By Abba Hamisu Sani
Africa-Press – Nigeria. Yahaya Ibrahim Al-Yakub is the former Presidential aspirant in the 2023 elections under the Action Alliance (AA), one of the opposition parties in Nigeria. He is also a renowned development expert, working with different International Organizations.
In this Interview with Africa Press, he speaks about the Crisis and legal battle between the Kano State Government, the dethroned Emir of Kano Aminu Ado Bayero, and the reinstatement of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as the Emir of Kano.
And about Tinubu’s and Nigerian governors one year in office. Among other issues.
Africa Press -Many issues have recently surrounded the political atmosphere of Kano State which affected the economy of the state, what is your view about the issue of the royal rumble taking place in Kano, as governor Yusuf replaced Emir Aminu Ado Bayero with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, but that led to two Emirs in Kano due to two conflicting court orders?
The former Presidential aspirant Yahaya Al-Yakub: The name of the game taking place in Kano State as some social media tag it, is the game of the throne, that is what I copy to say, so let us look at it and name it that way as it has already been named.
Actually what is happening for every reasonable politician who has Kano in mind for the sake of development is not happy about it, well a governor or government that comes in and finds out that, somehow, someone has masterminded a law in his favor of a particular issue and they feel they want to repeal that law to go back to its state, I think there is the possibility of creating a divide actually, and sometimes, you could find it as an open door with this kind of activity to sustain itself, for instance, should this governor go another governor may come and decide to remove this Emir and put another one.
Actually what we knew previously is that Emirs are fathers of the land, and they don’t involve themselves in politicking Unfortunately all the Emirs we are talking about or in question to some extent have records basically from Social Media, even though I can not beat my chest and say yes social media is correct but we have seen it and nobody contradicts that, these Emirs have played some art of Politics and of course, that is where every reasonable person in Kano is not happy about.
“Emirs need to be content with the situations, our late father may his soul rest in peace Alhaji Ado Bayero has sustained more than forty years or so on the throne, and he had tolerated every governor that came in, every situation, he knows how to manage them and go along, despite sometimes you could see a body language that they are tilted to this and that but has never come up and challenged any governor or bring in any tension in the state, always when you approach him he will say peace should rain, that is his words all the time. I believe this should have been the situation but unfortunately, the politicians have fooled the royal house into politicking, and it is not the best for the state. I think this should be squarely addressed by the leaders of the state so that the mantle of leadership at the Emirate or the traditional leadership in the state should be respected as it is supposed to be ” Al-Yakubu stated.
Africa Press: There are conflicting court orders about the issue, two courts of the same status gave different directives. What is your take on this?
Yahaya Al-Bashir – Yes the situation is now in the hands of the courts of law, even though there are conflicting issues to do with the court of laws, we should not make unnecessary comments on that, let us allow the law to take its toll and wait and see what will happen, I think all are vested upon the powers of the law. I think it is not good for us to be meddling in the issue while it is in the court of law.
Africa Press: Due to many on-folding events, the political atmosphere of Kano is becoming hot, what do you have to say about this?
A Presidential aspirant in 2023 – Again based on the question you raised about the political atmosphere in Kano State, any reasonable person who wants Kano to grow, should not support what is happening, I think it is very important for politicians to note that when you loss power, the best way for you is to go by the site and watch.
“Allow the incumbent to do his work with his team, you can document whatever he did, wait until when it is time for a political campaign, and you can use it against him and win the heart of the people, but for you to come and try to kind of turn the face or confuse those in governance, trying to work for people, for you to disallow that person to do the work they wanted to do for the development of the state, this is not good for us. We are shooting ourselves in the legs. Kano is ours, and we belong here, if we can not support anybody to develop the state, then we should not be found trying to mastermind bringing them down to work for the people.”He stated.
I know very well that Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, is a workaholic person, if you check the work he did between the first few weeks to ten months of his administration, even before the final verdict of the court, you can see how tremendous he has done in discharging his duties as a governor, he has done a lot, in fact for other governors, you could find out they could not do such as he did. So at least if we can not allow him to work, we are just kind of short-changing ourselves. Let us give him all the support for him to work and then put our state forward so that at least there should be a kind of positive development in the state for all of us. Then if there are mistakes politically we can document the mistakes and use such mistakes against him in the next political campaign comes 2027, that is how politics should be, everybody is not equal, and everyone has his style of leadership, so allow him to work, to me politicians should understand this, allow the governor to work, if he didn’t work, then we can use that against him, if he works we can also develop. We should not be having a kind of retrogressive development, where we are dealing with one particular thing all the time.” He added.
What I mean by one particular thing at all the time is that I believe for anybody from 60 years downwards when you check carefully, you will find out all the time when you hear politicking, you hear from people build roads for us, build schools, build hospitals, provide drugs in the hospitals, provide writing materials or instruction materials in schools, provides drinking water, provide electricity, this has been the campaigns in our country, at least we should go beyond this. We have all the resources, for Kano to have the population we have today, we should be thinking of advancing in technology, and interns in food production, our education when you merge it with Qur’anic education will be different from what comes from the other regions because Islamic religious knowledge has a lot of things that put people Street including with western education is more advantageous when you match them together you find out someone comes better, so that is s what we should be thinking of. ” Al-Yakub stated.
The development worker turned politician added that we are still retrogressively concentrating on developing roads, we can not even provide water, we should be far, far beyond that, our system of governance in the state should be a continuous kind of governance. Took instance, look at what Lagos State is doing, they are advancing, and that is where we should be, the governor who comes in and out in putting a project should have a kind of consultation before the project through consultative forums, to look for what is next for the state, the stakeholders in the state, elder statesman, other people who are technocrat in the state should be involved, so that we discuss, this is what we need to do, the governor should work towards that, towards developing the state. But if every governor will come and cross down whatever the previous governor did and start his own, everybody’s starting his own afresh, so having such kind of governors that we have a lot of unfinished projects and then wasting people’s money.
I think this is where we should be thinking of, so I think I have to call on politicians who have Kano in heart to look at this, any governor who comes in, let him support the governor to do projects , not be attacking the governor on particular projects that will help the state not trying to mar him down, to distract him from doing his job because it will all affect us.
Kano is full of human and natural resources, there is an urgent need for all of us to come together and harness it and push Kano forward.
Africa Press. – Finally, what is your general assessment of both Tinubu and the Nigerian governor’s performance within this one year?
The AA Presidential aspirant Yahaya Ibrahim Al- Yakub – Finally, actually you can not assess any new government within just one year, but I will say generally, all of the governors and the Nigerian Government under Tinubu are making some reforms, so you could not see anything tremendous that you can asses things.
We hope the reforms they are making will make a positive impact on the country while wishing them the best of luck.
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