I don’t make a habit of kicking a man when he is down. There is something unseemly about it, something that says more about the kicker than the kicked. Yet, some stories need to be told, not for the sake of criticism, but for the clarity they offer. The case of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the strongman of Kano State, is one such story. The real question is not how he failed, but why he spent so long digging a hole for himself.
This didn’t just happen by chance. It was a choice. A bunch of mistakes were made that didn’t have to happen, and they had real consequences. It shows something tough about politics: you can spend years building up your power and respect, and lose it all in just a few months because of pride and bad decisions. You can see how it happened, they went from being strong and having real support to almost being ignored, now left hoping for a meeting with people they used to look down on.
To understand the scale of this development, we must begin where the story peaked. In the 2023 presidential election, Kwankwaso, leading his New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), had pulled off a singular feat in Kano State. He secured 997,279 votes for his presidential bid. In Nigeria’s political nerve centre, a state every serious contender must win, he had commanded the loyalty of nearly a million people.
This influence transcends mere backing; it is a source of tangible political power. It translates into the leverage that makes the telephone ring in Abuja and forces competitors to pause and reassess their positions.
Yet here, I would argue, the first critical misjudgement took root. He, and perhaps too many in his inner circle, listened only to the roar from Kano’s decibel meter. They failed to pay sufficient heed to the silence, or worse, the indifferent whispers, from everywhere else. For beyond that single, formidable stronghold, the national picture was brutally different. Across the remaining 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory, he managed a mere 499,392 votes.
His second best outing was in neighbouring Jigawa, with a paltry 98,234. To put a finer point on it, even in his moment of Kano triumph, Bola Tinubu still garnered 517,341 votes in that same state. The inescapable conclusion was that Kwankwaso was a giant in one arena and a footnote in the national ledger. He was a one-state wonder holding a ticket he mistook for a national headline act.
That misplaced confidence laid the foundation for his first and most devastating mistake. During the fragile, smoke filled negotiations to form a partnership after the election, President Tinubu was said to have extended an offer. Not casually. I can confirm at least two or three separate meetings with both men in Aso Rock.
While the details of their meetings are private, one thing is certain: a politician like Tinubu wouldn’t have let Kwankwaso leave without a concrete proposal. It is standard political strategy to bring key figures into the fold. However, the chatter suggests Kwankwaso’s demands were simply tstrateg, ome would say unrealistic.
What was on the table? That should wait for another day.
For any politician with a sense of history and a grip on reality, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. It was the bridge from being a warlord in the fields to becoming a counsellor within the castle. He would not have been president, no. But he could have been a kingmaker, using that position to rebuild, to funnel development to his base, and to grow his political structure with the fuel of federal patronage. It was the patient, strategic path, the long game that Nigerian politics often demands.
Kwankwaso looked at that bridge and decided he was too important to cross it. He swaggered away. The narrative, one imagines, was one of principle and fortitude. In truth, it was an act of deep political hubris. He overvalued his asset. He believed the sheer, concentrated weight of Kano’s votes meant he could dictate terms, perhaps even secure a better deal later. He failed to understand that in politics, leverage has an expiration date, and his was ticking down fast. He left a real seat at the table because he thought he deserved the head of the table, not realising he was, in fact, in the wrong dining room altogether.
This was not his first consequential misread. Even before the election in 2023, he had been presented with another golden, if risky, opportunity. Peter Obi of Labour Party, then riding an unprecedented wave of populist enthusiasm, approached him for a joint ticket. Here was a chance to merge Obi’s sprawling, youth-driven national appeal with Kwankwaso’s deep, disciplined machinery in the critical North-West. It was a partnership that could have genuinely upended the race. Kwankwaso said no. The precise details of the refusal are lost to political gossip, but the core reason in such situations is almost invariably the same: ego. The question of “who would be on top?” overrode the more strategic question of “could we win?”
He chose, in effect, to be the sole captain of a sturdy canoe, rejecting a place on the bridge of a battleship. He chose the symbolism of being his own man over the substance of shared, and potentially decisive, power.
Now, observe the consequences. They have come home to roost with a vengeance, and they are pecking at the very foundations of his political house.
The most brutal twist is playing out in Kano itself, the sacred ground of his power. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, the man he practically handcrafted and installed in the Government House, is now the architect of his current political humiliation. The governor’s planned defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) is not merely a betrayal; it is an existential crisis. It signals that in the very heart of Kwankwasiyya territory, the myth of the movement’s invincibility—and its leader’s kingmaking prowess—has shattered. His own protégé has calculated, coldly and pragmatically, that his future is brighter shackled to the national ruling party than it is in the fading shadow of his godfather. There is no greater indictment in politics.
Simultaneously, his national vehicle, the NNPP, is cracking under the strain. Senators and members of the House of Representatives, the few he had, are being peeled away in a slow-motion political annexation. The structure he hoped to present as a future bargaining chip is being dismantled before his eyes. What remains is a brand associated not with rising influence, but with managed decline.
And so, we arrive at the desperate, diminished present. The man who turned down a presidential coalition and a vice-presidential offer is now on a very public audition tour. He declares he is open to an opposition coalition, but only if he is handed the presidential or vice-presidential ticket. The sheer, unvarnished gall of it is almost impressive. He is like a trader who refused to sell his goods at the market’s peak price, watched them rot in the sun, and now stands in the same market demanding an even higher price, bewildered that the buyers have moved on.
The speculation that his camp is now looking at fringe options is the final, farcical act in this drama. It reveals the depth of the ditch he now finds himself in- from negotiating with a sitting president to potentially begging for space on a platform with negligible national traction. It is the political equivalent of searching for a lifeboat and finding only a punctured rubber ring.
What, then, is the enduring lesson here, beyond the personal tragedy of a fallen leader?
First, know your actual worth, not your imagined worth. Politics is, at its core, a brutal numbers game. It does not care about your title, your history or the volume of cheers at your rallies. It cares about deliverable votes across a wide electoral map. Kwankwaso confused intensity in one location with breadth across the nation. It was a fatal arithmetic error.
Second, understand that leverage is a fleeting commodity. Its value is highest at the moment of transaction, the peak of a crisis, the formation of a government, the balance of a hung parliament. When President Tinubu called, that was the market peak for Kwankwaso’s stock. By refusing to sell, he assumed the value would hold or appreciate. Instead, it instantly began to plummet. Political capital unused is political capital decaying.
Third, and most crucially, pride is not a plan. The stubborn insistence on being the top name, the headline act, is a luxury reserved for those who already command unshakeable, nationwide authority. For everyone else, politics is the art of the possible—the long, often unglamorous game of building alliances, accepting incremental gains, and living to fight another day from a position of greater strength.
Kwankwaso wanted the crown without first securing the kingdom. He sought the glory of the presidency without undertaking the gruelling, state-by-state work required to win it.
Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso now embodies a stark political lesson: a fervent following does not guarantee lasting power. He once held a seat at the table but stepped away, only to find it gone upon his return. Believing his position was unassailable, he overplayed a hand of genuine potential. The political landscape has now shifted, negotiations are occurring elsewhere, and Kwankwaso is left isolated. His once-formidable influence has faded, rendering him a figure who negotiated his way to the margins.
EMAMEH GABRIEL is media practitioner and public affairs analyst. He wrote from Abuja.
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