Kano state governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, has described trending photos and videos of children voting in last Saturday’s local government election in the state as “propaganda” by his political opponents.
The governing All Progressives Congress, APC, won 100 per cent of all chairmanship and councillor seats in all the 44 local governments in the state.
However, the social media has been awash with images of children queuing to vote, sparking national outrage.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Monday washed its hands off the scandal, saying the election was conducted by the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission.
Speaking with journalists at the presidential villa on Tuesday, Mr. Ganduje said the images were simply propaganda orchestrated by his political opponents loyal to his predecessor, Rabiu Kwankwaso.
“Ask the international observers who went there, they held a press conference after they went round. All those pictures of children are pictures of assembled children they took, so it’s not true, it is part of the propaganda,” he said.
He also said Mr. Kwankwaso who is a Senator, resorted to propaganda because of his failure to go to Kano and participate in the election.
“Ask them, did they go back to the state to queue up and take part in the election? They were not able to do so, so we don’t even need to respond to such falsehood,” he said.
“What is important is to ask those who are credible and who witnessed the election; that is what is important than relying on the social media where things are crafted, we don’t rely on that,” he said.
Why I’m fighting Kwankwaso
The Kano governor also opened up on the reasons for his ongoing feud with his predecessor and former political benefactor.
He said although, his politics is not complete without Mr. Kwankwaso, the governor’s politics too cannot be complete without his.
Mr. Ganduje said he cannot be “controlled”.
Mr. Ganduje said he and his predecessor had come a long way, but that “somewhere, somehow, things went wrong”.
“But one important thing is that you cannot rule and manage a state and you are being controlled from outside, you know that one is very difficult to happen if you look at the psychology of leaders. That is the issue,” he said.