Former Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has revealed that President Bola Tinubu was shocked by the atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the immediate past governor of the state, Abdullahi Ganduje.
Kwankwaso, who spoke to State House correspondents from the Aso Rock Villa on Friday after a closed-door meeting with the President, disclosed that he and his successor, Ganduje, were both summoned to the State House by Tinubu over the ongoing demolition in Kano State.
He told the BBC Hausa Service in an interview, that he met Tinubu for about 2 hours at the Presidential Villa and was able to convinced him on the alleged land deals and other infractions of the erstwhile Ganduje administration in Kano state, adding that “the President was so surprised with the revelations.”
He alleged that Ganduje had, among other things, allocated lands at the Kano Race Course to his friends and family members, a development that now made it hard for people who wanted to indulge in sporting activities and other exercises, to find a place.
Kwankwaso, a presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, in 2023 elections, stressed that the buildings demolished were illegally acquired by the Ganduje administration.
According to him, the President was shocked when he (Kwankwaso) revealed the actual situation to him.
He said: “The President was shocked. Are you not shocked that somebody will sell university? Are you not shocked that he demolished the only university? Daula Hotel, for those of you who are in Kano, you know the old Daula, demolished to zero, and that is a faculty under the University of Science and Technology. He demolished that one. Are you not shocked?
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“The President was shocked. He didn’t know. He even mentioned that he talked to somebody to go and find out for him. But when I told him, I said, “You are a Muslim; very soon you are going for Sallah. How can you go under those circumstances and pray in that place? And even the Triumph place he is talking about, you are journalists. You should be angry because that’s your constituency; he demolished it completely and put shops everywhere.”
Kwankwaso added that his party, under Governor Abba Yusuf, was merely fulfilling campaign promises to demolish such structures.
“You see, the governor is doing what we campaigned with. I wanted to be president; I campaigned also. And I went to Kano and told them that these places—schools, in fact, most of our schools in Kano— were being encroached on. And it is our policy to make sure that the encroached areas are returned to them.”
According to him, even the Eid praying ground where Muslims converged to pray during Sallah, was not spared by Ganduje who had allegedly allowed shops to be built round the holy place where the Emir and many other important dignitaries had prayed, thereby compromising the security of the Eid Prayer ground.
Kwankwaso also called the bluff of the immediate past Governor of Kano state, Abdullahi Ganduje who said he would’ve slapped him at the Presidential Villa, describing Ganduje as a person who was confused while making the “slapping ” remarks.
“I heard that he ( Ganduje) said he would’ve slapped me, but I’m here. He was just confused. These are all my boys politically. They can’t even look at me straight on the face if we meet. He was in a confused state when he said that, these my political boys if they see me they lower their gaze,” Kwankwaso said.
Kwankwaso also disclosed that there were possibilities the Tinubu administration may engage some of them from the opposition in his government, and did not rule out if he may eventually make it in the forthcoming ministerial list of the new administration.
