LAGOS, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- Former Kano State Governor, Ibrahim Shekarau, has accused the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP, Rabiu Kwankwaso, of betraying and manipulating him.
“I think that is the least you can call it; betrayal and outright disregard, outright manipulation,” he said Thursday on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme when asked whether he felt Kwankwaso betrayed him.
“Our guiding principles is the protection of our image, the protection of our integrity and you cannot have the protection of our integrity if there is no going to be integrity, if there is not going to be sincerity,” he added.
The serving Senator representing Kano Central District and former Minister of Education said he threw away his re-election to the red chamber by joining the Peoples Democratic Party.
“PDP will clear the votes in Kano,” he said
Shekarau had left the All Progressives Congress in May to join Kwankwaso’s NNPP but dumped the party in August when he fell out with the presidential candidate.
Speaking on the crisis that led to his movement from the NNPP to the PDP, Shekarau said, “We joined the party on the 18th of May. Long before then, almost two weeks earlier on, through my discussion with him, we made our proposals. At that time, it was the period of generating candidates of the various political offices to be contested in the 2023 general elections – state assembly, national assembly, governorship and senatorial seats.
“We sat down with Rabiu Kwankwaso. I submitted this proposal, he accepted it and he said in about one or two, three days, he’s going to prepare his proposal. And then I together with him will sit down to sort ourselves out and harmonise and see what we can do to produce electable people in our various constituencies”.
He said that the NNPP presidential candidate gave him a senatorial form when he joined the party but said Kwankwaso released a list that shut out his political associates who aspired elective offices.
“The same 18th of May by the night, midnight, we saw a list released by the party leadership in the state, handwritten list of candidates by their constituencies and indicating as having solved the entire constituencies’ candidate.
“In fact, in the list released on the 18th by the night, even some constituencies had no name. The following morning I met him (Kwankwaso) and I challenged the list released, we said this is unacceptable because in the entire list, except my name, no any other name from our own movement from our own political association was reflected on the list”.
Shekarau said himself and Kwankwaso resolved to set up a nine-man committee to harmonise the lists for both camps to have representative tickets but the committee given three days spent three months till the end of the deadline by the Independent National Electoral Commission for the submission of names elapsed.
“We convened a meeting. I had to call a meeting of my political associates, to brief them as to what we went through for three months. And we set up a committee of 30 to go and review the situation, we still did not make it public.
“But to our surprise, few days later, my brother Rabiu Kwankwaso was on air on the Hausa service of the BBC, saying that there was no way we could be attended to, because we joined the party when it was too late,” he said.
Shekarau said Kwankwaso was wrong that he joined the NNPP late and shouldn’t have agreed to setting up a committee to harmonise the lists.
