By Musa Abubakar
His Excellency Abba Kabir Yusuf, the Governor of Kano State has proven himself a successful showman, one that put his skills to use and hoodwinked us in Kano State to the point when we once deluded ourselves that he was the real deal. With the benefit of hindsight and the much we have seen of the calamitous months he has been in office, we now know that there have certainly been some errors of judgment on the part of the citizens of our state.
The first signs were unmistakable but the false euphoria of having a new kid on the block had clouded our perception when Abba Yusuf first assumed office. His priority at that time was to embark on a spree of spurious demolition of structures under the guise of correcting some perceived failings of his predecessor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje. That misadvised venture of tearing down critical infrastructure and causing untold economic losses almost threw the state into crisis as the political, sectarian and ethnic undertone of the demolition became known.
We were wrong in voting for Abba Yusuf and we were wrong to have construed the irrational actions of his earlier months in office as a demonstration of zeal to please the people. What we had thought was naivety on his part has now been proven to be a sociopathic tendency that the state’s people must now have to reign in lest they endure four meaningless years of Abba Yusuf in office.
His lack of vision in this regard was recently headlined with him inaugurating, not one, but two judicial panels. The panels are to probe cases of political violence and misappropriation of public assets during the administration of his predecessor. Abba Yusuf also ordered the panels to look into cases of missing persons in the state, from 2015 to 2023. That period was when Abdullahi Ganduje was the governor.
Abba Yusuf further caused concerns for his commitment to the good of our dear state by orchestrating the waste of resources by having the Kano State Government file criminal charges at the State High Court against Ganduje over alleged bribery. The vendetta upon which this charge is based is evident in the callous manner in which he dragged his predecessor’s family – wife and son – into the fray.
It is instructive to note Ganduje’s response to the court charge in which he clearly stated that only the Federal Government can try him for the kind of crimes Yusuf is alleging. Even more profound is the statesmanly manner in which Ganduje schooled his successor to concentrate on delivering governance to the state.
For context, Ganduje further stated that the bribery allegation was an ‘unfortunate and sorry attempt’ to shift attention from the fact that there was nothing on the ground in the state that the governor could use to justify the huge allocations he has been receiving in almost one year of being office.
He said, “In their desperate attempt to malign me and my family, they either forgot or probably cannot conduct themselves by the dictates of the law. They failed to take judicial notice of the recent pronouncement of the Federal High Court in Kano, which ruled that the so-called offence I am being accused of is a federal offence that can only be prosecuted by the Attorney General of the Federation and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“Rather than join issues with my traducers in Kano over the trumped-up charges levelled against me, I would implore them to redirect their energies towards easing the plights of our people in Kano. They still have the opportunity to revert to my blueprint for the sustainable growth and development of Kano State. It is not yet late in the day for them to emulate my developmental strides. They can still salvage the situation as my tenure was devoid of any wrongdoing.”
With what we know of our political schemings in Kano state, I daresay Ganduje is being too gentlemanly, too much of a statesman. Else, he should have told Abba Yusuf in clear terms that the tail is wagging the dog in his administration. The former governor should have been frontal in telling Abba Yusuf in clear terms to stop running errands for Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso and allow the interest of the electorates to determine the direction of the state.
The logic for expecting Ganduje to make such a call is based on the principle of fairness. Abba Yusuf ought to make the investigation of the past thorough. He should do this by extending the probe to 2011-2015, which would cover the period his puppeteer – Kwankwaso was governor and he (Abba Yusuf) was Commissioner for Works, Housing and Transport (some of my compatriots in Kano state say it should be extended to 1999 -2011).
For us in Kano, we know the terror that the supporters of Abba Yusuf’s puppeteer put us through with their Kwakwansiya movement so any talks of probing political violence should start from their camp and the incidents of missing persons can be situated within the threats that known loyalists of the governor have made. Some of our people have become so cowed by the persistent threat of violence from the Yusuf/Kwankwaso camp that they no longer make interventions in the sorry state of affairs under the incumbent government.
But some of us will not stop speaking out. This abandonment of governance due to a lack of vision and viable programme for Kano State has to stop because I believe Yusuf was not elected to superintend a campaign of witch hunt. He should set down to work for the people of Kano state, who deserve good governance even more now that the economic and cost of living crisis calls for state leadership with substance to offer. This is because as the economic situation becomes even more dire we have been asking ourselves the question “When Will Abba Resume Work As Governor of Kano State?”
For instance, the governor campaigned with the promise of improving education, healthcare, the economy and the environment but none of those things have come to fruition. The state has not fared better educationally under his watch with the state’s out-of-school children now at a record high in under one year. He promised to approve the recruitment of additional competent medical personnel to provide medical services at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of health care but the last time such took place was the recruitment of medical doctors in 2021 under his predecessor. The state sits atop an ecological disaster as impoverished citizens are forced to cut down trees for fuel thereby putting paid to Yusuf’s promise of protecting the environment.
As basic as these issues are, these are the things that are of interest to the citizens and not the errand their state governor is abusing the state’s commonwealth to run for a man whose interest is at the centre in Abuja. We want our funds to be committed to things that benefit us and not to score-settling. What is the essence of filing bribery charges against Ganduje at the State High Court when a 100-level law student can easily confirm would be thrown out over the court’s lack of jurisdiction?
We, therefore, earnestly want to know when our governor will stop playing at the galley, take the bull by the horns and resume his duties, which includes doing the things he was elected to do as opposed to digging up a past he helped make.
Abubakar is a retired educationist and wrote this piece from Kofar Mata, Kano.