Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso has said that the Federal Government was deliberately causing a schism between the governors of the 36 states by recognizing the Jonah Jang led faction of the Nigeria’s Governors Forum.
He said the 16 members of the NGF who allied with Jang were paid N2 billion to reward them for their loyalty to the PDP.
Kwankwaso spoke at a meeting with the team from the secretariat of NGF on Peer Review Mechanisms led by Director General Ashishana Okauru.
He said, “Each of the 16 governors that voted for Governor Jang has benefited N2 billion each from our own money, given to them free of charge. All of us from the Ameachi side were given nothing, that is not being fair, that is not even correct and it is illegal”, Kwankwaso fumed.
“We are having difficulties in coming together as one forum because the Federal Government is not respecting democratic tenets”. “For rapid progress, governors must work as brothers,” he counseled.
“I need to learn one or two unique practices from other states which I could replicate in Kano State.
“If you give us a template on why and how a state is succeeding for instance in environment, it will be easier for us to copy.
“I would give such template to my commissioners to study for possible replication.
“If I have a literature or a template on what a state is doing in a particular sector, I would not need to travel to such state to learn.’’
Okauru in his remarks stated that the forum wants all the 36 governors under one umbrella, pointing out that a lot of ground had already been lost in polio eradication, the lingering insecurity in the country, teeming youth unemployment and Excess Crude Account, lamenting that comradeship among the governors had weakened.