Despite recent claims that he had no hand in the confusion surrounding the Emirates, former Kano state governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, in a leaked phone conversation, is suspected to be involved in the dissolution of the five Emirates and the subsequent return of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II to replace Aminu Ado Bayero.

In the leaked phone conversation clip obtained by PRNigeria, a leading fact-check news platform, Kwankwaso receives a call from an associate who discusses the removal of Bayero and his replacement with Sanusi as the Kano Emir.

The Kano state House of Assembly had recently repealed the law signed by ex-governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje on the five new Emirates, paving the way for Governor Abba Yusuf to sack Bayero and bring back Sanusi.

While the governor’s political mentor, Kwankwaso, said in a BBC interview some days ago that he was not aware of Emir Bayero's impending sack and Emir Sanusi's return, a leaked phone conversation with a political associate suggests that the leader of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) may be the mastermind of the fiasco.

It would be recalled that shortly after Gov Yusuf won the election in 2023, Kwankwaso boasted that the new administration would revisit the new Emirates and Sanusi’s dethronement issues as installing justice in the state.

In the leaked tape, Kwankwaso asks the caller if everything is going smoothly as planned on the replacement of Aminu with Sanusi, to which the latter answers in the affirmative. He also asks if Sanusi has taken over the main palace in Kano city.

After obtaining the audio, the PRNigeria Factcheck team decided to subject it to an authenticity test using speech recognition freeware, which proved authentic.

While Artificial Intelligence software like Deepfake can mimic any voice after a few seconds of listening to it, PRNigeria extracted the audio's voice and compared it against Kwankwaso's publicly known voice, and the result was also positive.

Kwankwaso's voice also returned with a 90% accuracy level when PRNigeria subjected the audio to the speech recognition test.

While it is rare for calls to initiate recording on the dial, hackers and other sources using sophisticated gadgets can intercept the same calls.

PRNigeria, therefore, subjected the audio to a deepfake test using a Deepware scanner, an AI tool used to detect alterations in audio and videos. It found that AI was not used to generate or modify the voices.

The conversation went thus:

Caller: Salamu Alaikum, Your Excellency, sir

Kwankwaso: Ameen, Ameen

Caller: Weldone sir

Kwankwaso: Ehen, thank you

Caller: Are we deciding on the planned gathering?

Kwankwaso: It has been postponed till Monday

Caller: Okay, let me inform them at the venue

Kwankwaso: Because of the current situation, it won't be pleasant. It's better to concentrate and entirely focus on the issue at hand first. By Monday, we do that other one.

Caller: My thoughts exactly

Kwankwaso: Is that our own Emir's Palace filled with a crowd of people?

Caller: Yes, there are so many people

Kwankwaso: okay...I learned the other emir had been taken to Nasarawa (Palace), right?

Caller: Yes, they took him to Nasarawa Palace, but the main Emir's Palace has a lot of people.

Kwankwaso: Okay great

Caller: There are enough forces there

Kwankwaso: No problem

Caller: Many people have trooped out

Kwankwaso: That is great

Caller: Are you going to hold back a bit

Kwankwaso: yes, I am around

Kwankwaso: okay (Hails Kwankwaso?)

(By PRNigeria)

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