A former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has asked the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to intervene in the increasing death toll in the state.
Kwankwaso, in an open letter to Buhari on the social media, raised the alarm over the way the state government was handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said, “Hundreds of funerals have been recorded in all the cemeteries of the eight metropolitan local governments alone. Looking at the pattern elsewhere in the world where senior citizens with pre-existing conditions were the main fatalities of the novel coronavirus, we are concerned that the inability to conduct tests in the state to determine the status of these senior citizens might be responsible for their death. We are even more concerned that if sincere and efficient machinery is not urgently put in place to understand and mitigate against this, more lives of innocent senior citizens will be lost.

“At present, and to all intent and purposes, the state has practically no COVID-19 response committee. What was hitherto working as a COVID-19 committee was a contraption of cronies that are both unqualified and incompetent. As such, they kowtow to the whims of politicians without any regards to professional healthcare considerations. The committee technically disbanded itself when majority of the members were tested positive for COVID-19.”

Kwanwanso noted that since the announcement of the positive results of the committee members, there had not been any test in the state.

He expressed worry over the development, saying carriers of the virus were roaming free and spreading it to others, which had led to untimely deaths in the state.

He slammed the state government for its denial of the upsurge in death rate, saying it had led to mistrust by residents.

The Peoples Democratic Party chieftain said Governor Abdullahi Ganduje was not providing leadership at a critical time.

Kwankwaso also criticised the disagreements between the state government and officials of the National Centre for Disease Control, saying it was counter-productive.

“Kano is the most populous state in the country and Kano city is one of the biggest in Africa. Experts have expressed concern that if the Kano situation is not handled professionally, sincerely, efficiently and competently, we have the tendency of becoming the epicentre of this disease in Africa in a matter of months.

“Every sincere leader should be concerned about this. Everything that ought to have been in place, from advocacy and awareness campaign to sensitise the public, to the provision of support (material, medical and emotional) to the citizens, is conspicuously absent in Kano,” he said.

He asked the Federal Government to provide palliatives for residents to enable them to cope with the effect of the lockdown, adding that the state had been distributing food items based on political patronage.

The Personal Assistant to the President on New Media, Bashir Ahmad, however, mocked the letter.

Ahmad asked why the former governor would write a letter to the President on the social media, saying he was merely politicising the issue.

“Wait, is this a letter to the President or an open letter to the people of Twitter? I assume H.E. Kwankwaso, as a former Governor, knows better than all of us, how to properly send a letter to the President. Politicise (sic) Kano’s issue is the first step taken in the wrong direction,” he wrote on Twitter.

PUNCH.