The Kano State Government has banned tricycle riders known as “Adaidaita Sahu” from operating on some major roads within the Kano metropolis in the state from Wednesday, November 30, 2022.
The government, through the Kano Road Traffic Agency, said it took the action after providing 100 ultra-modern buses and 50 taxis that would be conveying passengers on the roads that are prohibited for tricycle operators.
This was disclosed in a statement on Tuesday by the Public Relations Officer of KAROTA, Nabilusi Na’isa.
“Adaidaita Sahu drivers (tricycle operators) are prohibited from following Ahmadu Bello Way by Mundubawa road to Gazawa and Tal’udu road to Gwarzo,” the statement partly read.
According to the statement, the government has provided buses in order to enhance transportation in the state as well as to make it easier for people to follow these routes.
The statement added that the government will also announce when tricycle operators will stop using other major roads in the state once it provides more ultra-modern buses and taxis to ease traffic congestion in Kano city.
In this file photo, Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje speaks during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today which aired on February 12, 2021.
The Kano State Executive Council has adopted the review of rates for the rehabilitation of Kwanar Kwankwaso-Kwankwaso Road in Madobi local government with an augmentation of the sum of N97, 826, 831.82 million.
The contract for the project was awarded in March this year at the sum of N372, 268, 632.03 million with an advance payment of N154, 491, 457.43 million and works have reached 50 percent progress.
The state Commissioner for Information, Malam Muhammad Garba, who disclosed this during a media briefing after the council meeting held at the Council Chambers, Government House, Kano, said that the review was attributed to the incessant increase in the prices of construction materials.
He said the increase brings the revised contract sum to the tune of N470, 095, 463.85 million.
Malam Garba also announced that the Council has approved the release of N40, 373, 130.00 million for the rehabilitation of 10 dilapidated solar-powered boreholes and VIP latrines in 10 rural markets across the state.
The Commissioner recalled that the state government through the Ministry for Rural and Community Development had constructed VIP latrines that use solar power to operate the boreholes in 74 rural markets across the state since 2012.
He stated that the state COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (KANO CARES) is rehabilitating 23 out of the existing 74 under its Rural Wet Market programme.
Malam Garba also revealed the Council’s adoption of approval for the revised estimated total cost for the construction of Muhammadu Buhari Interchange at NNPC Mega Station Rotary Intersection, Hotro, Maiduguri Road in the metropolis.
The Commissioner also recalled that the contract for the project was awarded in March this year at the sum of N8, 980, 303, 460.63 billion, with an advance payment of N4, 151, 730. 32 billion.
He said the project has reached 97 percent progress as the major components of the project that included the underpass, overpass, and flyover have been completed, with the underpass and overpass opened for traffic.
Malam Garba further said that in view of the prevailing circumstances and approval for the execution of additional works on the provision of streetlights, and fencing, provision of sand dust, artificial grassing under the flyover, provision of permanent CCTV cameras, service ducts and tower, the contract had to be reviewed upward to the tune of N9, 231, 117, 259.06 billion.
The Commissioner revealed that the Council has also approved a request for the extension of college premises in respect of the state College of Health, Science and Technology (School of Hygiene) in accordance with the recommendation by the National Board for Technical Education to give space for the accommodation of the college’s partially accredited programmes.
He said the Council approved the allocation of the former section ‘B’ of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) building located opposite Sabuwar Kofa, behind the current office accommodation of the state Science and Technical Schools Board to serve as an extension to the college.
The Council, he added, has also granted the request for the release of 55 officers from various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies to undergo overseas training on salary options and have secured admissions from various donor agencies including TET-FUND and were duly recommended by the respective Ministerial Training Committee (MTC) in line with the approved training guidelines.
Malam Garba said approval has also been given by the Council for the payment of arrears of hazard allowances to the non-academic staff of Yusuf Maitama Sule University, Kano amounting to N24, 835, 000.00 million covering January-May, 2019.
The Commissioner stated that the council has approved the implementation of salaries migration of 2, 207 staff redeployed to the state payroll with a cost implication of N199, 582, 888.11 million.
He said the staff is drawn from local governments, SUBEB, and other Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), and were deployed to secondary and tertiary institutions in the state.
Malam Garba explained that 451 of the staff were from the state payroll whose salaries would increase in the monthly state wage bill by N19, 162, 490.55 million due to migration from one salary scale to another, while 1, 756 staff whose salaries are not in the state payroll would increase it by N180, 420, 398.56 million monthly.
The Commissioner further announced that the Council has approved the State and Local Government Revenue Administration (Codification and Consolidation) Amendment Bill 2022 and transmission to the state House of Assembly for passage into law.
Jihadists have attacked an army base and a town in northeast Nigeria killing soldiers and civilians, security sources and residents said Sunday in the latest violence to rock the region.
Fighters from Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) riding trucks fitted with machineguns stormed the town of Malam Fatori, in Abadam district, late Friday and early Saturday, they said.
“ISWAP terrorists attacked Malam Fatori and caused huge destruction which we are working to quantify,” a military officer told AFP.
“They attacked the military base and engaged troops in a fight while a second group went on a killing spree and arson in the town,” said the officer who asked not to be identified.
The first attack, near the Niger border, came at dusk Friday, leading to a fierce battle with soldiers who repelled the assault, said resident Buji Garwa.
In a predawn attack on the base and the town on Saturday, the jihadists hurled explosives and killed residents, while others drowned in a river trying to flee.
Death toll unclear
“It is not clear how many people were killed because we all fled the town and are now gradually returning to assess the damage,” Garwa said, adding that a large part of the town had been set afire.
“We have started combing the bushes and picking (up) bodies of those killed and searching along the river banks to find those washed to the shores,” he said.
Another resident, Baitu Madari, said she had counted a dozen people who were killed in her neighbourhood.
“I have no idea of the number of the dead bodies recovered in other parts of town. The destruction is really huge,” she said.
According to an intelligence officer, the attackers came from nearby Kamuya village.
“Kamuya is the largest ISWAP camp in Lake Chad area which is just eight kilometres (five miles) from Malam Fatori,” the source said.
“All the previous unsuccessful attacks on Malam Fatori were launched from Kamuya which is well fortified with mines and heavy weapons,” he added.
Malam Fatori, 200 kilometres from the regional capital Maiduguri, on the fringes of Lake Chad, was seized by Boko Haram jihadists in 2014 but clawed back by the military in 2015.
A base was established in the town to repel attacks from ISWAP, which split from Boko Haram in 2016 and turned Lake Chad into a bastion.
In March, thousands of people who fled to Maiduguri and into neighbouring Niger were returned to Malam Fatori on the orders of the Borno state government, despite concern by aid agencies.
The jihadist conflict which broke out in 2009 has killed over 40,000 people and displaced around two million in the northeast.
The violence has spilled into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting a regional military force to fight the insurgents.
The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu has tasked the party faithful to continue supporting the ruling party.
He made the call in Kano on Saturday while addressing party leaders from the North-West zone at the commissioning of the APC campaign offices.
“This party will sing victory. This country will experience progress. This office will be filled with joy come February 2023. We are confident that we don’t have any regret at all,” he told them.
“Don’t allow those who don’t know the way to victory, don’t understand the success of a nation to lie to you about Buhari or anybody. Don’t let them. Throw it back at them. Take your broom firmly and sweep Nigeria clean. God will bless you. We will give you joy.”
Tinubu was Lagos State Governor between 1999 to 2007. [email protected]
His comment in Kano came on the same day that his supporters trooped into the streets in Lagos State to ramp up support for him and the Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
The supporters – youths – were spotted with several APC paraphernalia such as brooms and flags. They marched from Maryland on Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way to Police College via Ikeja, the state capital.
The rally organised by Tinubu’s son Seyi was named “Eko Youth Walk For Tinubu- Shettima, Sanwo-Olu- Hamzat”.
Saturday’s rally attracted the heavy presence of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).
It was the third major march for Tinubu in the nation’s commercial capital since the campaign season intensified.
Tinubu, a former Lagos governor between 1999 and 2007 in the battle for Aso Rock’s top job alongside leading contenders like Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) in a contest that analysts have described as a three-horse race.
The presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) Rabiu Kwankwaso has pledged to restore the country’s glory if elected next year.
Kwankwaso said this on Sunday shortly after holding a closed-door meeting with NNPP stalwarts in Jalingo, Taraba State where he also commissioned the party’s offices.
He says he has the capacity to reposition Nigeria economically and restore security and infrastructure in the country. This, he said, pushed him to join the presidential race.
“Well, you see, our strategy normally is to allow people to continue to underrate us. Our politics is underground, not in the air. People could see and touch our supporters and these are committed supporters,” the former Kano State governor added.
“People who very much believe in our ideology; believe if we are given the opportunity, we are in a position to change many things for the better, and therefore, they also believe that if we get the position, the country will be a better place. That is why you see so many people everywhere in the country showing solidarity for our candidature.”
According to him, some months back, many persons doubted the party’s chances going into next year’s general elections. He, however, said the situation is now different.
“Seven months ago when we decided to join this party, many people thought we were not going anywhere,” Kwankwaso noted. “But by the grace of God, today in this country, everybody knows us.”
The NNPP flagbearer admitted that while he campaigned for President Muhammadu Buhari, he is unhappy with the level of joblessness among youths some of whom have now taken to drug abuse and banditry.
For Kwankwaso, if these issues are not addressed, it could lead to anarchy in the country.
He also promised to run an all-inclusive government if he wins next year’s presidential election.
A 22-year-old lady, Ummakulsum Sani Buhari, has been allegedly stabbed to death by her Chinese lover, Geng Quanrong, at Janbulo quarters, Kumbotso Local Government Area of Kano.
The incident took place at about 10 pm on Friday after the Chinese man came to see the lady at her parent’s residence located adjacent to the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) office.
The spokesman of the Kano Police Command, Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa, confirmed the incident.
“On 16/09/2022 at about 2200hrs, a report was received from Janbulo Quarters Kano that, one Geng Quanrong, ‘m’, 47 years old, of Nassarawa GRA Quarters Kano, a Chinese national, went to the residence of his girlfriend, one Ummukulsum Sani, ‘f’, 22 years old, had a misunderstanding with her, as a result, he attacked her with a sharp knife inflicting deep cut on her neck and some other parts of her body,” he said in a statement on Saturday.
“On receipt of the report, the Commissioner of Police, Kano State Command, CP Abubakar Lawal, FDC mobilised a team of policemen led by SP Ibrahim Hamma, Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Dorayi Babba Division to the scene.
“The victim was rushed to Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital Kano, where a medical doctor confirmed her dead. The suspect was immediately arrested.”
He quoted the commissioner to have “directed that case had been transferred to the command’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Homicide Section for discreet investigation”.
A crowd watches on as an excavator picks through the rubble after a building collapsed in Kano on August 30, 2022.
One person has been confirmed dead with eight others injured in a building collapse in Kano State.
An uncompleted three-storey building caved in on Tuesday at a popular GSM market in Beirut Road, the north-western state as emergency officials embarked on rescue operations.
A few hours after the collapse, the Executive Secretary of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Sale Aliyu told Channels Television that a dead body has been retrieved from the rubble.
The building caved in at about 3:05 p.m. on Tuesday. So far, the eight rescued persons have been evacuated to Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital, Kano, for treatment.
Meanwhile, Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, has sympathised with the victims.
The governor in a statement also ordered intensified rescue operations to get to those trapped in the rubble.
While lamenting the unfortunate incident, he assured us that an investigation is ongoing to unravel the cause of the collapsed structure which was still under construction.
On Friday, a three-storey building also collapsed in Kubwa Satellite town, Abuja, killing two persons.
The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar and some chieftains of the party on Monday welcomed Ibrahim Shekarau and his associates into its fold.
Shekarau left the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), a party he joined in May from the All Progressives Congress (APC), for the PDP, citing unfair treatment.
Prominent PDP members at the event to welcome the Kano Central senator include the party’s vice presidential candidate, Ifeanyi Okowa; former Vice President Namadi Sambo; the party’s BOT chairman, Walid Jibrin; former Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido, and Senator Dino Melaye.
The lawmaker’s teeming supporters from the 44 local government areas of Kano State and PDP faithful defied the downpour to witness the event at Shekarau’s Mundubawa residence.
Party faithful defied the rain to witness the event in Kano. [email protected]
While formally announcing his defection from the NNPP, he pledged to work for PDP’s victory in the forthcoming polls.
Monday’s defection came years after Shekarau left the PDP for the APC. That was in 2019 and he succeeded in winning a senatorial seat on the platform of the ruling party.
But a fallout with Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State led to his defection to the NNPP. Again, the lawmaker’s relationship with Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, who later clinched the NNPP presidential ticket, went sour after some of his loyalists failed to get the party’s tickets to contest in next year’s general elections.
A federal court in Kano has dismissed an appeal by a singer battling a religious ruling that he should be sentenced to death over blasphemy.
This is the first time that a federal court in Nigeria rules on whether or not Islamic sharia law is consistent with the secular country’s constitution.
Northern states in Nigeria have sharia courts that operate alongside common law.
The case goes back to August 2020 when a sharia court in Kano ordered singer Yahaya Aminu Sharif’s death by hanging for expressions considered derogatory against the Prophet Mohammed.
The singer appealed his conviction.
In January 2021, the Kano state high court quashed the death sentence but ordered a retrial before the Kano state upper sharia court.
Sharif’s lawyers appealed that verdict, arguing he should not be retried by another religious court.
But on Wednesday, the federal court in Kano dismissed that appeal.
“Sharia law is constitutional… The attempt by the appellants to prove the illegality of sharia law is therefore unfounded,” said judge Abubakar Mu’azu Lamido, in a 17-minute judgement read via Zoom.
“The appeal lacks merit, and the case is hereby dismissed.”
Two out of three judges backed the order for a retrial at the religious court, but the third dissented.
Sharif’s lawyer, Kola Alapinni, said the singer would appeal that ruling at the supreme court.
“It’s safe to say that we will go to the supreme court,” Alapinni told AFP.
The singer was accused of insulting the prophet in a song he shared online, which caused riots in the city.
Mobs burnt his family home and took to the streets demanding prosecution, leading to his arrest.
Sharif belongs to a branch of the Tijaniyya Sufi order, whose beliefs are considered heretical by some because of their interpretation of some basic Islamic principles.
Sharif’s conviction is the second death sentence to be handed down for blasphemy since a stricter version of sharia law was introduced in the early 2000s.
A Kano sharia court sentenced Abdul Nyass, a Sufi Muslim cleric, to death in 2015 for making blasphemous statements against the prophet.
Sharif and Nyass belong to the same branch of the Tijaniyya Sufi order.
In continuation of their clearance operations in bandits and terrorist enclaves in Kaduna and other parts of the northwest zone, security operatives have rescued three people who were kidnapped by bandits along the Zaria-Kano road.
The captives according to security sources were kidnapped from a neighbouring state and taken down to Kaduna by their abductors.
According to the Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, the victims were rescued by troops conducting patrols around Ungwan Namama, along the Zaria-Kano road.
He explained that the troops came in contact with the migrating bandits in the area and engaged them, during which the criminals abandoned their three captives and hastily escaped.
The Commissioner gave the names of the rescued persons as Abdullahi Lawal, Sadiya Salimanu, and her 10- month old baby, Fatima Salimanu .
Also recovered from the bandits were nine rustled animals, comprising one cow and eight sheep. The rescued persons have been reunited with their families, and the recovered animals were handed over to local authorities for proper identification and retrieval.
Temporary respite came for a singer accused of blasphemy as the Court of Appeal in Kano has ordered a retrial of the death sentence handed to him.
24-year-old Yahya Sharif-Aminu was handed down a death sentence by a Shari’a Court in Kano on August 10, 2020, after he was found guilty of committing blasphemy in a song.
The ruling against the resident of Sharifai in the Kano metropolis had drawn widespread among Nigerians. Despite the public outcry, the Supreme Council for Shari’a in Nigeria asked the Kano State government to execute the court judgment.
Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, had indicated his readiness to sign Sharif-Aminu’s death sentence if he failed to file an appeal within 30 days.
But Sharif-Aminu challenged the judgment before the state high court. He had appealed the judgment in a suit filed through his counsel, Kola Alanipini.
Joined in the musician’s suits as respondents are the Attorney General Of Kano State, Musa Lawan and the Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje.
In the Court of Appeal session on Wednesday via Zoom, the court dismissed the death sentence. It, however, denied the musician bail and ordered his re-trial before another Shari’a court judge.
The appeal panel comprised three judges. Two of the judges supported the respondents while one objected.
President Muhammadu Buhari gives a speech at the palace of the Emir of Kano, Nasiru Ado Bayero, during a visit to Kano State on May 23, 2022.
He urged them to remain resolute and committed to their duty. His government, he said, invested much in equipping NAF, which has yielded results, and would do even more.
“In furtherance of our drive to continue to modernise the Armed Forces, we would continue to do more to support the Air Force,” Buhari told the gathering.
“To this end, we have approved the procurement of more platforms such as the Beechcraft, some modern helicopter gunships, and UAV for the Nigerian Air Force to enable it to man our airspace more effectively.
“Rest assured that in our government, we are willing to do even more to ensure the provision of the requisite support and the encouragement to overcome various security challenges.”
President Muhammadu Buhari with the Emir of Kano, Nasiru Ado Bayero, and Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, during a visit to the state on May 23, 2022.
The President promised to enhance the welfare of NAF personnel and expressed confidence that Nigeria’s security challenges would soon be a thing of the past.
Monday’s event was attended by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State, service chiefs, the leadership of the National Assembly, and traditional rulers among others.
Earlier, the President had visited the Emir of Kano Aminu Ado Bayero to commiserate with him over the explosion that rocked the state last week. He was accompanied by Governor Ganduje.
