• NNPP scribe accuses Kwankwaso of trading with party

• Tags Tinubu’s plan to accommodate Kano ex-gov political suicide

The strongman of Kano politics, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s administration “for the neglect of the Northern region” and concentration of the nation’s resources on developing his southern part.

Not agreeing with the former governor, Northern elder, Col. Lawan Gwadabe (rtd), said Northern Nigeria’s backwardness was rather a product of failed leadership.

Meanwhile, there are allegations that Kwankwaso was using the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) to negotiate with Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to win the 2027 presidential election.

“Let me advise the Federal Government on the distribution of federal resources,” the former Kano governor said yesterday at the Kano State Stakeholders’ Dialogue on the 2025 Constitutional Amendment.

In attendance were Kano State Governor, Abba Yusuf and the 16th Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, at the event tagged ‘Join the conversation, influence the change’, as well as other government functionaries, civil society groups, and stakeholders.

“From the information available to us, it’s like most of the national budget is now tilting in one direction in this country.”

Kwankwaso, the 2023 NNPP presidential candidate, accused Tinubu of lopsided allocation of scarce resources between the two regions of the country.

He said, “Let me advise those who are struggling by all means to take everything, to remember that some of the issues that we have in this part of the country today have to do with the lack of enough resources and mismanagement of the little that comes in.

“That is why we have insecurity, poverty and so on. It is happening here mainly, but like a desert, it would go everywhere.”

He urged the Tinubu administration to change for the better and ensure the equitable distribution of resources for the development of all parts of the country.

Speaking at a briefing yesterday to mark the 30th anniversary of Hassan Katsina’s death, Gwadabe decried what he described as a tragic betrayal of the leadership ideals of the late General Hassan Usman Katsina by today’s Northern elite.

“The poverty afflicting Northern Nigeria is not an accident like the slave trade or apartheid,” Gwadabe declared. “It is man-made and can be reversed by the collective actions of leaders at the helm of affairs today.”

The event, organised by the New Vision Development Initiative (NEVDI), served not just to honour the late General Katsina, but to raise the alarm over what Gwadabe called a “leadership vacuum” plaguing the region.

He called on Northern politicians and traditional rulers to rediscover the sense of sacrifice, urgency and empathy that defined Katsina’s leadership.

Meanwhile, NNPP’s National Secretary, Olaposi Oginni, in a statement made available to The Guardian yesterday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State Capital, accused the former senator representing Kano Central of using both NNPP and his Kwankwasiya Movement as a bargaining chip for Tinubu to return to office in 2027.

Oginni specifically dismissed the notion that Kwankwaso had the electoral strength in Kano to pull votes for Tinubu in the coming polls, citing his failure to pull mass votes in the last presidential election where former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the presidential candidate for Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, shared Kano votes with him in the last presidential election.

He wondered why the former Minister of Defence would be trading NNPP for the ruling APC to obtain a political position at the national level should Tinubu return to office for the second time, stressing that the President might be making a grave mistake to negotiate with Kwankwaso to win the seat of power in 2027.(The Guardian)