As crisis in Kwankwaso’s NNPP festers, Shekarau flirts with Tinubu

• To meet today in Abuja

Crisis brewing in the Rabiu Kwankwaso-led New Nigeria Peoples Party may result in some of its new members ditching the party soon.

Already, members of the party have met with leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party.

A former governor of Kano State, Ibrahim Shekarau, is set to meet the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, on Wednesday.

This was confirmed in a Premium Times report on Tuesday by Shekarau’s spokesperson, Yau Sule,

Sule said the former Kano governor, who is currently senator for the Kano Central District, would meet with Tinibu in Abuja to explore the option of returning to his former party with his followers and what they stand to benefit.

This is coming three months after leading his associates from the APC to the NNPP with fanfare in Kano.
Sule said Shekarau’s followers had been made unhappy by happenings in the NNPP since their defection to the party.
The group had reportedly been demanding that the party implement the terms of the agreement it reached with it before the defection of its members.
Sule said both sides had agreed that an unspecified number of the former governor’s associates would be awarded nomination tickets for the general elections.
“Before accepting the offer to join the NNPP, we presented our proposals to the NNPP, which they accepted. Unfortunately, they deceived us. None of the agreements reached before defecting to the NNPP was fulfilled by Kwankwaso,” the spokesperson said.
A founding member of the APC, Shekarau had moved to the NNPP with thousands of his supporters on 18 May, following a disagreement with incumbent Governor Abdullahi Ganduje over the leadership of the ruling party in the state.
Shekarau was the presidential candidate of the defunct All Nigeria People’s Party in 2011 and was one of the leaders of the party in the alliance talks with the leaders of the other legacy parties that resulted in the formation of the APC in 2013.
However, he defected from the party to the then ruling PDP in 2014, in protest against the new party handing over its structures in Kano to then Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, who had defected with some other governors and lawmakers from the PDP.
But Shekarau rejoined the APC in 2018 after the party dissolved its Kano State Executive Committee and constituted a caretaker committee to absorb the associates of the same Kwankwaso, who returned to the party that year.
It was a surprise when Shekarau led his group to join Mr Kwankwaso who had left the PDP once again to run for the president on the ticket of the NNPP.
Although he was awarded the senatorial ticket of the party, it emerged from the list of candidates submitted by the NNPP to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that his associates got none.
The tension in the NNPP aggravated following the closure of substitution of candidates by INEC.

Rival political parties, including the APC and the PDP, have since been reaching out to the group to exploit the situation.

Shekarau and his associates have since met with the PDP, presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the party’s national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu.
He has also met with the vice presidential candidate of the APC, Kashim Shettima and has scheduled another meeting for Wednesday with Tinubu.
Sule said Shekarau called a meeting of the Shura Council, the group’s highest decision-making body, on Sunday to brief the members on the challenges with the NNPP. and the proposals that had been made to the group by both the APC and the PDP.
Sule said because the meeting could not agree on whether to move into the PDP or the APC, it set up a 30-member committee to look into the development and recommend a way forward.
“The 30-member committee will present its recommendations this Thursday. So, it is after that our next line of action will be made public,” he also told Daily Trust.