The presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Rabiu Kwankwaso, is still in the race and would not step down for anybody, the party’s Presidential Campaign Council said on Sunday.

The council described the insinuation as a campaign of calumny.

According to the NNPP, the reports were being masterminded by jobbers seeking to sell expired drugs to a sick Nigeria.

The spokesperson of Kwankwaso/NNPP-PCC, Ladipo Johnson, made the clarification in a statement issued in Abuja titled, “Is Kwankwaso still in the race? Is he running to win?”

He said, “These are the questions being bandied around by the supporters of those who have failed this country and who are still pretenders to the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“The campaign of calumny is well orchestrated and comes from more than one political block! Ab initio, they initiated and carried rumours about Kwankwaso purportedly stepping down for their weak candidates.

“I pity these political jobbers as there probably is no easy way for them to sell their weak and ailing candidates who have passed their ‘sell by dates’ to Nigerians! I make bold to say that these so-called candidates should be taken off the supermarket shelf (off the political space). They have cost us enough.”

Johnson added that political jobbers are attempting to push their narrative by using pecuniary means to entice NNPP or Kwankwasiyya members who then stage “decamping shows”, where they parade a few hired hands adorned with “new” red Kwankwasiyya caps which they symbolically remove or throw away.

He added, “Rabiu Kwankwaso and the NNPP are contesting this election to the end. The RMK 2023 campaign is waxing stronger as we head into the last 30 days of the campaign.

“Our candidate has reached way over 400 plus local governments and is going into the only state he has not been to, to campaign in the coming days.

“We repeat that we have a clear strategic path to victory and that by God’s special grace, the NNPP and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso are going to win the election.”

[Punch]