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 was a sign of early political alignments as the race for his successor heats up.
Wadada, who is currently a senator for Nasarawa West, recently switched from the Social Democratic Party to the APC. Many people think this was a way for him to get ready for the race for governor.
The governor, on the other hand, has said that politicians who brag about doing things like paying salaries and building roads are not doing their jobs well.
Sule gave a speech on Wednesday at the 59th inaugural lecture of Nasarawa State University. He talked about what people expect from leaders and governments.
“A rendered project that doesn’t directly affect the people you’re leading is not a service.” He said, “If you ever 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 is talking about.”
The governor said that these kinds of duties are basic duties of government and should not be seen as great achievements.
“This is because that’s what you were chosen to do in the first place. You think it’s an accomplishment just because you’re paying people, building roads, and doing other things? He went on to say, “That is not the kind of leadership people want.”
He told leaders to come up with new ways to make a real difference in the lives of citizens.
“But life is all about doing things that people don’t expect and that have an effect on them and what they do.” Sule said, “That’s what service is for.”
Sule gave examples from his time in office to show how using unusual solutions helped solve problems that kept coming up.
He remembered how fires kept breaking out at a market, which caused the government to keep giving money to the traders who were affected.
“When I lived in America, I was always told that our small market traders would get their goods burned and the government would come to help them. “We started with ₦2 million and went up to ₦5 million. Before I got there, I think the most was ₦10 million, which was shared,” he said.
He said that the pattern kept going until his administration chose to do things differently.
“The market would get burned again after nine months or a year.” Then, as the government, we would go back, find something to give them, and then move on. This was actually going on for a long time, until we started to think outside the box.
“We decided that we need to build a modern market so that we don’t wake up and find it burned down again.” “We haven’t heard a single report that the market got burned again since we rebuilt it,” he said.
The governor also talked about what had been done in Auta, near Keffi, where flooding had been a problem for a long time.
He said that better revenue from within the area made it possible to build a bridge, which has made flooding in the area much less of a problem.
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 highways.
Emmanuel Dandaura, the Vice President of the institute, gave a lecture in which he warned that poor communication and performance could damage public trust.
He stressed that institutions should put accountability and responsiveness first.
He said that to keep their credibility, organizations must always talk to stakeholders and make sure that what they say and do are the same.
