A political group loyal to former Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso is making concerted effort to frustrate incumbent Governor Abdullahi Ganduje’s €684 million loan request from China for a Kano Light Rail Project.
The group, Kwankwasiyya Movement (KM), in a petition lodged with the Chinese Government and China Development Bank, asked them not to grant the loan to the Kano State government.
The group also lodged a petition against the loan with the Senate President, Ahmad Lawal; Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed; and Director-General of the Debt Management Office, Patience Oniha.
Speaking during a press briefing in Abuja, the spokesman of KM, who was the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deputy governorship candidate in the 2019 election in Kano State, Aminu Abdulsalam, said that the loan, if given to Ganduje, would plunged the state into further indebtedness and mortgage the future of the present and incoming generations whose lives were already under threat due to immense poverty.
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Accusing Ganduje of embarking on reckless borrowing spree from both local and international financiers, Abdulsalam said:
“The Chinese Development Bank has been contacted via a petition in respect of the illegality and crass procedural violations by the state government; both the executive and the legislature. The attention of the Chinese Embassy in Nigeria has been drawn to the risks of the proposed transaction with Ganduje.”
Meanwhile, the Kano government said on Monday in a statement by the state Commissioner for Information, Malam Muhammad Garba, that no amount of criticism would deter the government from carrying out laudable projects aimed at transforming Kano into a Mega City.
According to Garba, since the foreign loan had already been approved by the China Export-Import Bank, the Kano State government would go “ahead with the projects as the state lawmakers have recommended the contractor Messrs CR18G-CRCEGJV to commence with lot I, which starts from Dawanau Graiins Market-Bata, being Phase I of the project and to be completed within 20 months.”
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