A former Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, has strongly rejected allegations linking him to the disappearance of social media commentator Abubakar Idris, popularly known as Dadiyata, and accused former Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai of spreading falsehoods to divert attention.
In a fiery response on Saturday, Ganduje described as a “complete fabrication” El-Rufai’s claim that a police officer had confessed to carrying out the abduction on orders from Kano.
The former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress insisted that the allegations were politically motivated and an attempt to shift responsibility for an incident that occurred on El-Rufai’s watch in Kaduna State.
Dadiyata, a lecturer and outspoken online critic, was abducted by gunmen on August 2, 2019, as he drove into his home in Barnawa, Kaduna. His whereabouts remain unknown, and the case has remained a sore point in the region’s human rights record.
Speaking on Arise Television on Friday, El-Rufai had denied any involvement by the Kaduna State Government, arguing that Dadiyata was primarily a critic of the Kano administration, not his own.
“Dadiyata was not a fierce critic of the Kaduna State Government. He was a fierce critic of the Kano State Government,” El-Rufai said. “If anybody is to be asked about the disappearance of Dadiyata, it is the Kano State Government; it has nothing to do with us. We didn’t even know he existed.”
El-Rufai further referenced what he described as a later confession by a police officer. “Three years after Dadiyata was abducted, a policeman who was posted out of Kano to Ekiti State confessed to someone that they were sent from Kano and they abducted Dadiyata, and he felt bad about it,” he claimed.
However, in a statement issued on Saturday by his former Commissioner for Information, Muhammad Garba, Ganduje tore into the narrative, calling it a reckless attempt to rewrite history.
“It is absurd that someone who claimed not to know Dadiyata would now be so detailed about an alleged confession. That story about a police confession is a fabrication, pure and simple,” the statement read.
Ganduje maintained that Dadiyata was a well-known figure in Kaduna precisely for his criticism of the El-Rufai administration.
“Everyone in Kaduna knew the nature of the criticism he made and who it was directed at. To now pretend that he was only focused on Kano is a dishonest attempt to dodge responsibility for a tragedy that happened on his soil,” Ganduje said.
He questioned the consistency of El-Rufai’s remarks, pointing out the contradiction between claiming ignorance of the victim and simultaneously making detailed assertions about who was responsible for his disappearance.
The former governor also dismissed the alleged police confession as “hearsay” being used as a political tool.
“The family deserves closure. What they do not deserve is for this tragic matter to become an instrument.
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