A former governor of Kano State, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has criticized Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje over his plan to construct a flyover bridge at the Hotoro roundabout in the Kano metropolis.
The former governor faulted Ganduje for acquiring a loan of N20 billion for the project, which he said is the responsibility of the federal government, not the state government.
Governor Ganduje had visited President Muahammdu Buhari and presented the prototype of a three-level road interchange along Kano-Maiduguri road which will be named after the president.
But Kwankwaso, in an interview with BBC Hausa service on Friday, said “even though we need flyovers in Kano but what people need the most in the state is education.
“They need to focus more on our children to be educated and get entrepreneurial skills to depend on themselves.
“Instead of Ganduje to go and see the president and ask him to do the bridge, because it is the responsibility of the federal government to do the flyovers connecting Kano city to Wudil, but the governor went ahead and presented a photo that was badly design which even the president did not understand and have something better in his office,” Kwankwaso added.
He added that it is not a good idea to add to the debt of the state just because of a flyover and that the governor cannot pay back, rather will leave the coming governments with too many debts to settle.
He said his administration did not leave any debt to the state government but to his surprise from that moment to now Kano has N185 billion debt to settle.
Kwankwaso added that in government it is not any project that can be done with debt and that his administration constructed all the bridges with the state-owned money, not with debt.
“If you are in government there are important projects that you have to focus your attention on always.
“Education, health, and so on are very important that you cannot play with.
“While flyover is just a mere thing. During our administration, we constructed all the bridges with the state’s money.”