THE New Nigeria Peoples Party’s presidential candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, came under fire from the Labour Party’s Presidential Campaign Council for disparaging Peter Obi, the LP’s presidential candidate, on Wednesday in London.
Speaking on the “Nigeria’s 2023 Election: Service Delivery and Policy Alternatives,” Kwankwaso said the Labour Party was all about hype, describing LP as a party built on “ethnic and religious sentiments.”
Reacting to the remarks, the spokesman of the LP Presidential Campaign Council, Yunusa Tanko, said the former Kano state governor missed the point, having failed to see the quality possessed by Obi.
Speaking further, Tanko said, “That is a wrong perception. These things can also be said of Kwankwaso and his party. If it is about ethnicity, Kwankwaso is also from a particular ethnic group. If it is about religion, he practises a particular faith too. Where Kwankwaso falls short is that neither he nor his party has the contents that our party and presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, have. We have content and most Nigerians know this.
“Our candidate was the only one who came out to say, ‘don’t vote for me because I come from a particular ethnic group and don’t vote for me because I practice a particular religion, but vote for me because I have the capacity, character, integrity and compassion to make this country work.’ These attributes were reechoed by the Emir of Kano who spoke in Hausa language telling everyone that Peter has all it takes to govern this country when we visited Kano to interface with Nigerians over there,” he stated.
Also speaking, Akin Osuntokun, the director general of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, stated if any Nigerian leader deserves an ethnic tag, that person would certainly be the NNPP standard bearer.
