By Samuel Solomon
The Kano State House of Assembly has thrown its weight behind the planned defection of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf from the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), citing unresolved leadership crises and ongoing court cases that it says could jeopardise his mandate.
Addressing journalists yesterday, the Majority Leader of the House, Lawan Hussaini, said remaining on the NNPP platform had become increasingly risky not only for the governor but also for other elected officials in the state.
According to him, the party is currently plagued by factional leadership disputes and multiple litigations, creating uncertainty over the validity of its structure and nominations ahead of future elections.
“There is an existing court judgement that recognises a particular faction of the NNPP,” Hussaini told journalists. “We cannot continue to remain in the party and risk a repeat of the legal disaster that happened in Zamfara State.”
He said the situation had informed the Assembly’s support for calls urging Yusuf and the leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, to leave the NNPP for a more politically stable platform, including the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Hussaini disclosed that members of the House were engaged in consultations with both Yusuf and Kwankwaso to encourage a consensus decision on what he described as a “strategic and timely” exit from the party.
He warned that if the NNPP’s leadership crisis and factional court cases persisted, the judiciary could rule that the party’s candidates were not validly nominated, even if they won elections.
Such a development, he said, could result in the removal of Yusuf and other NNPP office holders by the courts, drawing parallels with events in Zamfara State.
In the 2019 general elections, the APC won nearly all elective positions in Zamfara State, including the governorship and state assembly seats. However, internal factional disputes prevented the conduct of valid primaries.
Days before the inauguration, the Supreme Court ruled that the APC had no valid candidates, declared the votes cast for the party wasted and ordered that candidates with the next highest votes who met constitutional requirements be declared winners.
The ruling handed the governorship to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Bello Matawalle, while the party also secured almost all legislative seats in the state despite losing at the polls.
