I can’t allow Kwankwaso to control me, says Ganduje

The Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, on Tuesday said as a leader, he could not be ruling a state and allow himself to be controlled from outside.

The governor was explaining the sour relationship between him and his predecessor, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso,  while answering questions from State House correspondents after attending a programme at the old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He said the same way his political history could not be complete without mentioning Kwankwaso, the former governor’s history too would not add up without his own name being mentioned.

He said, “As you know, we were very good friends. In fact, my politics cannot be complete without Kwankwaso and the history of Kwankwaso’s politics cannot be complete without me. But somewhere somehow, things went wrong.

“We believe in politics that you will get to a point that you cannot rule and manage a state and then you are being controlled from outside. You know that one is very very difficult to happen if you look at the psychology of leaders.”

Ganduje also denied media reports of underage voting during the last local government election in his state.

He said the pictures being circulated to depict underage voters were taken during a school assembly.

“That was propaganda. You can ask the national observers who went there. They held a press conference. All those pictures were children during a school assembly. It is not true, it is part of the propaganda.

“Let them go back to the states and ask the people did they queue up and vote in the election?

“So, we don’t even need to respond to such falsehood. Ask those who are credible and who witnessed the election, I think that is the most important rather than rely on the social media where things are crafted, and take pictures that were pre-arranged. We don’t rely on that,” he said.

The Bauchi State Governor, Mohammed Abubakar, said they were at the Presidential Villa for a dialogue on ethics and integrity of service and the presentation of a compendium on the life and times of President Muhammadu Buhari and the service he had rendered to the nation, from the time he joined the army to date.

Abubakar also supported the establishment of state police, saying the fear that state governors would abuse it was unfounded.

He said, “The nation is a federation. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria provides for a federal system and in a federal system, the federating units are all independent in their own sphere of influence.

“We copied the constitution from the American Constitution and if you go to America, you discover that there is county police; there is state police and then the federal police. If we are going to engender true federalism, that is probably the beginning.

“There will always be fears but we should not think in terms of individuals in Nigeria, that is our bane. We should think in terms of developing institutions. When we develop institutions and the plain truth, they take care of the indiscretions of individuals.”
(Punch)