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 during a meeting with political appointees at the Government House in Lafia. This was the first sign of political alignments as the race for his successor heats up.
Wadada, who is currently a senator from Nasarawa West, recently switched from the Social Democratic Party to the APC. Many people see this as a way for him to get ready for the governorship race.
At the same time, the governor has said that politicians who make routine tasks like paying salaries and building roads seem like big accomplishments are wrong.
On Wednesday, Sule spoke at the 59th inaugural lecture of Nasarawa State University. He talked about what people expect from leaders and how to run a government.
“A project that you do that doesn’t directly affect the people you lead 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 normal for government and should not be seen as great achievements.
“This is because that’s what you were elected to do in the first place.” So, you think it’s an accomplishment just because you’re paying salaries and building roads and other things? He went on to say, “That’s not the kind of leadership people want.”
He told leaders to come up with new ways to make a real difference in people’s lives.
“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 used examples from his time in office to show how using unusual solutions helped solve problems that kept coming up.
He remembered how fires at a market kept happening, which caused the government to keep giving money to the traders who were affected.
“When I lived in America, every time I came home, I was told that our small business owners in the market always had their goods burned and the government would help them. “We started at ₦2 million and went up to ₦5 million. Before I got there, I think the highest was ₦10 million, which was shared,” he said.
He said that this pattern went on until his government decided to do things differently.
“After nine months or a year, the market would get burned again. Then, as the government, we would go back, find something to give them, and keep going. This is what was happening for a long time, until we started to think outside the box.
“We decided that we need to build a new market so that we don’t wake up to find it burned down again.” “We haven’t heard a single report that the market burned down again since we rebuilt it,” he said.
The governor also talked about actions taken in Auta, near Keffi, where flooding had been a problem before.
He said that better revenue from within the area made it possible to build a bridge that has greatly cut down on flooding in the area.
Ike Neliaku, President of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, also spoke at the event and praised Sule’s efforts to improve the state, especially the infrastructure projects along major highways.
Emmanuel Dandaura, the Vice President of the institute, said in his lecture that if communication and performance don’t match up, people may lose faith in the public.
He stressed how important it is for organizations to put accountability and responsiveness first.
He said that to stay credible, organizations must always involve stakeholders and make sure that their actions match their messages.
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