Uba Sani’s return as Kaduna governor my major interest – Shehu Sani

Former senator and civil rights activist Shehu Sani says his major political interest in 2027 is to see Governor Uba Sani reelected as Kaduna State governor.

Mr Sani, who recently returned from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to his former political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.

“By political equation in Kaduna State, if I happen to get a ticket to return to the Senate in 2027, I will be glad. But if I am not, certainly I will be at peace that we return Uba as governor.

The governor replaced Mr Sani as the APC senatorial candidate for the 2019 election. The then-sitting governor decamped to the PDP to contest, but he lost to his namesake.

In the interview, Mr Sani said he was glad that former governor Nasir El-Rufai’s tenure is over.

“I am very much glad that Kaduna State has gotten rid of the tormentor that bedevilled the state politically, and that was the reason most of us who left APC to PDP had to return en masse to APC recently,’’ he said.

Mr Sani, who represented Kaduna Central District in the Eighth Senate, described power as `ephemeral’, advising those in positions of authority to always learn how to treat people well.

“If God has blessed you with power, try and impact positively on the masses. But when you get intoxicated with power by abusing it, arresting people, unleashing terror on people, a day will come when you will be out of power,’’ he said.

The former senator said that Kaduna had never been badly governed like it was between 2015 and 2023 under Mr El-Rufai, saying that a lot of things went wrong in the state.

“There was a very sharp division between the Muslin North and Southern Christians in the state, and that fuelled the problems of insecurity, terrorism and other challenges that dragged development down.

“In Birnin Gwari area of Kaduna State, farmers have started returning to their farmers, where they hitherto used to pay millions of naira fine to terrorists before going to farms.

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“Though the state has not achieved all that it is set to achieve, it is far away from where it is coming from.

“Since Uba Sani took over as governor, things have improved significantly, in that we hardly hear of cases of mass adoption of people in Kaduna.

“People are now freely moving from Kaduna to Abuja and we are thankful to Nuhu Ribadu as the National Security Adviser and President Bola Tinubu,” he said.