President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have intervened in the crisis between Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and his predecessor, Sen. Rabiu Kwankwaso.
It was gathered that at the instance of the president, six governors of the APC from the North-west held a meeting on Monday, with Kwankwaso and Ganduje at the former’s residence in Abuja, where ‘contentious issues’ were resolved.
The meeting, which started around 9pm, lasted till around 3am, when Governor Yari announced that the two politicians from Kano have agreed to work together.
Sources close to the meeting said Buhari found it necessary to intervene on the grounds that if allowed to degenerate, the crisis would snowball to other places, a development that would not augur well for the APC.
In an interview with our correspondent, Kwankwaso’s Chief of Staff, Aminu Abdulsalam, who confirmed the meeting, said based on intervention by relevant stakeholders, his principal had agreed to work with Ganduje.
Also, Ganduje’s Director-General on Media and Communications, Malam Baba Halilu Dantiye, who released pictures of the meeting, said the two political heavy weights have forsakened their differences.
However, there was a new twist hours after the truce, when a high-powered delegation from Kano State, delivered a letter to the national headquarters of the APC, containing the decision of the APC in the state to sack the state chairman of the party, Umar Haruna Doguwa, and the former state organizing secretary, Sunusi Sirajo.
In a presentation, the state APC public relations officer (PRO), Bashir Yahaya, stated that the two officials were relieved of their positions for contradicting the party’s stand on the suspension of the former governor.
He said Abdullahi Abbas Sunusi was appointed as caretaker chairman, while Ahmed Muhammad, the assistant state organizing secretary, became acting organizing secretary.
In his response, national chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, described the feud as an “unfortunate, unnecessary and distracting situation that must be solved.”
He therefore pleaded with the delegations to help ensure peace, saying there was only one government in Kano State, whose authority must be upheld.
He said the party had set up a team of three people, led by a deputy national chairman, the party’s national secretary and the national organising secretary to restore amity between Ganduje and Kwankwaso.
He said: “It is a situation that we must not, as a party, allow to blossom. We must nip it in the bud because it is capable of causing problem in a state as sensitive and to some extent as volatile as Kano State.
“So, it is in all our interest, your interest and certainly our interest in the national secretariat to ensure that these differences between two of our very prominent leaders in Kano must not go any further and does not become yet another issue that will be feeding the press. None of us must do anything that is likely to make the situation worse,” he said.
The delegations, included the Speaker, Kano State House of Assembly with 36 out of 40 members and chairman of the Elders Forum Committee among others.
However, Kwankwaso’s Chief of Staff, Comrade Abdulsalam, had in an advertorial yesterday, condemned the sacking of Haruna Doguwa and Sunusi Suraj, as well as the detention of Dr. Yunusa Dangwani, a former commissioner for water resources, for allegedly organising a political rally in honour of Kwankwaso, an indication that the acrimony was not yet over.
Dailytrust
