Kano Gov political aides hit 196 with new 115 SSAs

• The fresh 115 aides announced included 57 senior special advisers and special advisers, 14 senior special assistants, and 44 senior special reporters
• Senior special reporters are citizens’ reporters and not professionals
  

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Kano State Governor, Abba Kabiru Yusuf, yesterday, announced additional 115 political appointees making a total of 196 aides appointed in less than 100 days in office.

The fresh 115 aides announced included 57 senior special advisers and special advisers, 14 senior special assistants, and 44 senior special reporters.

The senior special reporters, according to the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Sanusi Bature Dawakin-Tofa, were deployed to various ministries to report activities of government to the residents through social media.

Although Dawakin-Tofa confirmed that the senior special reporters are citizens’ reporters and not professionals, he said their work is to complement the functions of the information officers while rewarding their contribution to the New Nigeria Peoples Party’s (NNPP) government.

Before now, the state assembly had approved the governor’s request to appoint 60 political aides, besides the 18 commissioner nominees screened.

Speaking on the large numbers of appointees, a resident, Abubakar Yusuf, said: “It is sad that the government can be so insensitive to public plight.

The government kept making appointments to reward members of NNPP when people were begging for what to eat. The Federal Government has sent five trucks of bags of rice and N2b to Kano.

“The essence of palliatives was to ease the impact of subsidy. Why would the government continue to keep mute on this? When would the government release the food from the warehouse and distribute it to the people? People are suffering and the government kept announcing political aides. It is sad,” Yusuf lamented.

Responding to the delay in distributing the palliatives, the Commissioner for Information, Halilu Baba Dantiye, explained that the government has constituted a committee to develop modalities on how to share the grains.

The commissioner revealed that the government has already commenced the disbursement of cash palliatives with the recent release of N840m for the mass wedding programme and payment of N700m to Bayero University as registration fees of Kano State indigenes in the institution.