29 candidates go for Adamawa governorship poll, 284 for Assembly seats

A total of 313 candidates under 29 political parties in Adamawa State will be contesting for Governorship and House of Assembly elections scheduled for Saturday.

Twenty nine candidates have been entered for the governorship election, while 284 will be vying for the 25 seats in the state House of Assembly, according to the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) the state, Kassim Gaidam.

Four of the 29 governorship candidates are women, while 25 among the 284 candidates for the legislative poll are also women.

The foregoing are however mostly figures on paper, as among the lot entered for the governorship race, for example, only four or five are known to Adamawa people to be in serious contention.

They are incumbent Governor Mohammed Jibrilla Bindow of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Hon Umaru Fintiri of main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen Abdulaziz Nyako of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Chief Emmanuel Bello of Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Rev Abel Behora of Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN).

Bindow who was representing Adamawa North District in the Senate when he contested election and won to become the state governor in 2015, will be going into the election with power of incumbency boosted by performance anchored on good roads and regular payment of workers’ salaries, but he will have intraparty opposition from a few powerful individuals to contend with.

Fintiri is a former acting governor whose short reign, 15 July to 1 October, 2014; earned for him a reputation for action and love for workers’ welfare and the popular nickname ATM to go with it, but he is said to have issues with an elite group.

Abdulaziz Nyako is the serving senator for Adamawa North whose father, Murtala Nyako, a former governor of the state, will be a strong deciding factor when Adamawa people go to the polls on Saturday, as Murtala Nyako’s reign (2007-2014) was popular among the people.

Read Also: Adamawa: 10 guber candidates declare support for PDP

Emmanuel Bello of the SDP is a former House of Representatives member who has carried out easily the most comprehensive governorship campaign in the state. He started early and was up to this week still strong on activities that should help his candidacy.

Rev Abel Behora of the ANN has created some form of visibility for himself but he is the least likely to go far among the five who have shown some fighting spirit.

The remaining 24 governorship candidates have not made any known move towards actualizing their supposed dream. Some have given up entirely, with ten earlier in the week announcing that they were stepping down their candidacies to support Umaru Fintiri of the PDP after they failed to sustain a deal with Bindow.