Gov. Sule Reveals Choice of Successor Ahead of 2027 Election

Abdullahi Sule, the Governor of Nasarawa State, has said that Senator Aliyu Wadada is his top choice to be the All Progressives Congress’s candidate for governor in the 2027 general elections.

Sule made the announcement at a meeting with political appointees at the Government House in Lafia. This showed that political alliances were already forming as the race for his successor heated up.

Wadada, who is currently a senator for Nasarawa West in the 10th Senate, recently switched from the Social Democratic Party to the APC. Many people think this was a move to get ready for the governorship race.

The governor, on the other hand, has criticized politicians who brag about doing things like paying salaries and building roads as if they were big accomplishments.

At the 59th inaugural lecture of Nasarawa State University on Wednesday, Sule talked about what people expect from leaders and how they should govern.

“A rendered project that doesn’t directly affect the people you lead is not a service.” He said, “If you hear a governor say that one of my accomplishments is paying salaries or providing water, power, or building roads, even if they are flyovers, that governor doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

The governor stressed that these kinds of duties are normal for government and should not be seen as great achievements.

“This is because that was what you were elected to do in the first place.” So, you think it’s an accomplishment just because you’re paying people to work on roads and other projects? “That’s not the kind of leadership people want,” he said.

He told leaders to use new ideas that really make a difference in people’s lives.

“But life is all about doing things that people don’t expect that have an effect on them and what they do.” Sule said, “That’s what service is for.”

Sule talked about how using out-of-the-box solutions helped solve problems that kept coming up in his administration.

He remembered how fires kept breaking out at a market, which caused the government to keep giving money to the traders who were hurt.

“When I lived in America, I was always told that our small market traders had their goods burned and the government would help them.” “We started with ₦2 million and went up to ₦5 million. I think the highest was ₦10 million, which was shared,” he said.

He said that the pattern went on until his government decided to do things differently.

“After nine months or a year, the market would burn again. Then we would go back as the government, find something to give them, and then keep going. This was the way things were for a long time, until we started to think of new ways to do things.

“We decided that we had to build a new market that wouldn’t catch fire again when we woke up.” He said, “Since we rebuilt it, we haven’t heard a single report that the market caught fire again.”

The governor also talked about actions taken in Auta, which is close to Keffi, where flooding had been a problem for a long time.

He said that better internally generated revenue made it possible to build a bridge that has greatly cut down on flooding in the area.

Ike Neliaku, the President of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, also spoke at the event. He praised Sule’s efforts to improve the state, especially the infrastructure projects along major corridors.

Emmanuel Dandaura, the Vice President of the Institute, gave a talk in which he said that poor communication and performance could hurt public trust.

He stressed how important it is for institutions to put accountability and responsiveness first.

He said that to keep their credibility, organizations must always involve stakeholders and make sure that their actions match their words.