Background
He was born on August 9, 1920, son of Mallam Yusufu, Mufti of the Kano Alikali’s court. He came from the Genawa clan of the Fulani people, famed for their tradition of learning.
He was born on August 9, 1920, son of Mallam Yusufu, Mufti of the Kano Alikali’s court. He came from the Genawa clan of the Fulani people, famed for their tradition of learning.
Educated at Kano schools and Kaduna College between 1937 and 1942. He then toyed with the idea of becoming a barrister, doctor, policeman, before finally deciding to be a teacher, getting his diploma in education in 1942, and then teaching at Bauchi Middle School. Together with the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, he went to London Institute of Education on a one-year course and while there founded the Northern Teachers' Association, ready to become its first Secretary General on his return to Nigeria.
In August 1947 he went as a scout leader to London and was received by King George VI. He returned to become 3 founder member of the Bauchi General Improvement Union with Sir Abubakar. Refusing a job with the Kaduna Secretariat in 1948, he became head of the Teacher Training Centre, Maru, Sokoto. In July 1950 he was a founder member of the political association with which his name is most frequently associated, the Northern Elements Progressive Union. This radical body successfully contested the Kano Primaries in the 1951 election. This jolted Sir Abubakar and the traditional Northern leadership into forming the Northern Peoples’ Congress.
He became the first Vice-President of the NCNC in 1963 at a time when the tensions between the party and the NPC government were growing increasingly wide. The alliance broke down entirely before the Federal elections of 1964. A new grouping of all parties opposed to the Federal government came together in the United Progressive Grand Alliance. In the elections it was defeated and Aminu Kano lost his own seat, though he continued his opposition outside parliament, representing most Northern radicals as the Federal government gradually lost its grip on the country and slithered towards the precipice of civil war.
When the coup came in January 1966, Kano had been a critic of the government for two years and did not come under the blanket accusation of corruption that fell on other politicians. He also had the radical voice that accorded with the new mood of the nation and became an important spokesman of the North. After the second military coup General Gowon made him one of his Commissioners, first for Communications between June 1967 and 1971 and for Health from October 1971. He thoroughly endorses the Gowon policy of not letting tribal parties emerge in any future Nigeria; this includes his own NEPU, of which he was President before parties were disbanded, “The NEPU,” he has said, “has gone with history, so are the other parties.”
He was leader of the NEPU from 1953 to 1966 and led party delegations to constitutional conferences of 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957 and 1958 in London and Lagos. Trying to get into the Federal Parliament, he was narrowly defeated in 1954 and failed to get into the Northern Regional Assembly of 1956, but in the 1959 elections the NEPU fought in alliance with the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons, the party based on the Eastern Region. He won the Kano East seat and entered parliament to become government Chief Whip. The Northern Peoples’ Congress was allied with the NCNC and NEPU on a national basis, but back in the north, the NEPU encouraged by Kano was a radical voice in the Northern House of Assembly.