The presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has explained why the party could not meet one of the requests made by the camp of a former Kano State Governor, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau.
He noted that there was no rift between him and Shekarau, the Kano Central senatorial candidate of the party.
Shekarau, currently the senator representing Kano Central, had decamped from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the NNPP with thousands of his supporters.
Shekarau and his associates had demanded that the party implemented the terms of agreement it reached with them before their defection, among which was nomination tickets for a number of his associates.
But Kwankwaso, in an interview with BBC Hausa, said most of the people brought by Shekarau’s side to get tickets for elective positions joined the NNPP at a time INEC would not accept their candidacies.
Kwankwaso was reacting to the news that Shekarau may defect to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the failure of NNPP to fulfil the terms of the agreement.
He said, “There is no agreement that was not fulfilled other than that of contestants. We have tried our best to honour the agreement, but time didn’t permit us.”
However, he assured that if the party won the election and formed a government, Shekarau’s associates would get more prestigious positions.
Daily Trust reports that the Shura Council, the highest decision-making body of Shekarau’s political structure, will, today, determine whether or not to leave NNPP.