A former governor of Kano State, Senator Ibrahim Shekarau, has confirmed dumping the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), citing humiliation and betrayal by presidential candidate of the party, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, as reasons for leaving the party.
His decision to abandon the NNPP however did not come as a surprise to many who had been waiting to see how his political romance with Kwankwaso who used to be his sworn political foe before now would work out in the NNPP’s alliance of strange political bed fellows.
Though Shekarau, a Senator representing Kano Central in the Red Chamber on the APC ticket, is yet to state in clearer terms which party he was decamping to, LEADERSHIP gathered that he may be heading back to the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party he defected from.
Some members of the APC in Kano were yesterday sighted jubilating that the former governor was going to return to the governing party.
A source close to the former governor told this paper yesterday that Shekarau is billed “to meet with the APC presidential candidate, Senator Ahmad Bola Tunubu, who has been mounting pressure on him to return to APC, which he dumped for the NNPP because the party leadership in Kano refused to give him ticket for a second term”.
Speaking to a mammoth crowd of supporters who converged on the premises of Kano Foundation along BUK Road, Shekarau accused Kwankwaso who is also a former Kano State governor of not only betraying him but also humiliating him.
Taking his audience down memory lane, he recounted what transpired between him and Kwankwaso, noting with dismay that during his brief stay in the NNPP, he was the only person that was given a form to contest for the senatorial seat, while the fate of his teeming supporters was hanging in the balance.
He said on May 5, 2022, long before he and Kwankwaso joined NNPP, he personally met him at his country home and discussed extensively on his decisions to follow him to his new party, a suggestion he said he gladly obliged.
“And still on May 11, 2022 I still met Kwankwaso because since our last meeting we were not able to meet. And I reminded him of a proposal I submitted to him during our last meeting,” he noted.
The proposal, according to Shekarau, was the lists of his supporters who were seeking different political offices, but when he talked to Kwankwaso about it the NNPP presidential candidate said he was aware of lists and would definitely do something about it.
Shekarau said that after another meeting with Kwankwaso, his supporters became relaxed and agreed to decamp to NNPP.
He stated, “Similarly, on 16-5-2022, Kwankwaso came to my house at about 9pm and we still discussed extensively on the same issue. He even called five people, including Abba Kabir, Kawu Sumaila, Alhassan Rirum and two others and presented them to me as those to make the lists of contestants.
“During the meeting which led to my defection, Kwankwaso came with only my senatorial form and gave it to me telling me, saying that I was the first to receive it, and I asked him about the ones for my supporters he said it would be done.
“Since then Kwankwaso kept deceiving me, only for him to say much later that it is late for my supporters to be on the lists, and there was nothing he could do to save the situaton”.
Shekarau said with many more deceit he realised he had no place in NNPP because he he always carries his supporters along.
“With all these and many more lies from Kwankwaso, I have no place in NNPP. This is because my party politics always goes with my supporters and any attempt to throw them away and separate them from me would be vehemently rejected,” he noted.
Shekarau, a of the founding member of the APC, had in May this year defected to the NNPP with thousands of his supporters.
Announcing his defection at his Bompai GRA residence in Kano Shekarau, alongside Kwankwaso, was seen signing a register, and later obtained the membership registration card of the NNPP.
This was after the APC and the People Democratic Party (PDP)had spent weeks lobbying and wooing Shekarau into their folds.
In 2014, Shekarau had defected from the APC to the PDP, alleging that the APC for gave the party’s structures in Kano to Kwankwaso, who was the governor of the state at the time.
Kwankwaso too had also decamped to the APC from the PDP.
Ahead of the 2019 polls, Shekarau returned the APC in 2018 after the National Working Committee of the PDP dissolved the Kano State executive committee of the party and constituted a caretaker committee, which he alleged, favoured Kwankwaso who had also returned to the PDP.
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