There is little doubt that the administration of Abdullahi Ganduje was reckless and acted against the public interest...
Just three days after he assumed office as the governor of Kano State in early June, Abba Yusuf rolled out bulldozers to begin the demolition of private buildings, which he had declared a priori, during his campaign, as illegal structures erected during the tenure of his predecessor, Abdullahi Ganduje. He actually anchored his campaign on a promise of mass demolitions if he got to be elected and he accused the previous administration of splintering public assets, specifically land, and selling them to its cronies, just as the former governor was equally alleged to have benefitted from the racket.
There is little doubt that the administration of Abdullahi Ganduje was reckless and acted against the public interest in carving out plots from the grounds of public schools, hospitals and utilities, and selling or distributing them to government officials and their relatives. For example, plots were taken out of school football fields, and also in-between classroom blocks, for the construction of shops for commercial activities, thereby posing serious risks to students.
However, two wrongs do not make a right, hence it was wrong for the incoming administration to have taken action against the earlier anomaly, without passing through the judicial process to establish the wrongdoing of the Ganduje government, especially as many of the buildings in contestation appear to have been given bona fide certificates of occupancy.
Reduced to rubble were a three-storey building comprising 90 shops at Race Course in Nasarawa GRA; a three-Star Daula Hotel; a government property, reconstructed under a Public-Private Partnership agreement; several buildings at Salanta area of Kano; Hajj Camp; Eid Ground; Muhammadu Buhari Interchange flyover; and a roundabout in front of Government House Kano, which cost N160 million to build in 2017. The latter structure had served as a cultural monument to mark the state's golden jubilee. Its elegance and mosaic nuances, which included the Christian sign of the Cross, offended the religious sensibilities of the powers that be.
A state official unguardedly quipped that in Kano, "we are 99.9% Moslem," an indication of religious intolerance. More dangerous was the fact that he did violence to the 1999 Constitution, as amended, which forbids the recognition of any faith as a state religion.
On the day he supervised the demolition, the governor said, "The structures erected in schools, mosques, playgrounds, graveyards, markets and hospitals are to be demolished to ensure strict adherence to the urban planning, beautification and safety of people." Kano Polytechnic is one of the educational institutions whose land was encroached on; or shared and sold to individuals. This is wrong. The Secretary to the State Government, Abdullahi Baffa, says all government property sold by the former administration will be reclaimed, and estimates indicate that over N1 trillion worth of assets may have been recovered.
However, those whose houses were peremptorily pulled down insist that they followed due process in acquiring their land and vowed to resist the state. "We will die here," one of the victims plaintively wailed. Indeed, many have died as a result. The Coalition for Good Governance claims that 25 lives were lost in the initial protest that greeted the demolition. This should not worsen. It is in this context that the ex-parte order granted by a Federal High Court, presided over by S.A. Amobeda, to 19 of the victims for the government to halt the demolitions, pending the determination of a substantive suit challenging the action, must be seen as a welcome relief.
Nonetheless, the Kano State Government has genuine or justifiable reasons to reverse the distortion of the city's environmental plan, reclaim land belonging to schools, hospitals, recreational centres that were recklessly re-allocated to private individuals. If Ganduje is guilty as charged, then his actions rank as impunity and irresponsibility in governance. Although he had earlier acquitted himself of any wrongdoing by stressing that the State Executive Council debated and approved the sales.
One thing stands out clearly in Governor Yusuf's actions: he rendered and dispossessed the victims without giving them due quit notice as required by law. In other words, their fundamental human rights were grossly violated. It is impunity that should never be condoned in a democracy. If he had acted the way his Sokoto State counterpart, Ahmed Aliyu, did by setting up a Commission of Enquiry first, he would have escaped the widely-held charge of vindictiveness and being used as a pawn in the chess board of Kano politics, which seems to have become vicious of late.
In Sokoto, Aliyu empanelled a committee headed by a former Chief Judge of Gombe State, Justice Muazu Abdulkadir, to look into how government properties were sold by the Waziri Tambuwal administration; and also to verify the "indiscriminate allocation of land to people", in addition to how the revenues realised therefrom were utilised. This is due process and transparency writ large, likely to exorcise, or at best, limit the perception of witch hunt by some people.The well-considered view of PREMIUM TIMES is that the gale of demolition of houses in Kano city should be based on the law. The outcry by victims of the demolitions is justified and the judicial process should be allowed to prevail. One of them said: "We have our documents intact." Where it is established that the plots were genuinely bought and built on, the victims then deserve to be compensated as government is a continuum.
Irrational as the appropriation of schools and hospital land for private use is, the Kano government is yet to convince all that it acted altruistically in all the cases. The tendency to erode the achievements of a predecessor, who is from an opposition political party, might be at play here. For instance, it is difficult to rationalise the demolition of the Muhammadu Buhari interchange flyover and the roundabout golden jubilee monument. The iconoclastic touch on legacies of preceding administrations is a new low in the country's sojourn in democratic consolidation, and it should be staunched.
As it is Kano State, so was it in Imo State during Emeka Ihedioha's short-lived governorship. Welded iron works and artificial palm trees deployed as street ornaments by the Rochas Okorocha administration were destroyed without follow up with better replacements. The Hope Uzodinma administration is also engrossed in that meanness of action. The two iconic public structures destroyed in Kano, estimated to have cost about N300 million, is a waste of scarce public resources.
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But beyond the veil of these demolitions is the unremitting cold war between Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, a former governor of the state, and his estranged political godson, Abdullahi Ganduje, who for eight years served as his deputy. He was one of the lucky deputies to have succeeded their principals. They fell apart shortly after Ganduje became governor in 2015, in a trend that has become inexorably fated with political godfatherism in this clime.
The abysmal depth of the animosity between both men was evident in Ganduje's recent visceral outburst that he would have slapped Kwankwaso in the presidential villa, Abuja, if perchance they had met, when State House correspondents reminded him of his former boss' presence there too, to see President Bola Tinubu. Kano's prevailing cauldron from the demolitions is inimical to progress in the state. A solution to it should be quickly found. Paradoxically, one useful lesson from it is that impunity in public office, as always, has deleterious upshots.
Without prejudice to on-going judicial processes, PREMIUM TIMES is as concerned as the majority of Kano inhabitants about the reckless carving out of the Race Course, the only open public space left for sports and recreation in the State; the cutting up of the entire Kano City wall to make room for shops, thereby depriving the people of their historical legacy; alongside the desecration of cemeteries, showing disrespect to the dead. The environmental damage caused by building up every open space in the city is unacceptable and must be corrected but, in a democracy, reversing policy must follow due process and the rule of law.
