For the two terms they worked together as a governor and a deputy, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso and Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, stood out among other political officer holders as a model for a harmonious working relationship that was devoid of disloyalty, suspicion and quarrels. But just five months after 2015 elections, a wide crack is emerging between the two.
DailyTrust Newspaper gathered that on Wednesday, October 21, 2015, the 59th birthday of former Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, which is usually marked in Kano as Kwankwasiya Day, the crack in the political wall that joined Kwankwaso to his successor, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, was noticed. It was the fifth anniversary of the Kwankwasiya political movement, and instead of the groups to come together to mark the event, the pro-Ganduje elements celebrated it at the Government House, while those who identified themselves as loyalists of ex-Governor Kwankwaso, led by his former Chief of Staff, Alhaji Yunusa Dangwani, held its own at Mambayya House in Kano. Though Kwankwaso was not in Kano for the event, it was one of the clear evidence that the political group on whose crest Kwankwaso and later Ganduje rode to Kano Government House has be split down the middle.
On his part, in the last five months since he handed over power to Governor Ganduje on May 29, 2015, Senator Kwankwo who represents Kano Central Senatorial District, has not visited Kano State. When asked recently why he has stayed away from a state he governed for eight years, Senator Kwankwaso responded by saying he didn’t want to meddle in the affairs of the state. But his decision may not be unfounded, as the no-love-lost relationship between him and his successor began to stare everyone in the face shortly after he left Kano Government House.
First, none of the commissioners in Kwankwaso’s executive was retained by Ganduje, with the exception of Alhaji Nasiru Yusif Gawuna, who was Commissioner for Agriculture under Kwankwaso. In Sokoto State, the opposite happened as Governor Aminu Tambuwal retained several executive members who worked with his predecessor, now Senator Aliyu Wamakko. In the case of Gawuna, he had been in government since the days of former Governor Ibrahim Shekarau. Alhaji Rabiu Suleiman Bichi is also retained as the Secretary to the State Government, but he had a very good working relationship with the current governor when Ganduje was Deputy Governor to Kwankwaso. Also, some of the policies of Kwankwaso were soon halted by the new regime. Recently, the portrait of Kwankwaso on the Coronation House, an adjoining building to the Government House, was removedand replaced by that of Ganduje. The portrait was an indicator that the building was constructed during the tenure of Governor Kwankwaso.
If some of these instances and issues were in secret, the daily political debate on Freedom Radio, Rahima Radio and Radio Express, all FM stations in Kano attest to the extent to which things have fallen apart between the two political figures in Kano. On the radio stations, there is a regular cross-fire between supporters of the previous administration and those of Governor Ganduje, such that active listeners to the radio stations have seen the crack in their relationship.
NewsWireNGR only last week, the Kano state commissioner of information, Alhaji Muhammad Garba had accused the former governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of spending the N4.1bn pensioners’ fund in building houses for pensioners which they can’t afford to buy.
Garba alleged that “Kwankwaso borrowed the sum of N4.1bn pensioners’ funds to build Bandirawo and Amana Housing estates with the aim that pensioners could benefit from the houses, but when he realized that the houses are too expensive for them to occupy, he slashed their prices by 50 per cent and even at that the pensioners could not afford to buy the houses.”
Governor Ganduje had also accused his predecessor for mismanagement of funds and leaving the state in debts when students paid him a visit over the plight of foreign students in Egpyt.
