2023 Election: Major Contenders Seeking To Take Over From El-Rufai In Kaduna State

The 2023 governorship election in Kaduna State has been fixed to hold on Saturday, March 11 alongside other states in the country.

The various candidates and their parties would be looking to win the election and take over from Governor Nasir El-Rufai whose tenure expires on May 29.

With El-Rufai not seeking a return to office as he has fulfilled the constitutionally allowed maximum of two terms, the coast is clear for all the candidates to have a shot at the Kaduna Governorship seat as none of them can claim the power of incumbency.

On the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) list of governorship candidates for Kaduna State, 18 political parties were listed, but one of them, the Boot Party (BP) does not have a candidate.

According to the figures INEC released recently, Kaduna state has about 4.3 million registered voters. It is a strategic state because it is considered the political capital of the North and was once the capital of the Northern region before it was split into 19 states.

Since it was created in 1967, Kaduna has had 20 governors, nine of them democratically elected while the others were military officers. Since 1999, Kaduna has been ruled by five elected governors.

Below however are those seen as major contenders for the March 11 governorship contest and their political parties.

1. Jonathan Asake (Labour Party)

Asake, the Labour Party candidate was one of the pioneering federal lawmakers at the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999.

Until he joined the governorship race, he was the President of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU). He is popular in Southern Kaduna, though the area had been a stronghold of the PDP since 1999.

2. Senator Uba Sani (All Progressives Congress)

Sani is a serving senator, representing Kaduna Central Senatorial Zone, and he is the anointed candidate of the outgoing governor, Nasir El-Rufai.

He retained El-Rufai’s Muslim-Muslim ticket introduced in 2019 by selecting the current deputy governor of the state, Dr. Hadiza Sabuwa, as his running mate.

Before his election as Senator in 2019, Sani had served as political adviser to El-Rufai in 2015.

3. Isa Ashiru (Peoples Democratic Party)

Ashiru is a two-term former member of the state house of assembly and later two-term member of the House of Representatives and he is contesting for the governorship race in Kaduna for the third time.

He was the PDP candidate in 2019, but he lost to El-Rufai.

4. Suleiman Hunkuyi (New Nigeria Peoples Party)

Hunkuyi is a former senator who represented Kaduna North Senatorial district on the platform of the APC in 2015, and is widely seen in the state as a grassroots mobilizer.

He was a major part of El-Rufai’s campaign team in 2015 but they later fell apart.