Kano Rerun Election: Group Slams Kwankwaso Over Violence

The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Kano State Governor, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of causing violence in Kano.

In a statement on Monday, the group claimed the governorship candidate of the PDP, Yusuf Kabir Abba, made inciting statement against the All Progressives Congress (APC).

They said: “There were indeed pockets of violence in Kano during the re-run election but we at BMO are alarmed at the level of propaganda that PDP and the Kwankwasiya movement were pushing out while actual voting was ongoing.

“Some of the gory pictures posted online were found to have been from a bar brawl in Ghana while at least one showing a machete sticking out from an individual’s shoulder was actually a special effect shot by a make-up artiste.

“Yet another set of gory pictures were taken from previous Jos crises, all in an effort to discredit an election that the Coalition of INEC Accredited Observers said was largely peaceful.”

According to BMO, Kwankwaso was at the centre of the call for public disobedience in the state at a time when former Sokoto State Governor Aliyu Wamakkko was in Sokoto urging aggrieved APC supporters to be calm after PDP candidate and incumbent Governor Aminu Tambuwal was declared re-elected for a second term in office.

“Nothing could be more shocking than seeing a high-profile politician like Kwankwaso, a two-time Governor, a Senator and a one-time defence minister, who had on more than one occasion aspired to be president of the country making comments on national TV that could best be described as inciting public disorder.

“Even while the election was still on, he was reeling out incidents of violence based on social media posts in an interview on Channels TV and he is on record to have told his supporters before Saturday that there was no way PDP could lose the election.

“But somewhere in Sokoto, another former governor, who is also a Senator, did not make any inciting comment even after the APC gubernatorial candidate Ahmed Aliyu lost the election by a slim margin of 342 votes.

“Rather, he called for calm and promised to challenge the outcome of the election at the tribunal. That is what is expected of true statesmen instead of a call for ‘unprecedented crisis’ like PDP leaders did in Kano,” it said.