The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) will suffer defeat in Kano State in 2027 general election as a result of the Kano Emirship tussle, not President Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state has assured.
The APC state chairman, Abdullahi Abbas, said in a statement that the party is now more united and popular and will deliver triple what it got in the last presidential election in Kano State due to the failures of the current NNPP administration in the state.
Abbas said that contrary to a media report credited to NNPP Kano State chairman Hashimu Dungurawa, the state ruling party and its national leader, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, will suffer the negative consequences of the ongoing emirship tussle.
The Kano NNPP chairman had said the lingering Emirship tussle may negatively affect President Bola Tinubu‘s second-term ambitions in 2027.
But the Kano APC chairman said the claim by the NNPP’s state chairman, Dungurawa, indicated the party’s frustration in the state and the nation’s political scene.
He said the crisis of confidence rocking the NNPP and its embattled leader, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, is embarrassingly exposing its dismal failure, even as it boasts of clinching the nation’s presidency in 2027.
According to Abbas, Kwankwaso’s presidential debut in 2023 was deliberately intended to test his national outlook, remain relevant in the scheme of things, manipulate the way for his son-in-law to have his way and reclaim Kano from ruling APC.
“Kwankwaso got 1,454,649 total votes, representing only 6.23 per cent, most of them from Kano. In fact, media post-election analysis showed that Kwankwaso did not get up to 100,000 votes elsewhere besides Kano,“ he said.
Abbas pointed out that Kwankwaso got 1.2 million, or 19 percent, of the total votes in the Northwest, his geopolitical zone, and almost nothing in other regions of the country.
“How come Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the opposition Labour Party from far away South East bested Kwankwaso in 13 northern states of Kaduna, Taraba, Borno, Gombe, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Sokoto, Nasarawa, Plateau, Adamawa and Benue,” he queried.
The APC chairman said the people of Kano and leaders of thought in Northern Nigeria understood that the federal government’s only interest in the lingering Emirate crisis in Kano is to ensure that the rule of law prevails for peace and tranquility in the largest populated state.
He reminded the NNPP chairman and his group that, based on vote statistics, they were roundly beaten in 2019 and narrowly escaped in 2023 despite having a presidential candidate from Kano State.
Abbas said, „Aside from the widely acknowledged poor performance of Governor Abba Yusuf‘s NNPP government in Kano State in the last year, the party‘s penchant for causing and sponsoring crises in a peaceful state he inherited and some of his antipeople policies are factors voters will consider in the next election.
„It is a public knowledge that while other state governors were commissioning one project or the other to mark their one year in office, the NNPP Kano State government was busy distracting the good people of Kano from his obvious failures through the contentious Emirate law as a tactic from his inadequacies in office.“
He added that in 2027, the people of Kano State whose houses were demolished and rendered homeless will not forget in a hurry, and those whose sources of economic survival and businesses were destroyed will not vote NNPP again, among many other categories of people already severely affected by the „current misfit government in Kano.“
Abbas stated that bringing up the issue of 2027 presidential election by the Kano NNPP chairman in the face of an apparent government failure was not only diversionary but an indication of a plan to plunder the state‘s resources in the name of candidature.
The APC chairman maintained that Kwankwaso would continue to lose the presidential election because he still does not have the national outlook to contest the nation‘s coveted seat.
Abbas added that since his debut into the political scene, everything has to be about him and nothing else, and the process also had to be manipulated.
„When Kwankwaso contested the gubernatorial primaries in 1999 on the platform of Peoples‘ Democratic Party, alongside Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, Mukthari Zimit and Alhaji Kabiru Rabi‘u, he didn‘t win the election. He had to rig the election in Gabasawa with only 86 votes, which Ganduje vehemently rejected. But the party leadership had to prevail on him to let it go,“ he said.
The APC chairman stated that the NNPP government in Kano State started on a wrong footing by going against the very essence of governance, which is the people, and always wants to distract the people from its apparent failure.
„We are using this medium to assure our able and capable President, including the party national leadership, that Kano State APC is now more united and popular and is daily attracting politically valuable people into our fold. We are ready and will deliver more than triple the votes we got in the 2023 presidential election,“ he stated.