By Ikechukwu Okaforadi
The administration of Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State has paid the N18 billion scholarship debts incurred by the previous administration of Rabiu Kwankwaso.
Kano State Commissioner for Information, Mallam Mohammed Garba, made this assertion on the foreign scholarship programme initiated by Kwankwaso before leaving office in 2015.
“When we came into power in 2015, we met huge unpaid foreign and domestic scholarships left behind by the Government of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and this gave us a lot of problems. But we [have] settled about N18 billion so far,” Garba said.
He said there was over five million euro debt in Cyprus alone, leading to institutions in the country writing to Governor Ganduje.
According to him: “We have to sit down and negotiate a way out with Cyprus to reduce the debts. We [have] paid N600 million; N300 million in the beginning and another N300 million [now]. You can see how committed we are to settling all the scholarships [debts] left behind by the government of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.”
The commissioner insisted that the scholarship programme was haphazardly created and without due diligence.
“If Gawuna is elected as governor of Kano State, he will certainly look at the programme [and] fine-tune it,” he said, noting that beneficiaries would henceforth be those studying courses that will be beneficial to the state “like engineers, and other relevant courses, not historians and their likes.
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