The presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party in the 2023 election and leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, has said Kano State Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf, will regret his decision to leave the party.
Kwankwaso spoke during an interview with the BBC Hausa Service on Wednesday, monitored by our correspondent in Kaduna, where he described Yusuf’s defection as shocking and difficult to understand.
The former Kano State governor said the circumstances surrounding Yusuf’s exit from the NNPP appeared confusing and almost unreal, even to him.
He disclosed that some people had suggested the move was the result of a secret arrangement involving him, the governor, or those close to Yusuf, a claim he dismissed.
Kwankwaso said he sometimes struggled to comprehend how events unfolded, noting that time would eventually expose the consequences of the decision.
He insisted that Yusuf and his political allies who followed him out of the NNPP would come to regret abandoning the party.
Yusuf formally defected to the All Progressives Congress on Monday, January 26, 2026, after announcing his resignation from the NNPP on Friday, January 23.
The defection came less than three years after he won the Kano governorship election on the platform of the NNPP, a party closely linked to Kwankwaso and the Kwankwasiyya movement.