Echoes from Kano

Returning to Kano city after over a decade was exhilarating, especially when the trip has been postponed serially.  It nearly became jinxed, as the flight schedule appeared too rigid for my convenience. But last week, I broke the jinx, and landed in Kano when the smooth Azman flight touched down after a detour to Abuja.

Aside the official duties that took me to the city, I was also eager to see the famed roads and bridges that the former governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, and his supporters boast about. There has been so much noise about the construction work under Mr. Kwankwaso that one could be forgiven for celebrating routine work under a governor who was simply doing what was expected of him. But this is Nigeria where the normal is celebrated and political leaders think they are doing citizens a favour by performing their duties.

My friend, a politically conscious person and a professional, who drove me round the city for two nights, and others, also provided windows into the city politics. Those roads and bridges are real, and the immediate past governor actually made giant strides in giving the city a facelift infrastructure wise. For a Lagos resident, any governor that succeeded in keeping commercial motorcyclists, okada, off the roads deserve a Nobel. Kano only has private motorcycle riders, with the suicidal commercial riders giving way to tricycles.

My taxi driver and other citizens across different economic strata were unanimous in their effusive praise of Kwankwaso, now a senator. Interestingly, however, they were also unanimous in condemning him for seeking to control things in the state by trying to force the current governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, to dance to his tune. “The red cap revolution is dead, “ my friend intoned asking rhetorically, “how many people do you see wearing red caps again in Kano?”

I know parachute visits by journalists could be dangerous in determining the correct mood of a group of people but the opinions of those I spoke with was that by and large, Kwankwaso did his best for Kano State. Though one or two added a caveat that the former governor was only interested in projects that will project his name more which was why the state became a huge construction site under him. They further blamed him for not allowing Dr. Ganduje to govern, a reason they cited for the duo parting ways politically. “Does he want the guy to serve him for life,” one asked. For those who are familiar with the political terrain of our country, the Kwankwaso-Ganduje duel is nothing new as we have a plethora of such.

While in Kano, however, a sad incident occurred which shone the light on the Ganduje administration in a way he himself could never have expected. The death of seven or eight students  – depending on the medium that reported it – of two secondary schools, Kano Capital School and Unity College, Karanye with the driver and a staff of   FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria Plc, makers of Peak milk and reportedly the organisers of the quiz competition that brought the students to Lagos made us to focus on Kano. They were on their way back to Kano when one of the bus tyres bust and the driver lost control last Tuesday in Ibadan. Ironically, their corpses were flown to Kano the next day after they were not deemed worthy of a plane ride when they were alive.

This threw up a lot of issues. Was the governor or any official of the state aware of the competition? Who took the decision to subject those students to the vagaries of our roads? Why was an official of the organisers on the trip? Does that mean FrieslandCampina had no budget for transportation for the contestants? What was the condition of the bus used for the journey?

Daily Trust of Wednesday, May 4, led with a story Despite cash crunch…Govs spend billions on foreign travels and Ganduje was listed among the most travelled governors. It adds, “Kano State Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, for instance, has so far travelled to Saudi Arabia three times, USA once, Dubai twice and India once since may last year.” The paper claimed that a first class return ticket to Dubai on Emirates Airlines is N886, 743 while New York for the same airline is N1.4 million. Ganduje’s last trip to Saudi Arabia was to inspect the accommodation reserved for pilgrims from the state for this year’s hajj yet less than 10 students were denied the opportunity of flying to Lagos.

While we focus on the federal government, our state governors are creaming us off with many states seemingly on life support. The least Kano can do is to fish out who put those young ones on the journey that terminated their lives abruptly, or else their deaths will be in vain.