Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), has come under fire for an alleged anti-Igbo remark, according to the Special Counsel for Nnamdi Kanu, the head of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Aloy Ejimakor.
Igbos, according to the former governor of Kano State, are successful in business but rank “bottom in politics.”
Additionally, it stated that Kwankwaso claimed northerners would not support the Labour Party’s presidential nominee, Peter Obi, because of the agitations for a separate state of Biafra in the region. Kwankwaso made the remark in Gombe while opening the state’s NNPP headquarters.
In addition, he rejected the idea of supporting Obi as his running mate in the 2023 presidential elections, arguing that the South-East area would have a greater chance if he ran as the candidate and Obi served as his running mate.
The NNPP and Labour Party were in talks to establish an alliance and jointly run for president in the upcoming general elections.
Since Kwankwaso made the remarks, there have been responses from all sides, including Mr. Obi, who claimed that the former governor’s speech was the cause of “100 million Nigerians are in poverty”
Ejimakor, who denounced the remark on Twitter on Thursday morning, questioned why southerners fare poorly in the exams while students from the south-east perform best in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
He also questioned why, despite the efforts of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the South-East area has a high Human Development Index while the North languishes at the bottom of the list.
According to Kwankwaso, the North is the grandmaster in politics & Southeast is a learner.
Why then is SE highest in WAEC, JAMB & Human Development Index while the North is lowest?
And why did these indices improve in the North under OBJ & GEJ but plummeted under GMB?#Oxymoron
— aloy ejimakor (@AloyEjimakor) July 7, 2022
He pointed out that the North’s position worsened under President Muhammadu Buhari, a native of the region.
“According to Kwankwaso, the North is the grandmaster in politics & the Southeast is a learner,” Ejimakor said on his Twitter account, @AloyEjimakor.
“So why is SE higher than North in WAEC, JAMB, and Human Development Index?
Why did these indices rise in the North under Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan but fall there under Muhammadu Buhari?