2019: PDP and Kwankwaso’s hypothesis,

It is an established precedence in our democratic culture that whenever elections approach, the atmosphere would be saturated with self-styled prophesies, postulations and self-promotional media hype.
In another angle, cross carpeting by politicians is equally taking the center stage all due to inordinate lust and desperation to occupy political positions.
Yes, it’s desperation shrouded by the abridgement of internal democracy and principle of party ideology.
I am compelled to respond to the outburst and political conniption of former Kano state Governor, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
He said only three of the 19 northern states are capable of producing the zoned PDP’s presidential ticket if the party is willing to wrestle power from APC and Muhammadu Buhari.
According to him, the states are Kaduna, Katsina and Kano where he Kwankwaso comes from.
What is the former governor alluding to? In fact, his posture only reminded Nigerians of nothing but the long forgotten destructive theme of the massively failed late Major Gideon Orkar’s coup d’état of April 20, 1990.
If anything, this stance smacks of myopism and arrogance.
Granted that zoning has become acceptable in sharing political offices, it does not have to be on the altar of self-postulation and exclusivity as Kwankwaso is trying to pray.
Though, it is not formally known that Kwankwaso has left his party, the APC, for the PDP, but his body language and outing in the media just recently, point to that direction.
The senator even said if the PDP will give him chance to fly the party’s presidential ticket, he can beat Buhari and the APC in the 2019 presidential elections. Oh! Okay, the PDP has now become a good bride to be courted by Kwankwaso this time around.
Kwankwaso, I dare to say, is by his new posturing only insulting the sensibilities of not just the Nigerians he and his co-travellers in 2014 deceived by first destroying the PDP and then abandoned it, but that of the membership of the PDP that effort is being made to repackage the relics.
I think there is too much of overconfidence in Kwankwaso to say such a thing.
Who gave Kwankwaso the role of anointing leaders in the first place? After desecrating the PDP, Kwankwaso wants it again, does that really add up? Kwankwaso’s statement reveals a state of mind poised to drag the apparently united north back to the pre-jihad period when the north was dotted with warring tribes killing one another for the purposes of materialistic political domination.
It is very unfortunate for a presidential aspirant to be so glaringly and undemocratically nepotistic to the extent of excluding fellow Nigerians of the same regional extraction from contesting the presidency simply because he wants to be president.
This is the kind of mentality that is throwing our nation into chaos and disunity.
We are tired of such leaders! Okay, let us accept that those three states – Katsina, Kaduna and Kano – should produce a presidential candidate.
Let us also assume that it has been narrowed to Kano.
Can Kwankwaso make it out of that area? He could not even organize an simple rally in Kano sometimes back, yet he wants to represent Kano as PDP’s presidential candidate.
Haba! Kwankwaso, do a bit of reasoning now! Even if the PDP would forgive you and still hand over the ticket to you, Nigerians would do a rethink as to whether politicians without party borders could have Nigeria handed over to them.
No matter how docile Nigerians are, currently, the situation in the country would make them find it so difficult to let political party prostitutes take charge of affairs.
That cannot happen again.
And in any case, Nigerians are not docile after all.
We have come of age.
Nigerians would no longer be taken for a ride.
That can be noticed in the massive opposition even against Buhari who seems to be working hard and honestly to right the wrongs the PDP, which Kwankwaso was a part of, unleashed on this nation in its 16 years of misrule.
If the people of Kano know what they are doing, which I think they know, they should not allow Kwankwaso to return even to the Senate again, let alone become a PDP presidential candidate.
We cannot afford to have power hungry desperados of the Kwankwaso stock to contest even for primaries not to talk of becoming presidential candidates on the platform of any political party.
As far as we are concerned, all northerners have equal rights to contest for the presidency.
The North will certainly vote for the candidate that, by antecedents, will respect all of them, irrespective of tribe, religion or political affiliation; a candidate that sees them as equal and that is ready to treat them as equals and give all Nigerians equal and just opportunities as Nigerians.
In any case, even the poorest statistician knows that the votes in the so-called “3Ks” alone cannot make one a president, even if he gets all the votes.
The worst mistake the PDP would make to spell doom of its fortunes is to field Kwankwaso as a presidential candidate.
The non “3Ks” states of the north will surely prove to them that the north is not all about the “3Ks” as some arrogant, selfish and narrow-minded politicians would want to believe.
Usman writes from Kaduna

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