Kwankwaso, Gov. Yusuf Supporters in Legal Tussle over NNPP Leadership

Ahmad Sorondinki in Kano.

Barely five days after reports emerged on Kano State Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf’s alleged plan to join the All Progressives Congress (APC), a heated row has erupted between supporters of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) leader, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and those loyal to the Governor with both factions clashing over the party’s chairmanship.

The Kwankwasiyya members of the NNPP have been sharply divided into two factions, with Governor Yusuf’s supporters hell-bent on decamping to the APC, while the party’s leader has opted to remain in the NNPP.

Yusuf’s supporters, including his Director of Protocol at Government House, Alhaji Abdullahi Rogo, were seen in a video clip, and some local government chairmen in their domain, urging Kwankwaso and Yusuf to defect to the ruling APC.

They argued that if the Governor remained in NNPP, he may not realise his second-term ambition come 2027, an opinion that didn’t sit well with Kwankwaso, and the party’s Chairman, Hashimu Dungurawa.

Shortly after the party’s Chairman had addressed a press conference and had described the Governor’s alleged attempt to join APC as betrayal, Yusuf’s supporters in the Chairman’s Cigari ward in Dawakin Tofa local government had announced his removal as chairman.

He had said: “Information reaching us indicated certain elements in NNPP are hell-bent on leaving our party, but I would like to make it categorically clear that our party and our national leader, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, have no hand in what’s going on.”

However, Governor Yusuf’s supporters had quickly appointed and announced Abdullahi Zubairu Abiya as the acting chairman of the party, despite the national NNPP’s rejection and disapproval of Abiya.

However, a new twist to the crisis was introduced yesterday, after Governor Yusuf’s supporters secured an interim order from the Kano State High Court affirming Abiya as the Acting State Chairman of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in Kano State.

In her ruling, Justice Zuwaira, Yusuf upheld the suspension of Dungurawa and restrained him from interfering in the affairs of the party pending the determination of the substantive suit.

The APC and Kano residents still await the reception of Governor Yusuf into the party, after he was reported to have held a series of meetings with APC chieftains and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ahead of his planned defection.