Two leading opposition figures in the country, former Vice president Atiku Abubakar and a former Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, recently held a meeting in Abuja.
The meeting took place at the residence of the former Governor and leader of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) late Tuesday.
Kwankwaso confirmed the meeting on his Facebook page, saying that “I was pleased to receive my brother, the former Vice President, His Excellency, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, at my residence this evening. I thank Waziri for this fraternal visit. – RMK.”
Though details of the meeting are yet to be known as those close to the two leaders have kept sealed lips, Daily Trust gathered that the meeting might not be unconnected with the political situation in the country and recent developments.
Before taking oath of office, President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) met with Kwankwaso, his NNPP rival in the election.
According to sources, the president considering a Government of National Unity and had planned to include Kwankwaso and some of his allies in his administration.
However, neither Kwankwaso nor any of his known associates made the ministerial list, while the immediate past governor of Kano, Abdullahi Ganduje, a known political foe of Kwankwaso, had some impute in the cabinet.
After Tinubu met with Kwankwaso, Ganduje had expressed worries, saying he felt abandoned.
In a leaked conversation, Ganduje was heard telling Alhaji Ibrahim Masari, one of Tinubu’s aides that there was noise all over Kano over the meeting between Tinubu and Kwankwaso.
The governor was then heard saying, “What could I have told him? Now he (Tinubu) is seeing Kwankwaso as an alternative to us? No problem. Because we don’t have a government? And it is even because of him (Tinubu) that we lost the government. Even if he would see him (Kwankwaso), he ought to have called us too. Or don’t you understand, even if symbolically.”
But Ganduje’s body language changed in the following weeks as he warmed his way into Tinubu’s camp, emerging National Chairman of the ruling party and also nominating a replacement for Maryam Shetty, the nominee who was dropped for the inclusion of Gnduje’s former commissioner in Tinubu’s cabinet.
Before the election Atiku and his allies tried to form a political alliance with Kwankwaso against the APC and its presidential candidate, but that was not to materialize.
Even though a source close to the former Vice President told Daily Trust that the meeting was just for fraternal greetings, the days ahead will show weather a new political alliance is already in the offing.