Hours after decamping from the All Progressive Congress (APC) to the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Senator Ibrahim Shekarau recollected how Governor Abdullahi Ganduje begged him to help his former party.
Speaking to journalists in Kano at his Mundubawa, Kano residence on Wednesday, Shekarau said injustice and non inclusiveness in the APC made his followers and the leadership of the Shura Consultative Council move to the NNPP.
Shekarau received his NNPP membership card from Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso on Wednesday morning.
“As a former governor, a former minister and a sitting senator, and an elder of the party, I was never ever invited to any structured meeting.
“The constitution of the party provides for caucus meeting, elders’ meeting at all levels, no one has the right, as far the party constitution, is concerned, to reconstitute the composition of such bodies. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, I was never invited to such meeting.
“Ganduje approached me in his first tenure and asked me to nominate one person to be appointed commissioner. Shehu Na’allah Kura was one of the loyal and hardworking party members. So I gave his name.
“The governor approached me again during his second term that he was granting our group two positions of commissionership, but he has selected one for us, we are to select another. And he said, he had selected Musa Iliyasu Kwankwaso and we said this is fraudulent.
“In the first place, we were not disowning Kwankwaso but the fact is that he had been in APC and as a commissioner over a year ahead of our defection to APC and as such, while we agree he’s one of us, but if we were to select, he couldn’t have been the one by any standard. I therefore said since you are technically giving us only one position, you already had Shehu Na’allah Kura. If you want to continue with him, we have no objection and he agreed and hence Kura was reappointed for the second term.
“Apart from that, Governor Ganduje never requested our group to submit a name for any kind of appointment. In spite of our contributions which he came personally to beg; at the stadium everybody saw him saying ‘we are begging you to come’, and he and the national chairman insisted. The entire national executives came to this very house and insisted I must come in to help.
“When the local government elections came, some two years ago, we were not involved at all. In my position, even if I were never a governor, minister or senator, at least, at my age in my local government or ward, I deserve some attention as an elder in the party, in my Ward and local government. Surprisingly, I was never consulted, never contacted; chairman and councillors were traditionally nominated not elected at any party structure meeting. Nobody consulted me to nominate any, even the councillor of my Ward.
“The party leaders know that I have governed Kano for eight years, there’s no ward in the 484 in Kano where I do not have mass followership.”
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