The Presidential Candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso says his planned alliance with Labour Party’s Peter Obi failed because he turned down the request to serve as the running mate.
Kwankwaso, who spoke in an exclusive interview on a television programme, said the North does not support a Southern presidency.
According to him, most northerners wanted power to remain in the North even after President Muhammadu Buhari must have completed his eight years in office
When told that many young Nigerians were unhappy with him that the planned alliance with Obi failed, Kwankwaso said: “Yes, I did everything possible for that alliance to work for many obvious reasons. In Kwankwassiya, we are not in a hurry
“In 2007, I could have tried to contest to become president because I was better qualified than almost everybody that contested at that particular time. I was a civil servant for 17 years; I was deputy speaker for the House of Reps; I was at the time the elected delegate for the Constitutional Conference of 2004-2005.
“I was governor of Kano for four years; I was Minister of Defence and to become president, is to become the president and Commander-in-Chief. This aspect of Commander-in-Chief is very important even in the military, to establish relationships with them and know them.
“We have already done that at that time. We were very close to each other and respect ourselves. But I was not in a hurry and I said I wanted to go back to Kano while many of my colleagues that were governors between 1999 and 2007 were all contesting to become president, I said I wanted to go back to Kano to finish that one term.
“After doing all that, the next thing was to contest for presidency and that was what I did in 2015 because I was in the game and of course, in any business you want to progress. Our people who know our value and capacity were putting all sorts of pressure that we should go and take it”.
