In what appears to be a u-turn barely 24 hours after advising President Muhammadu Buhari against going ahead with his scheduled Monday visit to Kano State, the Governor of Kano State, Umar Ganduje, has said that the state is now prepared to receive him.
The governor led a delegation of critical stakeholders from the state to meet President Buhari in his country home in Daura, Katsina State on Sunday after which he revealed the change of position to correspondents.
According to him, “We are very much ready to receive him and we have a lot for him to commission including federal government projects and state government projects. They are state-of-the-art projects.”
He disclosed the preparation of the state to host the President when asked whether the state was prepared to host Buhari on Monday.
Recall that Ganduje had in an interactive session with critical stakeholders including scholars, legislators, political leaders and the business community in the state, revealed that the his government had requested the President to postpone the trip, saying that the state was deeply concerned about the hardship principally induced by the ongoing cash swap from old to redesigned notes.
He said the decision was taken to avoid any unforeseen circumstance.
Consequently, the state government wrote a letter to the president outlining the reasons why the planned visit is no longer auspicious at this time.
According to a press statement issued on Saturday by Abba Anwar, the chief press secretary to the governor, the decision to advised the president against the visit was endorsed by the critical stakeholders of the state.
The statement by the governor’s spokesman reads in parts: “Deeply concerned with the hardship caused by limited time given for halting use of old Naira notes by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and for security reasons, the Kano State governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, reveals that the state resolved and wrote to Presidency that, the visit of the President to commission some projects be postponed.
“As we are waiting for this important visit, we found ourselves in this situation, which puts citizens into untold hardship. For security purpose we wrote to Presidency that President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Kano be postponed.
“We got an acknowledgement copy of the letter. People are really suffering because of this policy.
