Collapse of NNPP romance: What next for Shekarau?

Former Kano State governor, Senator Ibrahim Shekarau, has been in the news in recent days with developments in his political camp and his outburst signaling the collapse of his romance with the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), a party he joined just two months ago.

Shekarau, a two-term former governor (2003-2011) and current senator representing Kano Central at the red chamber, had harped on injustice as the reason for the disappointing outcome of his romance with the NNPP, led by his predecessor and successor as Kano governor (1999-2003 and 2011-2015), Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.

• Shekarau punctures Kwankwaso’s claims, leaves supporters guessing
• 2023: NNPP won’t collapse structure for Tinubu or anyone – Nat. chair

For those familiar with the political trajectory of the soft-spoken Kano politician, the allegation of injustice was not new but such that had been the thread that knitted all his past movements among the top political parties in the country.

By the time Shekarau officially announces his decamping from NNPP, which many observers believe will be in a matter of days, he will have switched political parties four times in just eight years, without including the merger of his foremost political party, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), with three others in February 2013 to form the All Progressives Congress (APC).

 A former school principal and mathematics teacher, Shekarau, began his political journey in 2003 when he emerged as the gubernatorial standard bearer of the ANPP and went against all odds to defeat the then sitting governor, Kwankwaso. He would go further to set the record of being the first democratic governor of Kano State to successfully contest and win a second term in office.

After his failed attempt to become Nigeria’s president in 2011, he came back to the forefront of national politics when his ANPP merged with the Action Congress of Nigeria, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, and the Congress for Progressive Change to form the APC in 2013.

But this merger also signaled a new turn in his political trajectory as it later led to his first defection from one party to another when he left the newly formed APC in 2014 after Kwankwaso, then governor, joined the party and took over the leadership of the party in Kano. Shekarau moved to PDP and was immediately compensated with a ministerial appointment by then President Goodluck Jonathan.

Fast forward four years later in 2018, Shekarau returned to the APC again after Kwankwaso had left the APC for the PDP, and the battle for the control of party structure rekindled between the duo within the PDP. And with Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje facing an uphill task of being re-elected in 2019, Shekarau’s return was heralded as a major coup and considered by his associates as playing a significant role in the re-election of Ganduje.

But as with earlier encounters, by 2020, cracks began to surface in his relationship with Ganduje and by 2021, he and five other federal lawmakers formed the G-7 faction of the APC in Kano State that nearly snatched the leadership of the party from Ganduje until the Supreme Court came to the governor’s aid. As such, it was of little surprise to many observers of Kano politics when in May this year; Shekarau officially dumped the party on the platform on which he is serving as a senator. The little surprise then was his teaming up with his otherwise political arch-enemy, Kwankwaso, in a union many observers described as a marriage of convenience.

This union, for many observers, was always such that it had every potential to fail but none expected the collapse to come barely two months after.

And with the outburst of Shekarau earlier in the week while reeling out what transpired from May to August to his supporters in Kano, it was obvious to all that the union has finally hit the rock with the next step only the uncertainty.

Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of NNPP, in an interview with BBC Hausa, said Shekarau’s political camp failed to secure elective seats because they joined the NNPP late.

This position had further raised dust in the polity, especially among Shekarau’s supporters who faulted the claim, saying they joined the party at the same time as Shekarau who was given the senatorial ticket. And Shekarau himself berated this claim on Monday while addressing his supporters in Kano.

But while also denying reports that he had received money from the PDP to join and lead its campaign in the North West, he told his supporters that he would be announcing his next step in a few days.

While this next step continues to be a subject of debate, political analysts have opined that this constant decamping was not surprising and not a thing peculiar to Shekarau but almost all Nigerian politicians, adding that this was because “we don’t have politics of principle or ideology but it is a politics of personal interest,” as one of them, Professor Kamilu Sani Fage, succinctly put it.

Fage, a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Bayero University, Kano (BUK), added that what many people see as the political ideology of Shekarau and other politicians was nothing more than “political rhetoric”, adding that, “If one is guided by a political ideology, one will remain with the party that shares his own ideology come what may. ”

Shekarau may end up as an onlooker in 2023 – Fage

On the options before the former Kano governor, Fage, like many of the analysts, said given the timing of the development, “if they move, their only option is to be an onlooker and mere member of the electorate because I doubt if INEC will reopen its portal for substitution of candidates. Perhaps what they are looking for is political appointments; they join a party and contribute to its success and then get compensated with appointments rather than political elective positions.”

He said the rush by other political parties to have Shekarau and his associates on board is not misguided because “he has his own followers and politics is a game of numbers and no matter how insignificant the number of people he is going to go with, it will still contribute to the party that has him and that is why they are trying to woo him.”

This move, according to experts, will also further change the political calculations in Kano because with Shekarau and Kwankwaso together in NNPP, the party was seen as the party to beat for the Kano gubernatorial.

PDP remains a tenable option for Shekarau – Don

Even as the rumours of Shekarau’s alliance with Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate, refused to go away, a political scientist, Dr Aminu Hayatu, of Bayero University, Kano (BUK), observed that these rumours might turn out to be true because the PDP remains the most tenable option for Shekarau.

He hinged his observation on the challenges that may lie ahead of any return of Shekarau to the APC, which he left in May to the fact that nothing has changed within the party in the state with the state governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, remaining not just the leader of the party in the state but also one of the closest persons to the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“Everyone is thinking it is the PDP (that Shekarau will move to) because the APC is the party he has just left and the governor of Kano (Ganduje) is still there together with other political rivals in the state. So, it is not likely that he will accept to go back to the APC but it is more viable to move to the PDP which will give him the opportunity to better align things with Atiku Abubakar, of course, based on certain promises for him and his people,” he said.

Hayatu said it is more than certain that Shekarau will have to forgo his senatorial ambition since substitution is no longer possible and then “accept any offer from the PDP when the government is formed. So, I think it is based on these calculations that he may move out of the NNPP.”

But Daily Trust gathered that it is these calculations that are dividing opinions among his close associates with some of them said to be unsure of the chances of the PDP at the general election, and thus fear that they may end up losing out on all fronts by the end of the election period.

Conversely, with every defection, this move and especially its timing is also expected to further affect the strength of Shekarau’s political structure in Kano with some of his associates already showing inclination of not ready to join their leader in moving out of the party, just as some of them refused to join him in leaving the APC in May.

Some analysts, therefore, feared that the uncertainties that joining APC or PDP bring and the loss of associates and supporters that comes with every defection move may put Shekarau’s political structure and influence on the brink of oblivion by the end of the election season in 2023 should the next step turn out to be the wrong step.