{"id":449695,"date":"2011-06-28T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/06\/28\/pdp-chair-how-we-defeated-anpp-in-kano\/"},"modified":"2011-06-28T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-28T23:00:00","slug":"pdp-chair-how-we-defeated-anpp-in-kano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/28\/pdp-chair-how-we-defeated-anpp-in-kano\/","title":{"rendered":"PDP chair: How we defeated ANPP in Kano"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Barrister Farouq Iya<\/strong> is the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kano State. In this interview with Daily Trust, he speaks on the secret behind PDP\u2019s success in the last general election, controversial Kofar Na\u2019isa land, ICT Park among other political issues. Excerpt:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What is the secret behind PDP\u2019s success in the last general election in Kano State?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As far as my party is concerned, we have lots of secrets which we will not hesitate to reveal to anybody now since we have won the election. One of the most important things we did before the conduct of the election was to remind the public of the successes of our party while in the government between 1999 and 2003.<\/p>\n

We brought those things we did for people to see and compare with what had been executed by the ANPP-led government in the last eight years. With that, people were able to weigh between the PDP and the ANPP which one was more credible.<\/p>\n

Apart from that, we put a lot of enlightenment programmes for our people to understand that PDP is people friendly and that when we return to power, we would to improve the situation in Kano.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for us, the ANPP government was not able to execute meaningful projects in the state; as a result people started getting worried about the party. With that enlightenment drive, people were able to understand that if they vote PDP in 2011, it will give them better service than the ANPP which had been in power for eight years.<\/p>\n

In addition to that, the PDP also embarked on rigorous enlightenment about our religion which was the bedrock the ANPP used at the time it came to power to wage war against us as if we were not interested in the Islamic religion.<\/p>\n

We were able to tell people that we are more interested in Islam than the ANPP and we gave them tangible evidence that they can see such as the Hisbah, Shari\u2019ah implementation and other social programmes which we executed when we were in government; which when compared to what ANPP government did in eight years, showed that we were still better off. These were some of the successes we recorded during our time and this was the reason we were able to have advantage over the ANPP to win election in the last general poll.<\/p>\n

Youths supported PDP in Kano during the April election. What should they expect from the PDP administration?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that the youths played a great role in our success in the last general election. This is part of what I said earlier, that we have been able to enlighten the public, including the youth. Honestly, we laid emphasis on the youth during our enlightenment campaign because they are the people that have the energy to carry out most of our activities.<\/p>\n

One of the things we observed was that at the time we lost election in 2003, the morale of our youths was completely down; therefore in 2011, we gingered them though massive enlightenment about all the injustices carried out by the ANPP and they understood the situation very well. As a result, they voted against ANPP during the election. They put in their maximum and protected our interest during the election. I will therefore say that the youths are extremely important to us and that is why our government resolved to accord priority to the improvement of the lives of our youths through introduction of various programmes aimed at improving their lives.<\/p>\n

That is also why when we came on board, we decided to improve the education sector to enable our youths further their studies. That is why we converted Ado Bayero building into a school. Our intention is to establish an organized secondary school in order to rehabilitate our youths, especially the drop-outs among them. We will educate them so that they can go to any university in the country and obtain degrees. We have realized that our quota in other universities across the country is never filled, so we want to equip them so that they can fill our quota there. In terms of other social facilities, we intend to open more technical schools for the youths. We want to train them on fish farming, tailoring, restaurant business and other skills for them to be self reliant.\u00a0 We are not going to allow any youth waste his\/her time any longer in Kano State.<\/p>\n

But the building was initially set aside for ICT Park. Why did government convert it to a school?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. It wasn\u2019t initially set for ICT Park. It was ICT Park that was introduced to the building just three months before the end of the Shekarau-led administration. Besides, the ICT project you are talking about is going to only utilize one or two floors of the entire building but in our case we want to have a full pledged utilization of the building. We want to transfer the ICT Park to somewhere else. We are not going to abandon it because it is also an important programme to our people. The plan of the immediate past administration is to dedicate two floors to ICT Park and rent the other floors to private investors, which is not convenient to us and indeed the people of Kano State. I personally suggested that we should call the school Dr. Rabi\u2019u Musa Kwankwaso College because it is his own initiative.<\/p>\n

What is your government\u2019s priority in Kano?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our priorities are of course the education, health, water supply, youth and women empowerment, among others. That is why when we assumed office, in fact one hour after the governor was sworn-in, we had to go to state water works to find out why water was not being supplied to the people of Kano State. So, you can see how important water supply is to us. We went there to find out the exact reason there was no water in the state. We realized that we have enough water at the source points for treatment but we don\u2019t have it in our taps. And being a water engineer, the governor rectified the problem and water has now started flowing into the city of Kano. We also want to accord priority to social activities; our government is very much interested in establishing modern sporting facilities in the state. We want to bring change in Kano within the first 100 days.<\/p>\n

From your findings, what are the major problems regarding water supply in Kano?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What we found was that the preceding government made some projects at the water source sites, but instead of solving our problems, it worsened the situation by diverting the water to somewhere else. As a result of this problem, the wells dried up and were grossly underutilized because the water is not going there for purification. What Kwankwaso did was that he directed the workers to supply more water to the wells, which in turn pumped same to the water treatment points for purification. The other reason was negligence on the side of management of the water supply agency. The other government\u2019s concern was not so much on water supply, but on reservation of water. Now Kwankwaso said we must distribute all the water we have to consumers.<\/p>\n

Garkuwa and Kwankwasiyya are well known factions in PDP in Kano. Now that you have formed a government, what is the fate of these factions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Garkuwa and Kwankwasiyya are not factions in PDP, they are pressure groups. We have never waged war against ourselves. All of them are strong but one is definitely stronger than the other. Honestly speaking, Kwankwasiyya is stronger than Garkuwa; almost 80 to 90 per cent of our members belonged to Kwankwasiyya because that is where the action is; that is where the governor is; where the party leader is and in fact where the entire PDP network is.<\/p>\n

We as party leaders are currently working to bring others to Kwankawsiyya camp because we are not fighting anybody. Garkuwa is not fighting anybody and so also the Kwankwasiyya group. But in a democratic setting everybody has the right to belong to any pressure group he\/she likes. People should understand that it is not the Kwankwasiyya that formed the present government of Kano, rather the PDP with bulk of the people of Kwankawasiyya in the government. All other people that will form the government will come from all groups, not Kwankwasiyya alone. We are ready to receive whoever wants to join us and assist the government.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\nPDP chair: How we defeated ANPP in Kano<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barrister Farouq Iya is the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kano State. 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