Agbo Major, a chieftain of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) has revealed why the party sanctioned the expulsion of Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate in the 2023 election from the party.
According to Major, who currently assumes the role of the party’s chairman, the decision to expel Kwankwaso stemmed from an alleged endeavour by the former governor of Kano State and his supporters to wrest control of the party away from its original founders.
Major stands firm in his assertion that the expulsion was necessary to preserve the party’s integrity and prevent it from being taken over by Kwankwaso and his loyalists.
“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 stated that Kwankwaso’s faction became part of the party in the previous year under the condition of an agreement, which allowed them to participate 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 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.
The NNPP has been embroiled in a crisis following the conclusion of the 2023 elections, marked by internal factions within the party resorting to measures such as suspensions and expulsions against one another.
The Agbo Major group primarily comprises longstanding members of the party, while the opposing faction consists of individuals aligned with Kwankwaso, who served as the party’s presidential candidate.
