Kano Governor-elect summons Ganduje’s Perm Secs, Heads of agencies

Kano State Governor-elect, Abba Kabiru Yusuf, has invited Permanent Secretaries, Heads of Ministries and Parastatals, and Chief Executives of government agencies appointed by Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje to an interactive meeting.

Besides, the governor-elect, who won on the platform of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), accused Ganduje of frustrating a smooth transition of government on May 29, this year.

Chairman, Transition Committee of the incoming government, Dr. Abdullahi Baffa Bichi, disclosed the development while briefing journalists on the committee’s assignment yesterday.

The former secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) explained that the need to invite the senior civil servants become pertinent because of the perceived sabotage of the transition programme by the Ganduje administration.

Bichi stressed that the incoming government resolved to rely on the civil servants to collect necessary information about the administration to facilitate the transition after Ganduje’s Transition Committee failed to cooperate.

He expressed disappointment over the negligence of the governor to inaugurate a counterpart transition committee that would jointly work out a transition plan with the incoming government, lamenting that his assignment had been frustrated in the last four weeks.

According to Bichi, Ganduje has resorted to doing everything possible to undermine and sabotage the smooth transition of power to the incoming government after he deliberately refused to inaugurate his administration’s transition committee.

He said: “You will recall that the governor-elect inaugurated his transition committee two days after he received Certificate of Return. The committee led by my humble self was glad to hear that Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje also did similar announcement of setting up a transition committee.

“Sooner after, we swung into action; our expectation was to have joint meetings with the outgoing government’s committee for smooth transition but unfortunately that did not happen despite several efforts. We wrote to request for meeting but the response we received instead was a request for three persons to join them.

“It was latter we realised the committee is incapacitated because the governor has deliberately refused to inaugurate them while he left the state. It is now clear that the governor is doing everything possible to undermine the transition process.”

Effort to get reactions from the outgoing government was not successful as the Commissioner for Information, Muhammad Garba, declined to respond.