Kwankwaso Should Tone Down Rhetoric

In the last few weeks, former presidential candidate of New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso, has been talking tough on how his party would defeat other political parties in 2027.

Basking in the euphoria of the defections from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to his NNPP, the former governor of Kano State has been accusing the APC of bad governance and predicting its downfall.

He had equally described the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a completely dead political party.

But what he does not realise is that if APC has failed Nigerians as he claimed, he is among the few politicians that created the problems due to their selfish motives.

Having known how difficult it would be to dethrone the APC being the party in power, Kwankwaso had the opportunity to form alliance with the PDP and Labour Party, just as the coalition of political parties formed APC to sack the PDP in 2015.

But because of pride and selfishness, Kwankwaso and other opposition leaders refused to form alliance  and he ended up coming a distant fourth position in the election.

He had even dismissed the idea being the running mate of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, on the grounds that he was far ahead of the former Anambra State governor in politics.

However, the outcome of the election has today shown who is ahead of each other in Nigerian politics between him and Obi.

Now, ahead of the 2027 elections, rather than strategising on how to form an alliance or a possible merger, he has been overheating the polity with tough talks, and taunting other political parties.

Meanwhile, all his attention was focused on the North as he thinks that winning the North alone is enough to give him the presidency in 2027.

He should better learn from the mistake of former President Muhammadu Buhari, which robbed himself of victory thrice before he eventually won in 2015 with the support of now President Bola Tinubu.

It took Buhari’s CPC to merge with other parties to form the APC before he could win the 2015 presidential election.

If Kwankwaso is really serious about 2027, the time to start the merger or alliance talks is now, instead of overheating the polity.