By: Oladapo Sofowora

Three years ago, Zamfara State was not merely a place on the Nigerian map; it was a global byword for the darkest extremes of human and governance failure. To call the name “Zamfara” in any public gathering, anywhere across the world was to invite a sharp intake of deep breath followed by an unassuming shake of the head. It was formerly a state where school gates had become rusted relics, where hospitals were hollowed-out shells dilapidated and where the only booming economy was the dark, bloody trade of banditry and insurgency.
But when Dr Dauda Lawal placed his hand on the Holy Qur’an on May 29, 2023, he did not inherit a government; he inherited a graveyard of unfulfilled promises. The civil service was a ghost of itself; unstructured and underperforming, groaning under the weight of unpaid salaries and gratuities stretching back over a decade. The state’s treasury had been bled dry, with an astonishing backlog of debt, including a suffocating ₦2.7 billion owed to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO); a debt that had cruelly barred thousands of innocent Zamfara State pupils from sitting for their final exams and progressing to tertiary education.

Insecurity was apocalyptic; rural communities had been abandoned, entire local government areas were under the effective control of non-state actors and the proud agrarian identity of the state ‘Farming is Our Pride’ had been replaced by the grovel of internally displaced persons begging for a handful of grains. This was the hellscape that Lawal walked into for the first few months, even his most optimistic supporters wondered if the former banker had made a catastrophic error in judgment. Instead of complaining and playing the blame game as many of his peers do, he folded his sleeves and went straight into the rescue mission. Rebuilding brick by brick, reforming strategically and effecting holistic change across board, three years later, as the sun rises over the newly constructed terminal of the Gusau International Airport and the sound of children reciting lessons echoes from over five hundred renovated schools, the verdict is undeniable: Dauda Lawal did not come to manage Zamfara; he came to rescue it and he has delivered a performance so startling that it has forced even his fiercest political rivals to stand and applaud him for a job well done. What seemed like an Herculean task was a piece of cake for him because he came with a will and can-do spirit, and his love for his people helped him navigate the tides.

Let us start with the most brutal wound; security. When Lawal campaigned on the promise of a “Rescue Mission,” the cornerstone was his vow to dismantle the ‘banditry economy’ that had turned farming into a death sentence. The previous approach had been a confusing mess of negotiations with criminals, which only emboldened the outlaws. Lawal, bringing the precision of a forensic auditor to the battlefield, did something unprecedented; he treated security like a strategic investment portfolio; he gave teeth to the security apparatus. The Governor dramatically raised the stakes by operationalising and heavily funding the Zamfara Community Protection Guards, known locally as Askarawan Zamfara. These were not vigilantes; they were a disciplined, state-backed auxiliary force recruited from local communities who knew the terrain very well, the caves and the escape routes of the bandits. To support them and the regular military, Lawal’s administration donated over 140 brand-new, high-capacity operational vehicles equipped with modern communication gadgets, ensuring that for the first time, security agents could match the mobility of the criminals. He invested in sophisticated intelligence-gathering technology, creating a situation room in Gusau that monitors real-time movements across the fourteen local government areas. The results have been staggering. Within eighteen months, the bandits lost their strategic freedom of action. Farmers who had not seen their ancestral lands in four years were suddenly escorted back by combined teams of soldiers and guards, clutching subsidized seedlings and bags of fertilizer provided by the government for wet-season and dry-season farming.

The famous rice and maize fields of Maradun and Anka which were once deserted are now green with harvest. The Governor understood a basic truth you cannot eat security, but you cannot farm without it. By breaking the siege on rural Zamfara, Lawal did not just save lives; he resurrected the state’s economy from the root upwards. The wailing of mothers who had lost sons to banditry has not stopped entirely, but it has been largely replaced by the hum of grinding machines and the laughter of children playing in villages that were once classified as “no-go areas.”

But what is a secure community without an educated mindset? The statistics Lawal met upon arrival were enough to make any compassionate leader weep. Thousands of students had been locked out of their futures because the previous administration simply refused to pay examination fees. Young girls, in particular, had been pushed into early marriage because their parents saw no point in sending them to dilapidated, teacher-less schools. Lawal declared a State of Emergency in Education on his second day in office and unlike the hollow declarations of the past, he backed it up with actions and the state’s treasury. The first thunderbolt was the payment of the ₦2.7 billion WAEC and NECO debt, a move that instantly liberated the results of over 45,000 students. That single act of fiscal responsibility changed the trajectory of an entire generation as students’ results were released. But Lawal did not stop at paying debts. He launched a massive, unprecedented infrastructural blitz. In three years, over 500 schools from primary to secondary have been either completely reconstructed, renovated or equipped with modern furniture and learning aids, replacing the broken chairs and mouldy chalkboards with over 9,542 new two-seater desks. He went further, recruiting over 2,000 qualified teachers, ending the absurdity of one teacher managing a class of 120 students. He also tackled the rot in tertiary institutions; the Zamfara State University and the College of Health Sciences and Technology received not just facelifts but functional laboratories, libraries and hostels.
The 2025 budget, a towering ₦79.6 billion allocation to education, is not an expense; it is a declaration that Zamfara will never again be a state of illiterates; rather it will be a state where intellectual giants and sound minds will be moulded.

Parallel to the educational revolution, Lawal launched a surgical strike on the healthcare sector, which had become a death trap for the poor. When he toured the General Hospitals in Gusau and Anka shortly after inauguration, what he saw reportedly upset his stomach. Maternity wards without mattresses, operating theatres without power supply and pharmacies without a single tablet of medication. The Governor’s response was a systematic, ward-by-ward renovation of the state’s health infrastructure. The Yariman Bakura Specialist Hospital in Gusau has been transformed into a gleaming referral centre, equipped with digital X-ray machines, a functional dialysis unit, an MRI Machine deployment and a steady supply of essential medications. General hospitals in Kaura Namoda, Maru and Maradun have been similarly upgraded, ensuring that a sick person no longer has to travel 200 kilometres to Sokoto, Kano, Kaduna and Abuja for a simple surgery. But perhaps the most humane intervention has been the health insurance rollout for the poorest citizens. Lawal’s administration has enrolled over 150,000 vulnerable women and children into the state’s health insurance scheme, meaning that for the first time, a poor mother in a remote village can take her child to a primary health centre and receive treatment without being asked for a dime. This singular act has slashed the maternal mortality rate in the local governments by a significant margin.

Then there is the quiet revolution happening in the civil service, a sector often ignored by politicians but which Lawal understood as the engine room of government. He met a workforce that had lost all hope. Retired professors and permanent secretaries were dying without collecting their gratuities, leaving their families in penury. The backlog of unpaid pensions and death benefits stood at an astronomical ₦13 billion. In a move that sent shockwaves through the state’s bureaucracy, Lawal cleared that entire backlog within his first 15 months in office. He didn’t stop there; he introduced a 13th-month salary bonus for all active workers, a rare gesture that boosted morale and productivity. He also cleared the previously unpaid cooperative deductions that had been stolen from workers’ salaries, an act that made him a hero in the corridors of the secretariat. By treating civil servants with dignity, Lawal ensured that the machinery of government began to move again, processing files, issuing permits and collecting revenue with an efficiency that saw the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) skyrocket from a pitiful ₦80 million per month to over ₦5 billion. This financial discipline allowed him to fund his infrastructure ambitions without begging for federal bailouts. The signature project of this ambition is the ongoing construction of the Gusau International Airport, a massive, visionary project that will open Zamfara to global trade, connect local farmers to export markets and drastically reduce the cost of transportation for businesses. Complementing this airborne gateway, Lawal unveiled 50 modern mass transit buses, equipped with free Wi-Fi and digital fare collectors, slashing the cost of commuting for the average worker and student while modernizing the chaotic transport sector.

As the sun sets on the third year of this remarkable tenure yesterday the 29th of May, the political landscape has shifted seismically. The opposition, which spent the first two years mocking Lawal has run out of insults. The evidence is too overwhelming. The students just received their WAEC results after a three-year delay, retired civil servants who finally received their ₦6 million gratuity after waiting for eight years are not going to vote for a return to the old ways. This is why the recent political development the endorsement of Governor Dauda Lawal as the consensus candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2027 election is not a surprise. What is stunning is the unanimity. In a rare, almost unprecedented show of political maturity, four former governors of Zamfara State Ahmed Yarima, Mahmuda Shinkafi, Abdulaziz Yari and Bello Matawalle gathered in Gusau to throw their weight behind Lawal’s second-term bid. These are men who have not agreed on a single issue in the past twenty years, yet they agree on Dauda Lawal’s re-election. This consensus is a powerful signal to the electorate that the era of destructive political rivalry is over and the era of collective development has begun.

But why should the people of Zamfara re-elect Dauda Lawal for another four years? The answer lies in the unfinished symphony of his rescue mission. He has laid the foundation but the house is not yet completed. He has secured the rural areas but the bandits have not been annihilated; a second term would allow him to consolidate the security gains and finally flush out the remaining bandits from their hideouts. He has built the schools, but the first cohort of his revolutionary education reforms is just now entering their final year; a second term would see them graduate and move into the new technical colleges he plans to build. He has started the airport, but it needs to be completed and operationalized to attract the foreign direct investment that will turn Zamfara from a consumer state to a producer state especially in the agricultural value chain. He has cleared the pension backlog but he needs another term to build a sustainable pension fund that ensures no future retiree ever suffers again. To abort the rescue mission now would be like a surgeon stopping a life-saving operation halfway through because the patient is breathing again. The patient, ‘Zamfara’ is breathing but it is not yet running. Dauda Lawal is a goal-getter not a goal-celebrator. He has shown that he has the vision, the discipline, the grit, the capacity and the courage to stare into the abyss and command it to close. The choice for the people of Zamfara in 2027 is the simplest binary in Nigerian politics; return to the dark, bloody, bankrupt stagnation of the pre-2023 era or move forward with the man who proved that a rescue mission is not a slogan; it is a reality. If the last three years are a sample of what Dauda Lawal can do, then another four years will not just complete the good work; they will turn Zamfara into a beacon a testament to the power of determined leadership.

South-West leaders insecurity criticism grows as public debate intensifies over alleged inaction amid worsening security challenges in the region

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Politics, like sports, produces winners and losers. Every competition cannot end with everyone carrying home a trophy, and every election cannot produce multiple winners for a single office. At the conclusion of every democratic contest, there will be celebrations in some camps and disappointment in others. What ultimately distinguishes a mature democracy is not the absence of defeat, controversy or disagreement, but the capacity of participants to display sportsmanship, accept outcomes with dignity, pursue legitimate grievances through lawful channels and place the collective interest of democracy above personal ambitions.

The recently concluded primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have once again demonstrated both the beauty and complexity of democratic politics. Across Nigeria’s 8,809 wards, millions of party members participated in one of the most expensive and extensive internal democratic exercises ever undertaken by a political party on the African continent. The party conducted primaries for 993 State House of Assembly constituencies, 360 House of Representatives constituencies, 109 Senate seats, governorship positions in states due for elections and the presidential ticket of the party. In practical terms, more than 1,462 legislative positions alone were subjected to democratic contests, in addition to governorship and presidential elections.

The magnitude of the exercise was extraordinary. Thousands of aspirants campaigned simultaneously across the federation. Millions of party members participated in selecting candidates. Thousands of election officials, observers, journalists, consultants, agents, volunteers and security personnel were mobilized. Ward structures came alive from the creeks of the Niger Delta to the savannah of the North, from the commercial centres of Lagos and Kano to remote communities scattered across the federation. Results were collated, disputes addressed and appeal mechanisms activated.

Yet, despite the sheer scale of the exercise, Nigeria remained peaceful.
Markets remained open. Businesses continued trading. Schools remained in session. Commercial flights took off and landed as scheduled. Public institutions functioned normally. Citizens carried on with their daily activities. The nation did not descend into widespread unrest despite the enormous political activity generated by the primaries.

That achievement deserves recognition and commendation.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the APC primaries was the adoption of the direct primary system, a process many observers have compared to the participatory spirit of the famous Option A4 model introduced during the political transition programme of former military President Ibrahim Babangida. Through this mechanism, political power moved beyond governors, ministers, senators and political elites and was placed directly in the hands of ordinary party members at the grassroots.

For perhaps the first time on such a nationwide scale, APC members in villages, towns, cities and communities across Nigeria were given the opportunity to directly determine who would represent the party in future elections.
The message was unmistakable.
The party belongs to its members.
Not to governors.
Not to ministers.
Not to senators.
Not to political godfathers.
Not even to the President.
But to the ordinary men and women who constitute the foundation of the party.
That is the essence of democratic participation.

Direct primaries are expensive. There is no denying that reality. Conducting elections across 8,809 wards simultaneously requires enormous financial resources, manpower, logistics and administrative coordination. Results recording materials must be distributed. Officials deployed. Security arrangements made. Results collected and verified.
Yet democracy is rarely cheap.
Participation has a cost.
Inclusion has a cost.
Legitimacy has a cost.

The reward, however, is that power becomes decentralized and decision-making is transferred from a handful of influential actors to ordinary party members.
The direct primary system compels aspirants to return to the grassroots. It forces politicians to reconnect with ordinary members. It rewards political relationships built over years rather than influence exercised from air-conditioned offices.

Indeed, one of the major lessons from the APC primaries is that money alone cannot guarantee victory in a direct primary election.
Financial resources may facilitate campaigns. They may improve logistics. They may enhance visibility. But they cannot easily substitute for popularity, grassroots structures, credibility and sustained engagement with party members.

Several prominent political figures discovered this reality too late.
Some highly placed office holders failed to secure nominations despite their visibility and influence. Some former ministers who left executive positions in pursuit of elective offices discovered that occupying public office does not automatically translate into grassroots popularity. Some lawmakers who had become accustomed to political comfort zones found themselves confronted by party members eager to exercise independent judgment.
In several constituencies and districts, party members selected candidates they considered more suitable, available and accessible to represent their interests.
That is democracy at work.
The result may be painful for some aspirants, but democracy was never designed to guarantee victory and painless.
It was designed to guarantee opportunity.
It was designed to guarantee participation.
It was designed to guarantee free choice.

The beauty of direct primaries lies in their capacity to reflect the authentic mood of the grassroots. Political history repeatedly demonstrates that it is difficult to suppress a genuinely popular candidate when ordinary voters are given direct access to the ballot.

Nigeria’s democratic experience provides perhaps the most famous example. During the historic 1993 Nigerian presidential election, widely regarded as one of the freest elections in the nation’s history, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola secured victories across regional, ethnic and religious boundaries, including areas many analysts considered politically improbable against Bashir Tofa. The election demonstrated a timeless democratic truth: when citizens are genuinely allowed to express their preferences freely, popular candidates can transcend conventional political calculations.
That lesson remains relevant today.

It is difficult to defeat a candidate who genuinely enjoys overwhelming grassroots support when party members are given direct participation. The larger the electorate, the more difficult it becomes for narrow interests to impose outcomes contrary to popular sentiment.

The presidential primary itself was historic. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerged as the APC presidential candidate after securing an overwhelming majority of 10.9 Million votes cast by party members nationwide.

While a party primary should never be confused with a general election, the turnout demonstrated significant organizational strength and grassroots mobilization within the party.
Many political observers have interpreted the participation figures as a vote of confidence in President Tinubu’s leadership of both the party and the government.
Equally significant was the fact that the President himself faced a challenger.
The APC did not prevent the challenger from contesting.
It did not treat the aspiration as an act of rebellion.
It did not deny him access to the democratic process.
Instead, it allowed him to exercise his democratic right to test his popularity before party members nationwide.

That is democracy.
That is inclusion.
That is confidence in democratic institutions.
Following his victory, President Tinubu emphasized unity, democratic participation and inclusiveness. In acknowledging his challenger, he reinforced the principle that democratic competition should not create permanent enemies but strengthen democratic culture.
Every political giant was once unknown.
Every governor was once an aspirant.
Every senator once sought support.
Every president once requested votes.
Democracy creates opportunities where privilege alone cannot guarantee success.

The APC National Chairman also consistently emphasized party unity, reconciliation and internal democracy throughout the process. His repeated message was that while contests may produce winners and losers, the larger family of the party must remain united after the competition.
That message remains important.
Political contests are temporary.
Political institutions endure.

One notable development that generated political discussion was the decision of Siminalayi Fubara not to seek a second-term APC ticket. According to public statements from APC leaders, he successfully passed the party’s screening process. However, for reasons known principally to himself and those within his political circle, he ultimately did not proceed with the contest. As an old African proverb reminds us, a man does not inquire too deeply into the circumstances surrounding his father’s death until he possesses the strength and wisdom to confront the answers. Politics often contains dimensions visible only to those directly involved.

Beyond politics, the APC primaries generated substantial economic activity throughout Nigeria.
Campaign offices were rented and furnished. Hotels recorded increased occupancy. Vehicles were hired. Airlines transported campaign teams. Restaurants and caterers supplied food for meetings, consultations and rallies. Event centres hosted stakeholder engagements and political gatherings.
The advertising and communications sector experienced one of its busiest periods in recent years.
Political public relations professionals, media strategists, consultants, advertising agencies, printers, graphic designers and branding companies secured contracts worth millions of naira.
Campaign posters, banners, billboards, flyers and promotional materials decorated communities nationwide. Television stations benefited from paid interviews and sponsored political programmes. Radio stations hosted campaign discussions and special broadcasts. Newspapers carried advertisements and feature articles. Online media platforms generated substantial revenue through campaign-related content and digital advertising.
Social media became a major arena of political engagement. Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube and WhatsApp were transformed into platforms for persuasion, mobilization and voter outreach. Content creators, digital consultants and social media managers found themselves in high demand.
Experiential campaigns flourished.
Town hall meetings.
Stakeholder consultations.
Youth engagements.
Women mobilization programmes.
Community interactions.
Ward meetings.
Political rallies.
All these activities created opportunities for event managers, decorators, photographers, videographers, sound engineers, logistics providers and countless service professionals.
Campaign merchandise flooded communities nationwide. Thousands of T-shirts, face caps, umbrellas, notebooks, calendars, shopping bags and promotional souvenirs were produced by local manufacturers. Textile suppliers benefited. Tailors secured contracts. Embroidery companies expanded production. Transportation providers moved supporters and campaign teams across communities.
From roadside printers in local government headquarters to major advertising agencies in Lagos and Abuja, countless businesses benefited from the circulation of campaign resources.

The APC primaries therefore became not merely a political exercise but also a significant contributor to economic activity and temporary employment generation.

Another issue that generated debate concerns aspirants facing investigations or court proceedings.
Here, constitutional principles must remain paramount.
An allegation is not a conviction.
An investigation is not a conviction.
A trial is not a conviction.
Under the rule of law, every citizen remains innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction.
Political parties are not courts of law.
They are not judicial tribunals.
They are not moral temples established to determine guilt or innocence.
Their constitutional responsibility is to facilitate political participation within the framework of the law.
Where the Constitution, electoral laws or final judicial pronouncements disqualify an individual, such provisions must naturally be respected. However, where no legal disqualification exists, the determination of guilt remains exclusively the responsibility of the courts.
To replace due process with suspicion would undermine the foundations of constitutional democracy.

As Nelson Mandela once observed, a critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of democracy.
Criticism therefore has an important place in democratic society.
Complaints should be investigated.
Questions should be asked.
Transparency should be encouraged.
However, criticism must also be fair.
Achievements deserve recognition just as shortcomings deserve scrutiny.

At this point, one is reminded of the biblical admonition:
“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Before condemning an exercise involving millions of participants and thousands of contestants, critics should identify a democracy anywhere in the world that consistently conducts elections without disputes, petitions, appeals, disagreements or litigation.
Such perfection does not exist. Or it can be found in the graveyard only.

As Winston Churchill famously observed:
“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”

Similarly, Barack Obama noted:
“The hallmark of a functioning democracy is not whether everybody agrees, but whether people can disagree peacefully.”

And Abraham Lincoln provided perhaps democracy’s most enduring definition:
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Even William Shakespeare understood the complexities of leadership and public judgment when he wrote:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Democratic societies succeed not because they are perfect but because they continually strive for improvement.

The APC primaries have also demonstrated a growing maturity within Nigeria’s democratic culture. Despite the enormous number of participants and contestants, democratic institutions continued to function. The republic endured. The political system absorbed disagreements without descending into widespread instability.
That is progress.
That is democratic consolidation.

At this stage, the wisdom of legendary Juju maestro Chief Ebenezer Obey becomes particularly relevant. In one of his memorable narratives, he tells the story of a father and son travelling with a donkey. When the father rode the donkey while the son walked, onlookers condemned him as heartless. When the father dismounted and allowed the son to ride while he walked, the same public condemned the son as disrespectful and the father as foolish. The lesson was profound: no matter what decision is taken, there will always be critics. Human beings are often difficult to satisfy completely.

Politics follows the same pattern.
No election will satisfy everyone.
No primary will please every aspirant.
No democratic process will escape criticism.
Leaders must therefore focus on fairness, participation, transparency and accountability, leaving posterity to render the final judgment.
However, every success story carries lessons and warnings.

The APC must not mistake success in internal primaries for guaranteed victory in the 2027 general elections.
A training session is not the same as a championship match against another formidable opponent.
Political strategists understand that internal party contests and national elections operate under entirely different dynamics. What succeeds within party structures may not automatically translate into victory against determined opposition parties in a general election.

The party must therefore avoid complacency.
It should pay close attention to voter sentiment in the South-West and other strategic regions. Political strongholds should never be taken for granted.
Loyalty grows when citizens feel respected, heard and rewarded through good governance.

The APC must also move swiftly to reconcile aggrieved aspirants and their supporters.
Politics is a game of addition, not subtraction.
Every disappointed aspirant represents supporters, associates, financiers and political structures.
Ignoring grievances can create opportunities for opponents.
That is why reconciliation is not merely desirable.
It is essential.
The leadership of the party at national, state and local levels should embark upon deliberate consultations, peace initiatives and confidence-building measures. Political bridges should be repaired before they become political fault lines.

A farmer who neglects his crops should not be surprised when another farmer harvests them.
Political parties must continually cultivate, encourage and retain their members.

Most importantly, governments at all levels must remain focused on governance.
Citizens want more security.
Citizens want more jobs.
Citizens want more stable prices.
Citizens want more quality healthcare.
Citizens want more better schools.
Citizens want more better roads and affordable mass transportation system.
Citizens want more electricity.
Citizens want more housing.
Citizens want more economic opportunities.
Citizens want more macroeconomic stability translated into better microeconomic prosperity for families, workers, traders, artisans, farmers and small businesses.

Politics is not an end in itself.
It is a means to improving the lives of the people.
In the final analysis, the APC primaries have demonstrated government of the people , by the people , for the people and that internal democracy is alive and evolving within Nigeria’s political system. They have empowered ordinary party members. They have strengthened grassroots participation. They have generated economic activity. They have reinforced democratic competition. They have highlighted the importance of sportsmanship .

Finally .
There were winners.
There were losers.
There were celebrations.
There were disappointments.

Yet above all else, one truth stands unmistakably clear.
Democracy was the ultimate winner.
Political victories are temporary.
Political defeats are temporary.

But democratic institutions endure when citizens and leaders alike respect the rules of the game.

The APC primaries have provided another opportunity for Nigeria to deepen democratic culture, strengthen internal party democracy and reinforce the timeless principle that political legitimacy ultimately flows from the people.

And in the final judgment of history—not emotion, bitterness or temporary political passions—the enduring verdict may well be that while individuals won and lost, democracy itself emerged victorious.

By Prince Adeyemi Shonibare
Public Affairs Analyst and Media Consultant.