Kano State Commissioner for Information, Mohammed Garba has accused a former NHIS boss, Prof Usman Yusuf of playing politics with Coronavirus by his allegation that Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje was planting the disease across the North.
He accused the professor of trying to dent the image of the governor and cause crisis in the state instead of offering a helping hand on how to solve the problem in the state.
The Information Commissioner pointed out that COVID-19, was already in some states in the North before Kano recorded its index case, emphasizing that, “before coronavirus came to Kano, it was already in Kaduna, and about four or five states in the North, so, how could he say that Governor Ganduje was planting the disease in the North. How did he plant it?”
According to him, “Like the professor mentioned that the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, lacks capacity, even hand gloves, but we should know that AKTH is owned by the federal government; it is not a state hospital, so what do you expect. The testing centre in the hospital is provided by the NCDC, the state government has no control over it, so when they said that the centre had to be shutdown, the state government couldn’t do anything.
“Remember when they said somebody was infected, they had to close the hospital for 74 hours, to fumigate it before it would start working again, the governor came out to plead with the federal government to facilitate it.
“In all these, the professor is playing politics with the disease, and his motive is to dent the good image of the governor and to cause crisis in the state. He has made his articles viral in the social media and we have decided to ignore him, but except because of the reputation of your paper, we wouldn’t be talking about what he said or has writtenGovt’s
“It is a pity that instead of him to come and put heads together and see how some of these issues can be addressed, he has chosen to play politics with coronavirus, it is really unfortunate.”