PRP’s Kingsley warns against campaign insults, hints at ‘dark horse’ entry

A People’s Redemption Party (PRP) presidential aspirant, Yakubu Kingsley, currently challenging his party’s primary defeat in court, has urged 2027 candidates to campaign on issues, not “personal attacks” or “character assassination”, as INEC lifted its campaign ban.

Kingsley, who lost PRP’s May 25 primary to Donald Duke and awaits a Federal High Court ruling on November 2, said crime and insecurity should never be blamed on entire ethnic or religious groups, insisting that “criminality has no ethnicity.”

In a statement on Sunday, the politician called for campaigns built on “issues… peace and mutual respect” rather than “personal attacks, character assassination” of rivals.

But beneath the standard call for civility was a sharper message aimed at Nigeria’s security crisis.

Kingsley argued that banditry, kidnapping and terrorism should never be pinned on entire communities or faiths, insisting that “crime has no religion” and “criminality has no ethnicity”, which is a pointed rebuttal to the ethnic and religious framing that often attaches to insecurity narratives in Nigeria’s North.

He also pitched AI-driven governance to fix what he called outdated public systems, and tied his YMK Nigeria Project to PRP’s grassroots ideals.

Most notably, Kingsley floated the possibility of a late “Dark Horse” entrant into the 2027 race without naming himself, a signal that comes just months before his own court verdict on the PRP ticket.

He paired that with a pitch for “technology-driven governance” — AI, automation and data systems — as the antidote to what he called outdated public administration, and positioned his YMK Nigeria Project as philosophically aligned with PRP’s working-class roots.

The most striking line, however, came near the close of the statement: as the court weighs whether to overturn PRP’s primary result, Kingsley floated the possibility of an unexpected late entrant into the 2027 race — a “Dark Horse” — invoking divine providence over “established assumptions or human calculations.”