The faceoff between Governor Nasir el-Rufai and senator representing Kaduna North, Shehu Sani, continued on Thursday as the lawmaker condemned the state government over a proposed music festival.
Sani, who fell out with el-Rufai after losing the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship ticket in the state, said in a statement that the music fiesta was uncalled for in the face of mounting security and financial challenges.
Both men have been exchanging words since the governor ordered a ban on street begging and trading following a terror attack in the state
Sani’s statement on Thursday reads: “The upcoming multi million naira jamboree known as Kaduna music festival stands unreservedly condemned.
“The event is an indecent and immoral proposition and an affront to the people of Kaduna, the North and the whole of Nigeria struggling to survive economic hardships and pervasive insecurity.
“It’s shameful, disgraceful, irresponsible and utterly insensitive that at this sorrowful and mournful season of bloodshed and economic difficulties, the Kaduna state government and so called ‘banks and the private sector’ have jointly decided to feast, make merry and dance on the graves of victims of Boko Haram insurgency in the North.
“It’s callous and amounts to insouciance that at a time when thousands of civil servants and pensioners across the nation remained unpaid, multi million naira is about to be wasted in a musical event.
“With over 25 thousand innocent persons killed by insurgents, more thousands abducted and unaccounted for, over two million people displaced from their hamlets, homes, villages and towns in the north, and with soldiers on the frontline fighting and dying to restore peace and order in the north, the musical event is nothing other than playing the fiddle while Rome is on fire.
“The musical jamboree is nothing but a complete waste of public and even private resources that could have better be channelled to address other social and economic needs and emergencies of the nation.
“It’s ironic that the very proposed venue of the event where millions of tax payers money will be wasted, the Ahmadu Bello Stadium, remains an uncompleted arena for the past 50 years.
“Kaduna musical festival is a spit on the face of abandoned orphans, neglected widows and widowers ‘generated’ by the violence in the North.
“Attending Kaduna Musical festival amounts to canonization of Emperor Nero. I call on President Muhammadu Buhari to reject the invitation to attend the charade called Kaduna Music festival.
“It’s a contradiction and morally reprehensible that the same Kaduna State government that declared that it will no longer finance pilgrimage to Saudi and Jerusalem and that it refuses to sponsor Ramadan feeding for the poor and Tafsir, but now have enough money to sponsor and host a musical jamboree.”
