Daily Independent Online.
*
Friday, July 09, 2004.
ANPP governors haven’t abandoned
Buhari - Shekarau
By Habib Aruna
Assistant
Political Editor, Lagos
Kano State Governor Ibrahim Shekarau has
denied reports that the governors and the leadership of the All Nigeria Peoples
Party (ANPP) have abandoned their Presidential candidate in the 2003 general
elections, Muhammadu Buhari.
He said there is no truth in the allegation
and that most of the elected officials in the party have not wavered in their
support for Buhari who remains the
party’s arrowhead.
Shekarau made the declaration on Thursday
during a visit to the corporate headquarters of Daily Independent, Ogba, Lagos.
He explained that ANPP governors have
demonstrated solidarity with Buhari with their regular presence and support in
his fight to invalidate the results of the April 2003 Presidential election won
by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
His words: “I totally disagree that
ANPP governors have abandoned Buhari, it is not true. We are very much with
Buhari, we support his challenging the April 2003 Presidential election in
court, some of us have been with him in court physically to register our solidarity
with him.
“I want to assure that as governors
of ANPP, he has our mandate and the mandate of the party to challenge the last
election and we have given him all the evidence available to us and we all are
in court. As far as our party is concerned Buhari is still the Presidential
candidate of the ANPP and until the court disposes off the case, we will not be
talking of any candidate until 2007”.
Shekarau, who came with some members of the
cabinet and advisers, again denounced media reports (not Daily Independent)
that there is renewed tension in Kano, calling them the handwork of the enemies
of the state bent on destabilising it.
He said it is not true that there is
tension in Kano and that “is
probably why the security people are trying to unravel the source of the report
which is a concoction to raise tension” by some people who have a
different motive or a different interest.
His words: “I want to tell you it is
very, very untrue that there is a fresh crisis in Kano. There is nothing like,
if I may tell you, because the case is already in court. The reporter will at
least tell the security people who told him to write the story. It is most
unfortunate that it is coming from an independent newspaper.
“Some of the challenges we face are
that the media has the responsibility of reporting the news objectively. I will
not cover up anything and we don’t solicit for any cover up, not at all.
What we expect from responsible reporting is a balanced story”.
According to him, the report showed that
there is nowhere the reporter attempted to cross check and obtain comment from
government or security officials, besides, “the story is
mischievous”.
Shekarau also spoke on the controversy
surrounding the polio vaccine, which some observers said have taken a political
coloration.
He explained that the stance of Kano State on the vaccines is
“neither sentimental nor religious but on scientific verification”,
which even the Federal Government team alluded to.
He added: “The controversy on polio
vaccine has nothing to do with religious controversy because Islam, which I
belong to and which most of my people in the state belong to, does not dictate
on which drug you take. It only tells you what is ‘halal’ and what
is ‘haram’ and it tells you to go and put them on scale and judge.
“I believe you might have read long
before now part of our stance on the pages of newspapers that what we
challenged was over scientific issues. Islam has no sentiment about it. Our
scientists went to laboratories and found some substances that cannot be
explained that are present in the vaccines.
“Initially, everybody was saying no, no, no. It took
us four to five months of argument with the federal team for them to agree
that, well, we are correct. The substance you said you saw is truly there but
insignificant. It is so insignificant that you need trillions of drugs for it
to have infertility effects that you are quarreling over”.
