Alhaji Sani Shinkafi: Why Zamfara People Must Turn a New Page in 2019

Alhaji Sani Shinkafi, APGA guber candidate in Zamfara State

|By Andrew Umenweke Jnr


As the 2019 general elections draws closer, political activities are currently at its peak in every nooks and crannies of the nation. While the election will be taking place simultaneously in every states of the federation, there are some states that political watchers have predicted would be of special concern due largely, to recent political developments in those states.

One of such States is Zamfara, where fallout of a crisis-ridden primary election has placed the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in a political limbo; with no governorship candidate to represent it in next year's election.

Any close observer of Zamfara politics since the return to democracy in Nigeria 1999 will agree with the fact that politics of the state is unique in many respects. For one, until the merging of some political parties to form the (now ruling) APC in 2014, the defunct All Nigerian Peoples Party, ANPP held sway in the state and only become part of the ruling party at the federal level following APC's victory in 2015. The ANPP was part of the 2014 merger.

With just two months to the 2019 general election and the future of the ruling APC in state still hanging in the balance; people of Zamfara state must have come to sudden discovery that their supposed political elites who have been running the affairs of the state over the years cares very little or not at all about their collective aspirations.

Still, the supposed leading opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, have never had a better a day in the state. It is on record that the party has never won any governorship election in the state since 1999 and their tide is far from changing in 2019. Whatever the reason for that, one undeniable fact is that Zamfara people are better for it.

The seeming rejection of the PDP in Zamfara dates back to history and for a reason best known to the people of the state who have never supported the party to preside over the affairs of the state for once. Even in 2011, when (then) governor, Alhaji Mahmud Shinkafi, who was originally elected on the platform of the ANPP in 2007 decamped to the PDP, on whose platform he sought re-election in 2011, he was massively rejected by the electorate as he lost the election to the then ANPP candidate, Alhaji Abdulazeez Yari, whose second term of office as governor of Zamfara state will terminate in May 2019.

So, with the APC in disarray; and the PDP hunted by their chronic failures in Zamfara and fruitless reign at the federal level for 16 years, the only promising alternative therefore, is the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Alhaji Sani Shinkafi, whose sterling performance and achievements in both public and private life set him apart as the man in whose hands God has placed the key to Zamfara state's future.

Alhaji Sani Shinkafi need no introduction anywhere in Nigeria. As the National Secretary of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA and the party's guber candidate in Zamfara state in 2015, he has travelled every nooks and crannies of the state, has a clear understanding of the peoples needs and has taken time to study their problems and come up with an empirical and practical solutions as contained in his celebrated master plan to bring the state back to the part of glory from May next year if elected.

While this is not an attempt to portray Alhaji Sani Shinkafi as the best candidate for Zamfara in the next year's guber poll, it is the considered view of many political observers and people in Zamfara state that this election presents before Zamfara people, a golden opportunity to take a bold step towards liberating themselves from political merchants and selfish, self serving political elites and turn a new page by electing Alhaji Sani Shinkafi as their governor on March 13, 2019.

The future, no doubt, holds a lot of positive promises to Zamfara people if and only they will turn out en mass to choose the man in whose hands God has placed their much cherished and expected future for prosperous and peaceful Zamfara state.


Andrew Umenweke Jnr, a political analyst and CNR Nigeria contributor writes from Gusau, Zamfara State.


All views and opinion expressed in this article are solely and strictly those of the writer and does not in any way represent the standpoint of CNR Nigeria