Emir of Kano Grace Love Idoko’s Activating Success TV Show

Moving from being a top bank chief to becoming the head of the country’s Central Bank before retiring to becoming the Emir of Kano, a position he describes as one of his highest achievements, Muhammed Sanusi II features on Love Idoko’s Activating Success show which airs every Saturday on AIT at 3:30pm.

In the exclusive interview, the Emir went from being just an economist to a voice that offers hope, insight and assurance to today’s youth about their purpose and future.

Speaking on legacy and how he wants to be remembered,  he made this known: “Everyone has to, at one point in his life, decide, how they want to be remembered. Is it as someone who devoted his life to the poor? Is it as somebody who always spoke the truth, is it as someone who had complete humility? Is it as someone who was an outstanding achiever? You’ve just got to decide for yourself how you will like to be remembered”.

The Emir went further to highlight the need for each person to have an identity, a focus and a decision on what we would want to be remembered for. 

“’Define for yourself a narrow range of objectives,’ my father once said to me as a teenager. You have a hundred things you want to do, focus on two or three things that you hold on to consistently and they could be very simple things. He gave me a simple example, let’s say you say to yourself; ‘whenever I have an appointment I will not be one minute late’, that is a difficult thing to do. But what happens is, if you see to that, even after death, if people don’t remember anything about you they will remember that, that man was known for never being late for a meeting’. At the end of the day, we all have to remember as human beings that we encourage ourselves to take full advantage of whatever gifts we have been given or we are endowed with. We have reputations to build, we have societies to serve, we have family”, he said. 

The show did not end without an advice to young people.  “This is one of the things I tell my children and that is what I will tell young people. Think of what you are good at and what you are happy doing and focus on it. If, for example, what you feel happy doing and what you are good at is Hausa Language focus on it. I’ll rather have a child get a first class degree in Hausa Language than one who gets a third class in Medicine or Law. My message for a young Nigerian is a message of optimism. At the end of the day, when you are in an environment like this, you tend to see dark clouds, you tend to see difficulties, challenges, you don’t see all the great opportunities. Part of the problem is that we are looking for these opportunities outside ourselves rather than within ourselves.

As the show was wrapping up, the Emir shared what he tagged ‘one of the greatest lessons for him in life’. 

“One of the greatest lessons for me in life is for you to believe in yourself and to look within yourself and see what you can achieve inspite of all the difficulties and to discern that the greatness of a man is measured not so much by what the outcome is but by the enormity of the task that you face and the challenges that you confront. Sometimes, people fail because from the beginning they set for themselves unrealistic expectations. At the end of the day we all have different things. Not all of us can be billionaires, or Governors, Ministers, but everybody can be something. Appreciate the importance of each and every challenge, no matter how small; with the realisation that what you make of it as an individual is what makes greatness”, he said. 

Activating Success with Love Idoko airs every Saturday on AIT by 3:30pm. The episode that features Emir Muhammed Sanusi II will air today, Saturday, March 31.

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