Ganduje v Emir Sanusi: Northern Elders Blame Buhari For Lingering Feud

The Director of Advocacy and Engagements of Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has said the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), is not doing enough to settle the feud between the Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, and the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido.
Baba-Ahmed, a former Secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), said this while speaking in an interview on the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) monitored in Kaduna on Tuesday.
But the Senior Special Assistant on Media to the President, Garba Shehu, who also spoke on the Hausa Service of the BBC, shot back on the NEF chieftain, saying the President was only mindful of his constitutional limitations.
The NEF Chieftain said Buhari was complacent about the feud, alleging that the president’s claim of his constitutional limitations was not reliable.
Baba-Ahmed noted that there were so several ways to resolve the dispute but for Buhari to remain unconcerned, was most unfortunate.
He said there are several issues, including the Ganduje and Sanusi that the President doesn’t necessarily need to refer to the constitution.
“We as elders from the North were the first to be in Kano so as to find ways of resolving the matter. While we were there, we suddenly heard that the President had set up his committee on the matter. We had gone far in this matter but to our knowledge, the President’s Committee had not started work,” he said.
However, the President’s spokesman insisted that his principal was not talking on the matter because of his respect to the constitution.
“He(President) said he would not talk over the matter citing the constitution,” the spokesman said
According to him, the President “knew and respects the constitutional limitations between his office and that of a governor, the reason why he did not interfere.”