Kano gov’t replies Kwankwaso, says Ganduje was not imposed

Kano State Government has dismissed as untrue claim by a former governor of Kano State, Senator Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, that Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje did not win the 2019 gubernatorial election but was imposed on the people by powerful forces.

Kwankwaso had on Sunday in an interview with a national daily said Ganduje was imposed on Kano people to become governor, not through an election.

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This is coming a few days after Ganduje visited Kwankwaso to condole with him over the death of his brother at his residence in Miller road.

Since that day, the political atmosphere in the state has taken a new direction with many predicting that Kwankwaso and Ganduje were on the path of reconciliation.

However, in a statement by the commissioner for Information, Malam Muhammad Garba, said contrary to the assertion made in the interview, Kwankwaso managed a well-organised election rigging network, particularly in the metropolitan local governments, where youth, mostly without even voters’ cards were engaged to perpetrate the act.

He said it was vividly clear that barely hours into the voting, most of the ballot boxes had been stuffed, only for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to discover that either card readers were not used or the voters were not captured in its data and therefore had to cancel the results from many centres and declared the election inconclusive.

Malam Garba pointed out that it was unfortunate that “as a leader who was severally involved in the election process, Kwankwaso is still contesting the result of an election conducted by a statutory body and upheld by courts of law.

“Just some few days ago, Kwankwaso was all over the media cautioning his followers against unguarded utterances but ended up making incendiary rhetoric unbecoming a person of his calibre.”

He said apparently, the interview Kwankwaso granted the national daily in which he attempted to rubbish the Ganduje administration has done him more harm than good which completely negates the spirit of genuine peace and reconciliation he preached to his followers in the last few days to avoid derailing.

Malam Garba stated that Kwankwaso should have thanked Ganduje for completing many of the projects he abandoned, saying that the people of Kano are paying the price for the unparallel policy of continuity that saw the completion of many projects in the last six years in the state.

He said these projects include the Aminu Dantata Flyover, Yahaya Gusau Road and Prince Audu Underpass, Five-kilometre roads in Dawakin Tofa, Ungogo, Warawa, Rano and Tofa local governments; Mahmoud Salga Road, Jaba-Rimin Kebe Road, Independent Power Project at Tiga and Challawa Dams, among many others.