Abdullahi Ganduje, the former governor of Kano State, has claimed that Rabiu Kwankwaso should have been slapped if they had met at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
On Friday, both men arrived at the State House at various times to meet with President Bola Tinubu.
Around 5:30 p.m., Kwankwaso was the first person to be seen at the Villa.
Later, Ganduje visited the Villa to speak with President Tinubu about the 10th National Assembly’s leadership and recent events in Kano.
He revealed to State House reporters that Kwankwaso was leading the demolition of buildings in the ancient city that had been properly allotted to private developers.
Kano natives, according to Ganduje, are trying to control the situation so that it doesn’t turn into a religious crisis.
“I know he’s in the building but we have not met,” Ganduje said of his predecessor. “Probably, if we met I could have slapped him,” he added. In his response, Kwankwaso called Ganduje a stooge.
“He is number one stooge. If you like, with due humility, I put him there,”
Kwankwaso told journalists. “You see, the governor (Abba Yusuf) is doing what we campaigned with. I wanted to be president, and I campaigned also.
“And I went to Kano and told them that these places – schools. And I can tell you: all our schools, in fact, most of them were being encroached and it is our policy to make sure that at least they are brought back to them, all of them.”
“We will not allow anybody, either local government chairman or governor, to go and sell. If you don’t buy from the school, don’t sell.”
Kwankwaso claimed that Ganduje sold lands carelessly while serving as governor of Kano State.
Since being inaugurated in on May 29, the new governor, Abba Yusuf, has been tearing down multibillion-naira structures.
The governor claims that, like Kwankwaso, the lands on which the buildings were built were obtained unlawfully.
From 1999 to 2003 and again from 2011 to 2015, Rabiu Kwankwaso served as governor of Kano, with Ganduje serving as his deputy.
The latter succeeded Kwankwaso in 2015 and held office for two terms, ending on May 29, 2023.
In his attempt to persuade voters to support the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for governor in the 2023 election, he was unsuccessful.
Yusuf, Kwankwaso’s son-in-law and candidate for the Nigeria National Peoples Party (NNPP), won that election.
