By Muhammad mukhatar Gwarzo
On October 11, 2011, an article bearing the above confused headline appeared on an embarrassingly unpopular website which indentifies itself as 247ureports.com. The website, which pretends to practice journalism, carried out an incomprehensible and incoherent report on the government of Kano state led by Engineer Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
Going by the first paragraph of the report, one does not need to be an expert in language to understand the linguistic nonsense the publishers of that unfortunate article unleashed, all in an attempt to impress unsuspecting readers. First, 247ureport.com claims that Governor Kwankwaso assaulted one of his commissioners whom the website identified as the Commissioner for Environment, Hon. Abbas Abdullahi Abbas. The assault, the website claimed almost led to the resignation of the commissioner “there and then” if not for the intervention of the some members of the cabinet. It must be categorically stated that at no time did such incident happen at the Kano government House. The whole story emanated from the schizophrenic imaginations of the publishers.
Any reasonable person knows that no amount of persuasion would make any sensible commissioner who has been assaulted by a governor to remain in a cabinet. To further confirm the blatant lie contained in the 247ureports.com story, no other sources of news carried the story. The report only exists on 247ureport.com and not anywhere else.
Second. The claim that Kwankwaso sanctioned the mischievous slogan of “Sabon Gwamna, Sabon sarki” (new governor, new emir), was just another deliberate attempt to bring the image of Kwankwaso into disrepute. The truth is that Governor Kwankwaso, even before his election into office has since dissociated himself from that slogan concocted by mischief-makers in his name. Also, members of the Kwankwassiyya movement as loyal party members have been known to be peaceful and not trouble-makers like their counterparts in the opposition camp of the ANPP.
Third. A close look at the composition of Kwankwaso’s cabinet reveals that virtually all the members in the cabinet are seasoned and experienced experts and technocrats in their respective areas of specialization. . According to The Nation newspaper edition of 18 June 2011 “… [kwankwaso’s] first set of appointments shows his preference for technocrats to translate his vision into reality. They include Dr. Yunusa Dangwani, Dr. Rabiu Suleiman, Dr Umar Shehu Minjibir, Dr. Danjuma Mahmud [and Prof. Umar Faruk [Jibril] among other experienced personalities”. This therefore clearly violates the 247ureport.com’s accusation that Kwankwaso “appointed unqualified persons to his cabinet. Even more interesting is the clear contradiction in the 247ureport.com’s description of the Hon. Abbas Abdullahi Abbas as “his own man” and not a “praise-singer”. If truly Kwankwaso wanted to honor incompetence, he would certainly not have appointed righteous people who are capable of being their “own man” like Abbas in his government.
Fourth. Contrary to the malicious allegations labeled on Kwankwaso that he “tongue-lashed his cabinet” and called them “jobless”, it was the appreciation of the individual commitments of Kwankwaso’s cabinet members in their respective fields of endeavor that attracted his interests to appoint them in the first instance. Professor Umar Faruk Jibril, the Hon. Commissioner for Information for example was the Head of Department (HOD) of Mass Communications, Bayero University, Kano, before his appointment to the position. Since kwankwaso’s first tenure in 1999, the governor has never been known to work with quacks in any area of his government and this explains his huge success then and now.
Fifth. Another mind-boggling falsehood perpetrated by the publishers of 247ureport.com was the charge Kwankwaso acted inappropriately to the unfortunate flood that ravaged Fagge local governments during the past few months. It was a well known fact that the Fagge flood disaster was one event that got the most appropriate and effective response from the Kwankwaso government. if, if Kwankwaso had slashed drainage clearing fund as 247ureport.com wants to claim, then how did the government find it possible to address the problem without receiving any complaints from the communities affected? To buttress my point,let me quote a report by The Nation newpaper which revealed that “after the recent destruction of almost 300 houses and the subsequent killing of about 30 people by a recent violent storm, the Commissioner for Environment , Alhaji Abdullahi Abbas painstakingly oversaw “the evacuation of the heaps of refuse that blocked the water tunnels and also ensured the sanitation of the debris of the fallen buildings” (The Nation, July 19,2011). This report again contradicts the falsehood perpetrated by the 247ureport.com publishers. Therefore, it is simply untrue that Governor Kwankwaso slashed a N10million to N1million as reported by 247ureport.com. Indeed ureport.com had no idea at all, on how much was spent to address the floods disaster in Fagge local government
Sixth. Also it is worth clarifying that no street cleaners were ever sacked by the Kwankwaso administration. However, any government will naturally find it necessary to eliminate ghost workers that usually feed undeservedly from government at the expense of hard-workers and the general public. There have been cases in which some loyalists of the Shekarau administration collected state funds every month using their ANPP membership cards as identification. It is these kinds of people that this government currently works hard to discover. None of them had any appointment letter and none of them did any kind of work. Nevertheless, they were paid each month for doing nothing. Any worker who has any valid appointment letter given to them by the past government should forward it if they must continue to serve in government. To confirm the truth that no valid cleaner was sacked, any keen observer would notice that the streets of Kano are always clean with the cleaners available in their assigned locations within the Kano metropolis.
Finally, it is also pathetically untrue that the Kwankwaso government sold any part of the Sabon Gari Market or increased any rent to any tenant in the market as alleged by the 247ureport.com story. Additionally, the relationship between the Emir of Kano, Alhaji ado Bayero and Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has not suffered any injury as mischief-makers like the publishers of the ureport.com story and their sponsors claim. The relationship between the two is as intact as it can ever be. More importantly, Kwankwaso’s cabinet is very stable and working quite efficiently in managing the affairs of the state. Whatever fabrications made to the contrary are just manifestations of the desperate attempts of the opposition camp to distract a focused government. Therefore, the unscrupulous publishers of 247ureport.com and their shameless sponsors should know that the Kwankwaso government is aware of their antics and is no position to succumb to cheap blackmail. This is because the Kwankwaso government still enjoys the magnificent support of the people especially as it intensifies the implementation of its people-friendly policies and programmes.
muhammad mukhtar Gwarzo k/fada kano state.
