Last year, this column predicted the parting of ways between Kano’s Governor Abba Yusuf and his mentor and godfather Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, a former governor himself. Both politicians have now acrimoniously reached a point of no return in their relationship. The governor has virtually defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC), tired of his mentor’s dithering, while Dr Kwankwaso has been left stranded in the litigious New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), angry with his mentee for his impatience and flirtation with the enemy. For more than one year, Dr Kwankwaso negotiated with APC leaders to facilitate his defection, but every time the ruling party met his terms, he shifted the goalpost. Vexed and irritated, the APC separately courted an already disaffected Mr Yusuf who was anxious to avoid the legal pitfalls in the NNPP that threatened his reelection. It turned out that the governor couldn’t wait any longer, while his mentor could afford all the time in the world. The explosion that followed in the last two weeks between the somnolent mentor and his agitated mentee was predictable and inevitable, as this column anticipated in October 2024.
One more prediction can be ventured on the Kano affair: Dr Kwankwaso has been left holding the short end of the stick, and Mr Yusuf is left with all the advantage. Having tarried so long in trying to negotiate a deal worthy of his stature, the Kwankwasiyya leader will now have to fight for his political life with little chance of stalemating the war or emerging victorious. He faces the unpalatable choice of either migrating to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), where there are covert and cowardly talks of unhorsing the immovable former vice president Atiku Abubakar, or of staying put at the forlorned NNPP. Whatever he does, he faces a veritable Hobson’s choice. To return to the APC suitor is to follow his mentee to the new watering hole while simultaneously losing face. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is out of the picture, while the ADC, now seething with plots and dreams of utopia, will test his forbearance to its limit. Enjoy the following 2024 discourses that presaged the Kwankwaso debacle.
Culled from The Nation
