From the outset, the New Nigerian Peoples’ Party (NNPP) under the leadership of the former Kano State Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has been described as a potential third force that is expected to spring surprise in next year’s general election. About seven months to the polls, the movement seems to be collapsing from within. ABDULGAFAR ALABELEWE reports.
Since early last year when two-term former Kano State governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and some of his political associates floated the National Movement, which later adopted the New Nigerian Peoples’ Party (NNPP) as its political wing, it immediately attracted followers across the North and elsewhere in the country, such as former Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung and President Muhammadu Buhari’s former right-hand man, Alhaji Buba Galadima, into the little known party.
As a result, there was a lot of excitement within the party founded 21 years ago by Boniface Aniebonam. After receiving the high-profile joiners, the NNPP has spread its tentacles across the North to states like Gombe, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Nasarawa and Zamfara, but Kano remains the stronghold of the party. It conducted its inaugural national convention in Abuja in early June where Rufai Alkali, a professor of Political Science and former National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, was elected as its national chairman, along with other officials. The party made it clear that it was on a mission to save the country from the PDP and APC; the two parties that have been at the helm of affairs since the beginning of the Fourth Republic in 1999.
Kwankwaso has been insisting that the NNPP is the party to beat in next year’s general elections. But political observers who spoke to The Nation are not in agreement with Kwankwaso’s rating of the NNPP, though they agree that the party has become a force to reckon with, they don’t see it emerging victorious in the presidential race. For instance, a civil society activist and former lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Bayero University, Kano (BUK), Dr Naseer Kura Ja’afaru believes the NNPP cannot compete favourably against the three leading parties, the APC, the PDP and the Labour Party (LP) in next year’s presidential election. His words: “Kwankwaso will not make much impact. He will not compete favourably not just against the two major parties; the LP has evolved as a major contestant in the election. So, we can call it the three major parties because we cannot compare the NNPP with the LP as they are presently constituted. Kwankwaso can only create an impact in states like Kano and maybe Katsina; that’s all. I don’t see the NNPP making any headway outside these states.”
A Kaduna-based lawyer and political analyst, Idris Usman is also of the view that the NNPP is not likely to cause any upset in next year’s general elections, particularly at the national level. He said: “The NNPP is a new party with a promising outcome. It is also a party with some level of acceptability. However, it is not likely to cause any serious upset, particularly at the federal level. The party has its stronghold in Kano State. It may pull one or two surprises by winning a political office at least in one of the Northwest states. As presently constituted, the party has not created enough awareness in the minds of the electorate to warrant any upset.
“The political parties that are predominantly in the minds of the electorate are the PDP and the APC. So, it will be very difficult for the NNPP to make any impact at the national level. They may make a substantial impact within the state of Kano, possibly a House of Representatives seat or state House of Assembly seats, but not for the office of the president or constituting any good number at the National Assembly. In other words, the bulk of their fortune and their impacts whether within the states or at the national level is within Kano State. They are likely at least to produce a seat in National Assembly.”
If the NNPP had any chance of making a positive impact in next year’s general elections, the recent exit of former Kano State governor, Senator Ibrahim Shekarau from the party, which he had joined a few months ago, may have deflated such hopes. Shekarau’s defection back to the PDP suggests that the two major parties remain the parties to beat, especially at the national level. Indeed, it is not the best of times for the NNPP. The party which had been described as one of the potential third force platforms in next year’s general elections does not appear to be making inroads into the southern part of the country, beyond the Northwest and the Northeast, where Kwankwaso has a considerably large following. It is not for want of trying, as the experienced politician who has been a member of the PDP and the ruling APC at different times has been working round the clock to popularize the party among Nigerians from all parts of the country.
From the outset, not many observers gave the NNPP a chance of displacing the two major parties during next year’s general elections. At best, it was expected to share the spoils with the ruling APC in the North, particularly in Kano. But, Shekarau’s defection from the party to the PDP, with the breakdown of his alliance with Kwankwaso is no doubt a big blow to the NNPP’s chances, not only in the presidential election but even in the Kano State governorship race.
Shekarau, like Kwankwaso, had governed Kano State for two terms. He defeated Kwankwaso, a sitting governor in 2003 and served two terms back to back on the platform of the opposition All People’s Party (APP) and All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) respectively before Kwankwaso could come back to serve his second term between 2011 and 2015. Today, Shekarau is a sitting senator representing Kano Central Senatorial Zone. He had dumped the ruling APC alongside his supporters in May 2022, and joined forces with Kwankwaso in the NNPP, alleging that the leadership of the APC in Kano State failed to fulfil its promises of carrying along his supporters in the scheme of things.
Shekarau told reporters in Kano: “Despite our immeasurable contributions, our members were dismayed by the lack of corresponding appreciation and reciprocal gesture by the state leadership. As loyal party members and conscious of our shared obligations as residents and indigenes of Kano state, to render to the administration the required advisory and support to succeed, we persevered and continued to explore avenues to reach out to the government.
He said: “It is regrettable to state that all our efforts are subtly blocked and often turned down. Against this sordid background, our members noted that such incidents were assuming the form of a rule rather than an exception and expressed the shared concern that it seemed to be a deliberate scheme to isolate and exclude my supporters and other political associates, the G7 and I from political engagements by the APC and the state government.”
His defection to the NNPP was seen as a gang-up of two former governors against the sitting Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and his governing APC. It was widely regarded as a big blow for the Ganduje-led APC. The Kwankwaso-Shekarau alliance saw the resignation of some of Ganduje’s political appointees, who left the APC to join the new party. Notable among them is the Governor’s Chief of Staff, Ali Makoda. The Shekarau and Kwankwaso alliance had almost made it certain that the NNPP governorship candidate, Abba Kabir Yusuf would win the Kano walk pose to one who is already on his feet walking? Politics today has become a trade and no more a vocation, and that is the more reason you find someone saying goodbye to a political party during the day and only to go back in the night. The bottom line is that majority of today’s politicians cannot nurture any political party because they are bereft of any ideology.
“The question is, how does anyone think a party without any elective members in any office from local government to national can spring surprises? We should not underrate the politics of Kano which is dynamic. I think such parties and their likes are clamouring for recognition. I ask myself, must politicians in Nigeria take the electorate for a ride all the time? Both Kwankwaso and Ibrahim Shekarau cannot pose any threat to anybody. Today’s politics has gone beyond the harvest of defection and social media hype. Like I said earlier, it is the absence of political will and ideology that make many politicians jump into the ring poorly prepared. Even in advanced climes, politicians nurture men and women that will do the footwork for victory for many years, put them in strategic places for good electoral values.”
But, Kwankwaso in a chat with reporters in Maiduguri recently insisted that his party is popular beyond the Northwest. He said: “Some people are saying that Kwankwaso’s political base is Kano State and I am so happy about that because Kano is not a small State in terms of millions of registered voters; some are saying Northwest and others are saying the north, in general, is the only base for Kwankwaso. But, they are all making a mistake.”
The NNPP is built around Kwankwaso who doubles as the party’s national leader and presidential candidate. He is one of the numerous politicians that have traversed the two major parties in the country at different times. The former Kano State governor has been described as a politician that is not afraid of taking his chances politically. From the PDP, he switched to the APC in 2014 and returned to the PDP four years later. The fact that he left the parties while each was in government says a lot about his readiness to take bold decisions even at the risk of losing it all.
The 65-year-old Kwankwaso first came to the national political stage in 1992 when he was elected into the House of Representatives on the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) during the aborted Third Republic. He was subsequently elected the deputy speaker of the House. He was only 36 years old then. He also served as a member of the Constitutional Conference in 1994. In 1999, he was elected as Kano State governor on the platform of the PDP. After losing re-election in 2003, incidentally to Shekarau, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him as Minister of Defence. He re-contested for his re-election on the PDP platform in 2011 and won. After his second term in 2015, he was elected to the Senate to represent the Kano Central district. He vied for the senatorial race on the platform of the APC; having joined the party during the build-up to the 2015 general elections. Kwankwaso was one of the five PDP governors that rebelled against former President Good luck Jonathan by ditching the then ruling party for the newly formed APC at the time.
The animosity between him and Governor Ganduje compelled him to return to the PDP in 2018 in time to vie for the party’s presidential ticket, which he lost to Atiku Abubakar.