Quote:By Ibrahim Sha'ban 


The governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, has ordered speedy allocation of lands to officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC in Kano State ahead of the March 9 governorship election, DAILY NIGERIAN can report.

Credible sources told this newspaper that the governor granted the approval to “some top officials” of INEC on the eve of the general election.

Weeks to the general election, leaked copies of the application forms obtained by DAILY NIGERIAN revealed that Mr Ganduje, on February 5 directed the Permanent Secretary of the Kano State Bureau for Land Management, Muhammad Yusuf-Danduwa to process the allocation.

The governor is the de facto commissioner of Land since the integration of the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning with Kano Geographic Information System, KANGIS, in June 2007, which gave birth to the Kano State Bureau for Land Management.

But most of the allocation forms seen by DAILY NIGERIAN contained minutes of the governor giving directive to the permanent secretary to “process early”.

Already, sources said, the allocations for the plots at at Umarawa, Bandirawo and other places have been approved by the governor.

When contacted for comment, Mr Yusuf-Danduwa neither picked our reporter’s call nor responded to a text message seeking his reaction to the last-minute allocations to the electoral officials.







INEC spokesman in Kano, Garba Lawan, said he would direct DAILY NIGERIAN inquiry to the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Riskuwa Shehu, “in a short while”.

But several calls to the INEC spokesman two hours after the first inquiry have not been responded to.

Mr Ganduje is facing a supplementary election tomorrow (Saturday) with his major contender, Abba Kabir-Yusuf of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

The re-run election would take place in 28 local government areas, with 75 registration points in 207 polling units whose results were all cancelled.

A total of 128,324 registered voters are expected to participate in the rerun elections in all the affected areas.