I’m not planning to return to APC — Kwankwaso
Yarima: I’m fully in 2023 presidential race
Aformer Kano State Governor, Sen Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has denied reports that he is perfecting plans to dump the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement also said he is not mulling the idea of floating a new political party to challenge PDP and APC for power in 2023.
Several reports had indicated that the former governor had reached out to APC national leaders to return to the party he left in 2018.
But while reacting to Daily Trust’s enquiries on the issue, a media aide to Kwankwaso, Saifullahi Hassan, said all the reports concerning decamping and forming a new party were not true.
Also reacting, a chieftain of the ruling party in the state and Commissioner for Rural Development, Musa Iliyasu
Kwankwaso, said the APC in the state does not have anything against anyone joining the ruling party insofar as the person is ready to submit to the leadership of Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje.
He said as declared by the APC national caretaker chairman, Mai Mala Buni in Cross River and Zamfara states, the leadership of the party in any state rests on the governor of the state.
“If he wants to come to APC, let him withdraw his red cap to come under Ganduje,” he added.
A former governor of Zamfara State, Ahmad Sani Yarima, has said Northern politicians have the right to contest the 2023 presidential poll.
Governors of the 17 Southern states had on Monday, during their meeting in Lagos, unanimously agreed that the next President of Nigeria should emerge from their region, puncturing the ambition of prominent politicians from the North.
But in an interview with newsmen on Tuesday in Abuja, Yarima said it was wrong for anyone to agitate for power shift to his region.
The former governor said he is fully in the 2023 presidential race, adding that coming from the same NorthWest geo-political zone with President Muhammadu Buhari, whose tenure elapses in 2023, is not a threat to his political ambition.
“I’m in the race, I have already declared my intention and I’m mobilising by the grace of God. At least, Mr. President won the election with a little above 15 million and I assure you, before I even declare officially, I would have had 20 million supporters,” he said.