How Kwankwaso betrayed, manipulated me, my group – Shekarau

Former governor of Kano State, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, has recounted how the presidential candidate and leader of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, betrayed him and his followers, leading to their defection to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Shekarau, speaking Thursday in an interview on Channels Television Politics Today, said Kwankwaso, the leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement, deliberately delayed implementing the agreement they reached before he joined the NNPP up to the time INEC closed receiving candidates.

“That is the least you can call it, betrayal, outright disregard, outright manipulation,” the former Minister of Education said of his experience in the hands of Kwankwaso.

According to Shekarau, a serving senator, elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), he alongside his group had made a proposal to Kwankwaso, prior to joining the NNPP in May, and he had agreed to harmonise issues with him, giving at most three-day period.

But the three days turned to weeks and months before eventually the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) closed the window for substitution of candidates by the parties at the national and state levels.

This left all the members of his group who had been nominated for offices not accommodated, except only himself, who Kwankwaso had given a senatorial ticket.

READ: How Kwankwaso deceived me – Shekarau, dumps NNPP

Shekarau said the relationship between his group and the NNPP finally broke down when Kwankwaso went on air on the Hausa Service of BBC, saying there was no way NNPP could have accommodated them because they joined the party when it was already too late.

“A party we joined on 18th of May when candidates were being sorted out and primaries were being held?” he queried.

Shekarau defended his decision to join the PDP, while discountenancing criticisms that his movement from the APC to NNPP and now to PDP, within a space of five years, was a sign of political indiscipline.

“If it had been my character to do all that because of my personal interests – ask any average man in Kano; the people would not have been coming along with us, if it was something selfish or for personal interests.

“Anytime we leave, we have a structure from the unit to the ward to the local government, to the state.

“Our politics has been a politics of consultation, very wide consultation. There was no decision that I have taken politically without taking a referendum across the state,” he said.