Kwakwanso’s mob manhandle Buhari’s minister

Communications Minister Ali Isa Pantami was mobbed on Monday in Kano when he went to pay his condolences to Hon. Shaban Shatada who lost his father.

The attack took place at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano, where the hoodlums first booed him before one of them drew near him to remove his cap.

The Kwakwasiyah movement and the opposition political party in the APC-ruling state have been accused of organisng the attack.

While the leader of the movement, former Gov. Rabiu Kwanakwaso, has met with the ruffled minister and apologized, the PDP has yet to react officially to the attack on Pantami.

Kwakwansiyyah is a socio-political movement Kwakwanso built when he was governor, and had relied on it to push his presidential ambition forward last year when while was a senator.

He however lost his Senate seat and PDP’s presidential ticket to ex-V.P Atiku Abubakar.

The former senator (Kano-PDP) has since been in hibernation until the Sept. 30 incident.

Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has condemned the attack and silence of the opposition party.

“At 59, Nigerians still engage in bolekaja politics. It is a big shame. Our post-independence political culture is still characterised with violence, bitterness, intimidation and coercion. Our politics is laced with heavy doses of intolerance. Ours is politics of retrogression. It is unacceptable,” Prof Ishaq Akinola, MURIC’s executive director.

He said in a saner climes, the political party would have issued a statement dissociating itself from such unethical behavior.

“We therefore call on PDP Kano chapter to do the needful. Anything short of a public apology over this infantile and highly embarrassing incident is an assault on civilized political decorum. Nigeria must move from Stone Age political gangsterism.”