Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje on Friday said that there is no more problem in his relationship with his predecessor, Rabiu Kwankwaso.
According to him, reconciliation moves between them is ongoing, noting that the move will succeed.
He spoke with State House correspondents after meeting President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said: “The situation is under control, it is an in-house problem which is under control. We are talking about it.
“Yes, reconciliation is ongoing and it will work. We have been together for long, we are politically brothers and friends. Therefore, we will make sure that we don’t allow things to continue to fall apart.
“Kano is the most populous state in the country. Kano was the one that provided the highest number of votes for the President. Kano is the state that has 100 percent APC in whichever elected posts you can think of.
“We shall put heads together to make sure that there is peace and stability in the state.” He added.
He disclosed that he briefed President Buhari about the security situation in Kano, especially on cattle rustling and kidnapping, which he said is under control.
According to him, the amnesty package extended to those that have decided to turn a new leaf and their empowerment programme were also discussed during the meeting.
He added: “We talked about irrigation, especially the production of wheat with dry farming. Now, we are getting ready for the production of rice. So Kano State is providing an enabling environment for farmers, cutting off the middlemen, the farmers are getting the best out of it.
“I think with what we are seeing in Kano State, there is hope in agriculture. We have provided enabling environment for rice, wheat and tomatoes.
“On security, for long time now, we have not got any eventuality within the city. Even the castle rustling has gone down. We recovered more than 10,000 cattle and we have returned them to their owners free of charge.
“We granted amnesty to those who decided to quit crime. 39 of them came forward to surrender all their arms ammunition, including AK47, with hard drugs like Indian hemps and so on. We are planning an empowerment scheme for them.
“So security situation has improved in the state and we have to appreciate the efforts of the security agencies in the state.” He said.
Speaking on Kano students sent abroad for education, he said: “To be frank with you, it is a system that we have to evaluate because right now, we have a liability of over N2.6bn.
“What we have discovered is that some of the courses that are being undertaken abroad are not necessary because such courses exist here in Nigeria with much lower costs.
“We are reforming the whole system so that we will make it more realistic. It is one thing to send those students abroad, it is another thing to get optimum benefit from what we are doing.
“I assure you that our foreign scholarship will extremely depend on the demand of manpower.” He stated
He said that students will only be sent abroad for only highly skilled courses.
“We do not need to send students abroad for conventional courses like International Relations, Geography and History.” He said
Continuing, he said: “We also have two universities that we have not yet developed. Our internal students are also suffering because our money goes to foreign universities. Some of these foreign universities are even sub-standard.
“The Executive Secretary of the NUC had even cautioned us from the beginning that these universities in India, China and other European countries are substandard to some of our universities here. We are cautious of that, so we are reforming the system.” He said
