The present administration of governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State has paid off N18 billion leftover scholarship debts by Engr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s government.
The commissioner for information, Mallam Mohammed Garba, said the foreign scholarship programme was initiated by Kwankwaso while living office in 2015, creating a burden for his successor.
He said one of the greatest problems incoming governments faces is wicked last-minute approvals which are difficult to implement just like the one left behind for Ganduje by Kwankwaso.
“When we came into power in 2015, we met huge unpaid Foreign and Domestic Scholarships left behind by the government of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso government and this causes a lot of headaches, but glory be to God we settled about N18 Billion so far,” he stated.
Garba said in Cyprus alone, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso left over 5 million Euro unpaid and the institutions wrote to Governor Ganduje that he is indebted to that amount.
He said, “We have sat down and negotiated way out with the University in Cyprus in order to reduce the Debts, so we paid N600 million so far in installment.
“We paid N300 million at the beginning and now we paid another N300 million, so you can see how committed we are in settling all the Scholarships left behind by the government of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.”
The commissioner who though thanked Kwankwaso for exposing the students to the outside world insisted that it was created without due diligence, which is why if his party is elected back to power, they would fine-tune it and continue with similar programme.
He said, “if Gawuna is elected as governor of Kano State, he will certainly look at the program, fine-tune it and do what is right by sending more Kano indigenes who would be beneficial to the State like Engineers, and other relevant Courses not historians and the likes”.