Shekarau’s Defection To PDP No Guarantee That Jonathan Will Win Kano Votes In 2015, Says Ex-Aide

IBRAHIM SHEKARAU WAVING PDP FLAG DURING DEFECTION CEREMONY
IBRAHIM SHEKARAU WAVING PDP FLAG DURING DEFECTION CEREMONY

The recent defection of Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, the immediate past governor of Kano State to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is not a guarantee that President Goodluck Jonathan will win the state in 2015, Alhaji Ibrahim Garba, a former commissioner under the now expired Shekarau’s administration has said.

Shekarau, who was one of the proponents of the formation of a mega opposition alliance, which gave birth to the All Progressives Congress (APC), defected to the PDP late last month following a disagreement over state leadership position.

Speaking in an interview yesterday, the ex-commissioner said he and many other loyalists of the former governor stayed behind in APC in order to dislodge the ruling PDP come 2015.

“While we were in government, from 2003 to 2011, Shekarau warned us to be very careful with PDP that the party is for the devils. And this is why we didn’t follow him to PDP when he was decamping to the party because nothing has changed in the party.

“We in the former ANPP we know what we did that made us win in 2003, we are going to use the same mechanism to ensure APC wins Kano State come 2015. The defection of Mallam to PDP will not make Jonathan win in the state because 95 percent of the people in the state are with APC”, he said adding that the PDP-led Federal Government in the country has exposed Nigerians to untold hardship.

“We are battling with insecurity, sectional presidential behaviours, economic downturn especially in the North, lack of power and many others. And you are saying we should support PDP, no we won’t”, he said.

Reacting to a statement recently made by Shekarau while speaking to State House correspondents in Abuja shortly after his official defection to PDP that Gov. Rabi’u Kwankwaso is running a cult-like administration in Kano, Garba says, “with the transformation we are witnessing in Kano now, if cultism is responsible for it, I think it’s worth doing”.

1 COMMENT

  1. Nigerian Political Parties and Politicians: a Call for National Unity
    Foreword to Nigerian Political Parties and Politicians – A Call for national unity by Professor Akinjide Osuntokun

    I am writing with delight a foreword to this interesting book on Nigeria’s political parties and politicians written by Bolaji Samson Aregbeshola. The late Chief Bola Ige of evergreen memory went over this same course in one of his book. No country can develop without political leadership. Nigerians generally regard politics as a dirty game and many decent and knowledgeable people avoid it like a plague. But it is apparent that no matter how technologically developed a country may be and no matter the amount of resources available to it, without the mobilization of people and resources which is generally provided by political leadership, that country will not develop. This credo is central to Aregbeshola’s book. This book goes back into our recent history to point out the dangers posed to the polity and the state by politics based on ethnic differences and tribalism. Even though this problem is universal, but in our case it is central to the politics of Africa. There is little or no political ideological debate among African politicians rather what we have is politics of primitive accumulation and over-emphasis on primordial differences as a strategy of attracting support.
    This according to the author has become a recurring decimal. This poses a serious danger to the survival of our country. We should learn from disappearing or disappeared states like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo where the forces of Proto nationalism have destroyed what was earlier on viable political entities. Nigeria is too big to court this fate because whatever happens to Nigeria will have reverberation all over Africa.
    This is why reading this book is a must for all of us if we are to avoid the mistakes of the past that has led to our present cul de sac where rather than making progress we are retrogressing. This book is readable and it is not marred by political science terminologies that may make non-intellectuals uncomfortable. The message of this book is that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

    Professor Akinjide Osuntokun