25 Nigerian Governors Who Got Elected Into Office Without Any Manifesto
Following the 2019 Nigerian Governorship election, you can recall that many Governors did not present their public mainfesto.
The 2019 polls have gone, Nigerians have chosen their leaders but while the heat of the campaign was on, several candidates went through the length and breadth of their constituency, promising better governance and specific projects to entice voters.
While some leave their manifesto in the public domain to ensure tracking of projects and transparency of governance, others keep mentioning to the media that they will keep and fulfill their campaign promises without making them available to the public.
Research and analysis show that only 11 governors have their manifesto in the public domain.
The governors include six of 15 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) controlled-states, four of 20 All Progressives Congress (APC)-controlled states, and one All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) controlled state.
The analysis also shows that three of six state governors from the southwest; four of five from southeast, three of six from south-south and only one of seven from Northcentral have a publicly available manifesto.
The prominent governors who don’t have their manifesto in the public domain are as follows:
The Governor of Kogi State who is in his second term in office got elected in November 2019.
He is well-known for making the news with unpopular opinions but neither his first term nor second term manifesto can be found in the public domain.
It is noteworthy that Bello’s first term came by accident as a result of the death of Audu Abubakar who initially contested and triumphed on the platform of the APC. Bello is the only governor born after the civil war.
The author of ‘The Accidental Public Servant’, former minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, and former director of the bureau of public enterprise is also in his second term as governor of Kaduna state.
Other prominent politicians who are in their second term and their manifesto cannot be found in the public domain include; Umar Ganduje of Kano state who became more popular after a video showing him stuffing dollars in his ‘babaringa’; and Rotimi Akeredolu, a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) who is also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and the current governor of Ondo State. Also noted is Nyesom Wike, a former Minister of Education who is presently in his second term as governor of Rivers state.
Others are Mai Bala Buni, Bello Matawalle, and Babagana Zulum, governors in the states — Yobe, Zamfara, and Borno respectively — worst hit by insecurity but they don’t have any publicly available manifesto, not even one to show they plan to fight the root cause of insecurity in the state, yet they got elected during the 2019 polls.
