APC crisis deepens as Shekarau, others disown Kwankwaso as Kano leader

There are concerns in a section of the defunct ANPP that the G5 governors will be given special privileges.

By Ahmad Salim

A section of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, led by a former governor of Kano State, Ibrahim Shekarau, has dissociated itself from the recent endorsement of the State governor, Musa Kwankwaso, as the leader of the All Progressive Congress, APC, in the state.

Mr. Kwankwaso defected from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to APC alongside four other governors last year.

The ANPP joined the defunct Congress for Progressive Change, CPC; Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN; and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, to form the APC last year, in what was described as the first successful merger of political parties since the country’s independence in 1960.

Some leaders of the defunct ANPP, including a former presidential candidate, Bashir Tofa, and ex-senator Kabiru Gaya, last week visited Mr. Kwankwaso during which they pledged their support to the governor as the leader of APC in the state.

Ibrahim Shekarau

However, at a press conference in Mr. Shekarau’s Kano home on Monday, a former Chairman of the ANPP, Sani Hotoro, said those who paid homage to the governor did so in their own individual capacity and not on behalf of the defunct party.

He alleged that Mr. Tofa, a former presidential candidate of the defunct National Republican Convention, NRC, who led the team to Mr. Kwankwaso, had publicly announced that he had quit partisan politics and also declined to serve in the merger committee of the ANPP when approached at that time.

Mr. Hotoro stated that members of defunct ANPP in the state had written a letter to APC national secretariat conveying their concern and the way forward and that they were still awaiting a reply to the letter. He claimed that most of the people that visited the Kano governor were signatories to the letter sent to the national headquarters of APC in Abuja.

“It is in the public knowledge that, members of the APC coming from the defunct ANPP Kano state, have on December 18th 2013 under the leadership of our 2011 presidential candidate and former Governor of Kano state, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau delivered a letter to the APC interim leadership in Abuja conveying our concern and the way forward,” he said.

“In it we requested for a clarification of the rumour going round that the five aggrieved new PDP governor who decided to decamp to APC did so as a result of an alleged agreement they reached with section of the APC leadership that they will be given special privileges that are clearly against all fairness and democratic norms.

“These included state leadership of the party, automatic tickets for all their members of the state and the national assemblies and also handling the registration of members.”

Mr. Hotoro also claimed that the privileges were rejected by members of all the merging parties in the five states where their governors defected.

He stated that as far as the ANPP section of the APC in Kano State was concerned, Mr. Shekarau remained the leader of the party in the state.

The former ANPP state chairman said the former governor and the other aggrieved members had no plan to decamp to other parties until the APC national headquarters responded to their letter.

The crisis in Kano is also happening in three other APC states were the governors newly decamped to the party. In Kwara, Adamawa, and Sokoto, members of the merger parties are having a running battle with the decampee governors.