Shekarau Calls Out Kwankwaso over Betrayal

Ibrahim Shekarau, a former governor of Kano State and currently serving senator, claims that Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the NNPP presidential candidate, betrayed him when he defected from the NNPP to the PDP.

Senator Shekarau made the claim while appearing on the Channels TV primetime programme, Politics Today, on Thursday.

He described the governor’s actions as a betrayal and “outright disregard, outright manipulation” he added that what was important was the protection of his image, the truth and integrity.

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 for 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 or three days, he’s going to prepare his proposal. And then I and he will sit down to sort ourselves out and harmonise and see what we can do to produce electable people in our various constituencies”.

Senator Shekarau claimed that after leaving the APC to join the party, the governor gave him a senatorial form. When the party leadership had published what he believed to be an incomplete list of candidate names, he, however, questioned the governor.

Shekarau added, “This hope and trust and sincerity kept us moving up to the 18th of May where we had a public declaration and Kwankwaso came with all his political associates it was a huge ceremony.

“It was at that meeting that he brought the senatorial seat of Kano central form and presented it to me, and he said I was the first to receive the form. At that time, as of the 18th of May, no other candidate had been identified or listed or given form through the discussions we agreed to make.

“The same 18th of May by 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 night, even some constituencies had no name. The following morning I met him, 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 movement from our political association was reflected on the list”.

In response to his challenge, the two had decided to form a nine-person committee, consisting of four individuals from each of the governors’ camps and the state party chairman, to coordinate the lists and correct the errors. Ultimately, this task would take three months to complete before the Independent National Electoral Commission’s deadline.

Shekarau said, “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, but we still did not make it public.

“But to our surprise, a 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 continued by saying it was dishonest of Governor Kwankwaso to permit them to form a committee before claiming they were late.