2019: Gov Abubakar can’t be substituted – Kwano

There is a lot of hullaballoo over Governor Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar’s indigeneship of Bauchi state and speculations that his name will be substituted by another contestant for the seat of the Governor against 2019. Alhaji Danladi OC Kwano, the governor’s media aide, speaks on this and other issues in this interview with NAJIB SANI.

It is being speculated that the candidacy of Governor Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar will be cancelled and he will be, therefore, substituted by another candidate. How true is this?

This is only speculation and the work of the opposition, especially the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and some forces within the All Progressives Congress (APC) itself. Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar has
been given certificate of award by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); INEC is the only electoral body that clears any candidate after primary elections and clearance from the party of
which the aspirant is contesting; so are these opposition and forces thinking that INEC is a political party that leads by moron politicians.

There is no way INEC can give you that certificate without scaling through all laid down electoral processes and those electoral processes are laws guiding elections even if the political party of which a certain aspirant is contesting has its rules and regulations of which if a prospective aspirant did not abide by it he or she cannot in any way win a primary election in that party.

This means that before the party sends the aspirant’s name to INEC for clearance, the aspirant must have been cleared by the party; based on this, the rumour going round town on Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar’s substitution is fabricated only by politicians that are trying to win elections on the foundation of lies, treachery and deceit and any politician whose foundation are these three vices I mentioned cannot offer anything tangible to the people that elected him. Therefore, the electorate must be very aware and they should be able to identify them early before elections and discard with them during elections, because as vendors of slander they cannot if elected into office respect their office, respect themselves and respect the people that voted for them.

As liars and deceivers, they can one day fling the state into chaos and that can be in a form of volatility that can make the state not better to live, but on their side they can be happy as their children and siblings will not experience what the masses are experiencing. This is an advice not only to the people of Bauchi state, but the entire country at large.

But people say there is crisis within the APC; some even say APC primary elections did not hold in Bauchi?

Does these set of rumor vendors take INEC officials and APC leaders as bunch of fools? INEC work hand glove with the political parties and but only in tandem with electoral laws, the APC crisis in Zamfara state is a very good example.

Did INEC publish any name for the Senate, governorship and other contested offices of the APC in that state?

Capital no; because the National Working Committee of the APC did not send any name to INEC even if it did, INEC believes the elections there did not conform with its laid down procedures. Our governor lawfully as member of the NBA tackles all the emerging problems that some key members of the APC tried to instill. It is a known fact that some front-line members of the APC didn’t want the election to take place so they started trooping to Abuja to scuttle the concentration of the leaders of the APC at the state level, but these were not achieved and Governor Muhammad Abdullahi emerged as the winner. As for crisis, no one can point to a single crisis that erupted after the primary elections in Bauchi state. This is because there was none.

The two frontline contestants did not fight the governor, they are not talking, they did not channel any complaints anywhere. They are only talking and he’ll soon get tired and shut up. I assure you that our party is more than united, with no element of disunity.

Some are saying that there is backlog of salary arrears, pension and gratuity unpaid by this administration; some of them have even gone to court. How do you react to this?

May be it is a campaign gimmick. I think whoever is saying this is not conversant with the activities of this government and the people of Bauchi state and needs to get his facts right, because those feeding
him with the information are deceiving her or her because the more he/she talks about this the more foolish he/she’ll look. It is true when Governor Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar came on board there was these problems that you mention but because of prudence, accountability and transparency associated with the running of day to day of his administration he was able to pay all outstanding arrears he inherited from his predecessor, this I can authoritatively tell you it backlog of two of his predecessors not only the last one in the state but he clears all of these.

Don’t forget so soon that Governor Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar is one of the first two governors in
Nigeria that agreed without persuasion to pay the new minimum wage that some governors are still grumbling about.

In Bauchi, accountability matters because the state has a lot of work force and government salaries earners constitute almost half of the state population, despite that he paid salary every month without delay, you could remember that when Bauchi started having salary problems some two years back was because of the garnishee order by an Industrial Court that mandated the payments of some arrears of councilors owed by the state from the administration of Ahmed Adamu Mu’azu that was from around 2005 to 2009, you can imagine the years, but not a single of them went to court until they were instigated by politicians that don’t wish the state well. But before the garnishee order, the present administration in Bauchi state has been paying salaries smoothly, I think this is what angered the enemies of this administration and instigate the councilors to go to court. That was the only time Bauchi has salary problems.

It is widely speculated that Muhammad Adullahi Abubakar is not an indigene, a reason many political pundits feel is behind the attack unleashed on his administration by some prominent persons.

It is high time for people to stop taking the issue of indigeneship as criteria for electing people into elective offices. We believe we are practising democracy in Nigeria and what is democracy? It is interpreted as government of the people, by the people and for the people! If it is government by the people in quotes, bold and capital, then let the people make their choices because the government is by them and will be for them. Governor Abubakar has worked for the state for over half of his life, dedicated to the well-being of the people of the state and pursuing government’s interest wherever he served during both civilian and military administrations, and nobody grumbled. Why
now?

Indigeneship

On the issue of indigeneship, if one is to authenticate he has superseded all those unscrupulous characters that are trying to make this a point. Firstly Governor Abubakar can contest the stool of the Galadima of Bauchi if the stool is vacant because he is a lineage of those that held sway the power of that stool he is an heir to it and you cannot be an heir to anything unless by either being a paternalchild of the owner of that property or the owner decides to trust and make you his or her child.

In this case, Governor Abubakar is a paternal child of those that became the Galadima from the day the Emirate Council of Bauchi was created. Go to Jahun and ask for the house of Abdullahi Sarkin Gero, they are well known; that is his parents’ house. When the founder of the Bauchi Emirate came and the Yakubu of Bauchi met five traditional ruling houses, one of those houses is the Galadima’s house and this man, our Governor Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar, is of the lineage of that house. Why is anyone making noise? Doesn’t it have political connotation?

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