Former Kano State Governor Ibrahim Shekarau yesterday returned to main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The former governor was a member of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) until his move, which he claimed was spurred by alleged betrayal.
Shekarau said he forfeited his senatorial ambition in NNPP to join the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who had been wooing him back to the party which once made him Minister of Education.
PDP National Chairman Iyorchia Ayu and Atiku welcomed the former governor to the party during a ceremony at his Mandubawa residence in Kano.
Shekarau, currently representing Kano Central in the Senate, aspired to become president in the 2011 general election.
He was Kano State governor from 2003 and re-elected in 2007. In 2019, he dumped the PDP for the All Progressives Congress (APC) and was subsequently elected into the Senate on the ruling party’s platform.
Ahead of the 2023 general election, Shekarau had frosty ties with Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and lost his senatorial re-election bid in the APC from where he joined the NNPP.
He claimed that his defection from NNPP to PDP was meant to restore justice and fairness in Nigerian politics.
It was gathered that while in the NNPP, where he spent only three months, his relationship with former Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, the NNPP’s founder, also went sour after his loyalists could not get the party’s tickets to contest elective positions in the forthcoming general election.
He has promised to mobilise his supporters across the country to work for Atiku’s victory in next year’s election.
The event was also attended by Atiku’s running mate and Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa; former Vice President Namadi Sambo; PDP’s Board of Trustees (BoT) Chairman Jibrin Walid and many officials and prominent chieftains of the party.
Others who defied a heavy downpour to witness Shekarau’s return to PDP also included former governor of Jigawa State Sule Lamido and former governor of Kaduna State Ahmed Makarfi, among others.
On Sunday, Kano State PDP Chairman Shehu Sagagi had hinted that Shekarau would to return to party.