Why I abandoned PDP for APC- Shekarau

Former governor of Kano state, Ibrahim Shekarau, says the preferential treatment given to Rabiu Kwankwaso, also a former governor of the state when he defected from the APC to the PDP by the leadership of the PDP contributed to his exit from the party on Saturday.

He told his supporters that he left the opposition party because the PDP leadership gave Rabiu Kwankwaso an edge over Kano PDP leaders after he defected.

Kwankwaso moved from the APC to PDP in July.

“I wish to first of all, give some little background, sometime in July this year, a number of APC leaders decided to cross over from APC to PDP,” Shekarau said.

“In appreciation, our party, the PDP set up a Committee of Integration and Contact led by former governor of Cross River state, His Excellency, Liyel Imoke.

“Some of these agreements included, for example, in Kano, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso was granted the following privileges: 51 percent of the structure of the leadership of the party; while the existing PDP members should take 49 percent. They also granted to Kwankwaso that all national and state legislators who come with him should have automatic ticket to contest 2019 election.”

Shekarau, dissatisfied, said they called for a meeting of all stakeholders in Kano in August and the matter was tabled.

“We wrote a letter of protest which we titled ‘Integration of PDP Returnees Members.’ We disagreed, we wrote, we would be given copies for all the media people to see.”

After series of meeting with Kwankwaso, Shekarau said they couldn’t come to an agreement as Kwankwaso insisted on having the 51 percent.

“Kwankwaso said that he wanted 51 percent and we said we are not willing to agree to that. This deliberation could not continue. We held four separate meetings with Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso and the committee of Liyel Imoke,” he said.

“We went as far as granting delegates at the Ward level that would be shared between Aminu Wali’s group, my group and Kwankwaso’s group; but Kwankwaso said he does not recognize such, what he is after is that he would be granted 51 percent of the party structure at all levels; which we said we would not tolerate.

“On the basis of this, the national chairman decided that we of the PDP in Kano are not cooperating. He felt we are not cooperating for unconstitutional act, because of this, he felt we have disagreed with the party and therefore, he pronounced the dissolution of the party structure in Kano which is unconstitutional; and we said we didn’t recognise it.

“To make it worse, when he constituted the caretaker committee, the seven-member caretaker committee were all nominees of Dr. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso and they are all from Kano. This has violated many constitutional provisions.

“The tradition of the party indicates that whenever it is necessary or constitutionally right to form a caretaker committee in a state, the chairman and secretary of the committee must come from outside the state.

“In this case, that was not done. All the members of that committee are from the Kwankwaso’s camp of the Kwankwasiyya. We said we cannot take this. We gave the party a deadline to restore the unconstitutional act of returning back the elected officers of the party. We also demanded that we don’t recognize automatic ticket because it is unconstitutional; it is against the spirit of democracy.”

At this point, Shekarau said he considered three options; either to remain in PDP under “this crazy, unconstitutional, unacceptable arrangement, which does not go down well with our people, or we abandon political activities or we move to another political party.”