09/05/2023
Who Is Senator-elect Abdul'aziz Abubakar Yari?
His Excellency Abdul'aziz Abubakar Yari was born on January 28, 1968. He attended Talata Mafara Township Primary School, and thereafter proceeded to Government Teacher's College in Bakura in present-day Zamfara State from 1979 to 1984. He completed his tertiary education at Sokoto Polytechnic from 1991 to 1994 where he obtained a Certificate and later a Diploma in Secretarial Studies in 2004. He also attended Kebbi Polytechnic for a Graduate Diploma in Public Administration in 2008.
Yari began his political career in 1999 when he served as the Secretary of the then All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP) between 1999 and 2003. He was elected Chairman of ANPP Zamfara State in 2003 and later rose to the position of ANPP National Financial Secretary and served in this position till 2007 when he was elected as Member representing Anka/Talata Mafara Federal Constituency from 2007 to 2011.
In-between, when then Zamfara State Governor, Mahmud Shinkafi, defected to the ruling PDP in January 2009, taking the ANPP state executive committee members with him, the ANPP National Headquarters in Abuja was forced to create a Caretaker Committee headed by Yari. The committee's tenure was repeatedly extended given Yari's performance and leadership acumen.
On April 26, 2011, Abdul-aziz Yari was elected Governor of Zamfara State on the platform of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). He defeacted the incumbent Governor Shinkafi of the PDP.
ANPP was one of the legacy parties which merged to form the mega All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2003.
Again in the 2015 gubernatorial election, he was re-elected as Governor under the platform of the APC.
On May 18, 2015, Hon. Yari's colleagues in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) unanimously elected him as their Chairman, succeeding Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.
As his term of office as governor of Zamfara State drew to a close in 2019, Yari ran for the Zamfara West senatorial election and won with a very wide margin on the platform of the ruling APC. But his election and other APC candidates in the 2019 general election in Zamfara State were nullified by the Supreme Court on the ground that they were not validly nominated through party primaries. The court ordered INEC to withdraw their Certificates of Return and issue same to the candidates who came second or runners-up in the said elections. The PDP became the undue beneficiaries of the intra-APC squabbles in Zamfara State at the time.
Being a loyal party man and a progressive to the core, Yari remains committed to the ideals of the APC in the face of the travails of the party occasioned by the Supreme Court verdict on the 2019 elections in the State on one hand and provocations by new entrants into the party on the other hand. He re-contested the Zamfara West senatorial seat again four years after and won convincingly in the 2023 elections, hence he is throwing his hat into the ring for the Senate Presidency in the 10th National Assembly.
Without gainsaying the fact, Yari has paid his dues having led the APC to victory in the 2023 presidential election in Zamfara State against all odds. The then APC presidential candidate now President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, won election only in Zamfara and Jigawa States out of the seven States of the North-West geo-political zone of Nigeria.
With a cognate legislative experience as a former member of the House of Representatives coupled with his knowledge of political party administration and leadership, eight years of leading Zamfara State as governor and being number one governor as chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum for four years, Yari is the best and most qualified candidate for the office of Senate President in the incoming 10th National Assembly.
