Aminu Kano

Aminu Kano (9 August 1920 – 17 April 1983) was a Nigerian politician, teacher, poet, playwright and trade unionist, one of the leading figures of the independence movement (Wikipedia). Born in the Sudawa ward of Kano, he began as a teacher and became an early critic of colonial rule and of the northern aristocracy, denouncing indirect rule as oppressive to the talakawa (commoners).

In 1948 he founded the Northern Teachers' Association, the first labour union in Northern Nigeria, and was a founding member of the Northern People's Congress, which he left because of its conservatism. As leader of the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) from 1953 he championed democratic socialism, women's rights and the empowerment of the talakawa, seeking to align Islamic principles with social justice. He sat in the Federal House of Representatives from 1959 and served as a federal commissioner under Yakubu Gowon.

His family, of the Fulani Gyanawa clan, was known for its learning in Islamic law: his father later became chief alkali (judge) of Kano, and local tradition holds that Usman dan Fodio himself appointed one of his relatives to that office. His mother's family, Fulbe from Kukawa in Borno, also produced scholars, among them a personal adviser to the emir. Of his mother's six children, he was the only one to reach the age of fifteen (Wikipedia). As a student teacher he spent months in Bauchi and Zaria and visited schools in the south, and after qualifying he became a junior teacher at Bauchi Middle School, where his friendship with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa began (Wikipedia).

In the Second Republic he led the People's Redemption Party, successor to NEPU, and was its presidential candidate; in 1979 the party won Kano State and the governorship of Kaduna (country study; Wikipedia).