Agbo Major, a New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) official, has stated that the party’s presidential candidate for 2023, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has been dismissed.
Major, who claims to be the party’s new chairman, claims Kwankwaso’s expulsion was forced by an attempt by the former Kano State governor and his allies to take over the party from its original members.
“The whole idea was, ‘Okay, this man (founder) is a good man; he is somebody who listens and so on and so forth, so let us dominate him and take over the party’, that was what they wanted, but they found in us the commitment to ensure that that never happened,” Major said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday.
He claims Kwankwaso’s faction joined the party last year after a deal was reached to allow them to run in the 2023 elections.
“They joined us last year for the purpose of the election. They joined us on the strength of an instrument, a MoU, which gave them an opportunity to run for various elective positions for the 2023 general election.
“That MoU is explicitly stated that at the end of the election, they could go their way or we come back again to redesign that marriage and see if we will be able to continue or not, but when we saw their activities, we discovered that there is no way the marriage is going to continue; we had to ask them to go, and that is the situation now,” he said.
Following the 2023 elections, the NNPP has been rocked by a crisis, with factions within the party suspending and dismissing one another.
The Agbo Major faction is primarily made up of elder party members, whereas the other camp is devoted to Kwankwaso, the party’s presidential candidate.
