From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
The candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 governorship election in Kaduna State, Isa Ashiru Kudan, has clarified that he did not sell his mandate to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2019 election in the State.
Isa, who spoke on Thursday while featuring on a Kaduna-based FM radio station’s breakfast show, added that, if it were true that he sold his mandate as his critics thought, he would not have pursued it up to the supreme court being the highest court in the country.
Under PDP, Isa Ashiru served as the lawmaker representing the Kudan Constituency in the Kaduna State House of Assembly between 1999 -2007 and subsequently served as a member representing the Kudan/Makarfi Federal Constituency in the Federal House of Representatives between 2007-2015.
Thereafter, he decamped to APC where he contested and lost in the governorship primary to Nasir El-Rufai. He later decamped back to PDP and flagged the party’s flag in the 2019 election where he lost to El-Rufai. In that election, El-Rufai polled 1,045,427 votes while Ashiru polled 814,168 votes.
Responding to a caller’s question during the radio programme Ashiru said, “the issue of selling my mandate was not true. If that was the situation, I would not have followed it up with the Supreme Court. It is not true.”
When another caller asked him whether he is going probe El-Rufai’s administration if elected he said,
“the loans that were collected especially the 574 million dollars is what we may check.
“According to information available to me, 78% of the loan went for recurrent service which I don’t know why. Some are saying for consultancy and other services.
“But when we come on board, we are going to check it. It is government money and not an individual or group. I don’t want to use the word probe but we will surely have documents to scrutinise and do the needful if we are elected.
“We have a property in Lagos, Abuja, and Kaduna and we are not just going to fold our hands. When we come in, we will check and make corrections where there is a mistake.
“The road from Railway to Nnamdi Azikiwe bypass was a part of the railway line contract. It was not the Kaduna State Government’s effort,” he added.
He however promised to revive sports activities in Kaduna as a deliberate strategy to reduce the issue of youth unemployment in the state.
“Sport is a very important tool that can take away more than half of our unemployed youths. When I was in my 20s -30s, I knew of the KKDs – the UNTLs, UIC’s when we used to troop into Ahmadu Bello Stadium (ABS) in the evenings.
“We will encourage sports and we will make sure that we develop clubs as government and as well support those that are willing to ensure sports return to the city,” he promised.