I once said it, and I repeat it today: whenever the glaring failures of Abba’s administration stare us in the face, their only weapon of defense is to shift the blame to the past government.
Two years of dry taps and empty reservoirs under their rule, they cry “It’s Ganduje….!”.
Our youths swallowed in the pit of thuggery and violent brigandage, again “the past regime….!”.
Our children rotting in dilapidated classrooms, abandoned to a broken future, “Laifin Ganduje ne”.
The economy of Kano, once the beating heart of commerce in West Africa, now a shadow crawling behind its peers, they will still scream “the previous administration……..!”.
And today, when EFCC and ICPC unmask their cronies for monumental looting, money laundering, and dollar racketeering, their hymn remains the same, “Ganduje! Ganduje! Ganduje!”
Yet this is the same Ganduje they deride daily as a man with no influence in Nigeria today, while at the same time, they invoke his name as the scapegoat for every shame and scandal that explodes under their roof.
To be honest and for the sake of clarity, in this new round of revelations, the individual fingered by EFCC and ICPC openly admitted guilt in his own statement. The courts have already seized millions from him as stolen public funds. ICPC itself confirmed seizing over one billion stolen naira, a billion siphoned from the sweat of Kano’s talakawa and hidden in the vaults of a single greedy hand. There are reports of public funds being diverted into a single individual’s account, from which he squandered the people’s wealth. There are further allegations of billions laundered through Abuja Bureau de Change operators, converting naira into illegal dollar transactions far beyond what the law permits.
These are not mere allegations to be swept under the carpet with propaganda and denial. These are specific charges that demand answers. Yet, instead of providing clarity, this government hides under the shadow of Ganduje, as though the man still occupies Government House in Kano, rather than Abba Kabir Yusuf.
Even the tired excuse that “the opposition is behind it” collapses under its own weight. Opposition politics, everywhere in the world, involves digging up allegations, the responsibility of the government is to defend itself with facts or reform itself through action. For eight long years, the Ganduje administration endured relentless opposition attacks, yet it never collapsed into this cowardly pattern of denial and blame-shifting. What stopped us from treating Abba’s government with the same scrutiny? Is it above reproach? Certainly not!
This is a government that campaigned on a moral promise: zero tolerance for corruption, no matter how little. That promise now lies murdered, exposed as a fraud against the people of Kano. If it turns out to be the usual political trick, a fraud to exploit the goodwill of the talakawan Kano, then let them know this, the talakawa of Kano have woken up.
