70 years after: NEPU’s successor, PRP, battles for relevance
Crack as party strategises for 2023
Seventy years after the formation of the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), its successor, the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), is fighting to relaunch its ideals and gain relevance.
The 70th anniversary of NEPU, the first political party in the northern Nigeria, was marked on August 8, with a lecture, titled:” Party Ideology and Supremacy: The Example of NEPU”, held virtually due to COVID-19. It was organised by the Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Studies (Mambayya House).
NEPU was formed on August 8, 1950.
In 1966, NEPU was one of the political parties proscribed by the military government of General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. However, 12 years later, directly out of the NEPU emerged the PRP, which was launched on October 28, 1978, under the leadership of Mallam Aminu Kano.
During the 79 general elections, the party won Kaduna and Kano states, producing Balarabe Musa and the late Abubakar Rimi as governors of the two states, respectively.
Like other political parties, when the military struck on December 31, 1983, the PRP went underground, only to resurface on May 5, 1989 when the ban on politics was lifted to continue with the ideals of NEPU.
For years, the soul of the party revolved around, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, a former governor of Kaduna who served as its national chairman until 2018 when he stepped aside for a top banker, Alhaji Falalu Bello.
The coming of Falalu Bello and others rejuvenated the party as it won two federal constituencies in Bauchi State in the 2019 general elections, a development that saved it from being deregistered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
In August 2019, it was announced that the former chairman of INEC, Attahiru Jega, and others joined the party. Three committees were set up to review the performance of the party in the 2019 general elections, with a view to reposition it ahead of 2023 polls. Jega who deregistered the party in 2014, is one of the leading personalities in it.
As the machinations for the 2023 politicking gather momentum, reports have it that the PRP maybe one of the political parties to be reckoned with, following it renewed membership drive.
However, a crack has been created in the leadership of the party as Balarabe Musa who is now the party’s Board of Trustees (BOT) chairman and Falalu Bello are feuding.
Speaking on the relationship between NEPU and PRP, an elder statesman and former publicity secretary of NEPU, Alhaji Tanko Yaksai said, “What relates NEPU and PRP is that when the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was formed, Malam Aminu Kano was among the founding fathers.
“He left NPN because of some differences and his supporters urged him to form PRP and because most of these supporters are either old NEPU members or NEPU sympathisers like Balarabe Musa. So, the relationship is that those NEPU supporters that went along with Malam Aminu Kano to form PRP attracted some people who had no previous relationship with NEPU as a kind of transition.”
For his part, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, while speaking on PRP’s survival strategy, said the inability of the ruling party and the leading opposition to turn around the fortunes of the country has made the PRP, the lone option for the masses.