Deji Elumoye

ith the conduct of the presidential and national assembly elections across the country yesterday, the last round of elections for the governorship and state Houses of Assemblies will hold on March 2. Already, INEC had a few weeks back displayed the list of candidates of the various parties vying for both the governorship and the state legislative seats.

The list however includes 15 members of the National Assembly, who won their parties’ tickets last year to run as gubernatorial candidates in their respective states. In the Senate, eight members of the upper chamber of the National Assembly including ranking and first time Senators are itching to be governors during the March 2 election, while the seven others were from the House.

Usman Nafada He represents Gombe North Senatorial District and is running for Gombe governorship seat under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), having defeated 12 other aspirants during the party’s primaries last October. The Senator enjoys the support of the outgoing state governor, Ibrahim Dankwambo and this went a long way to enhance his success at the party’s primaries.

Nafada, before his election to the Senate was deputy speaker of the House of Representatives between 2007 and 2011. Although a popular candidate at home, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is giving Nafada’s PDP a run for its money in the election.

John Enoh

A first time Senator representing Cross River Central Senatorial District, Senator John Enoh won election into the Senate on the platform of the PDP in 2015 but defected in May, 2017 to the APC. He has 20 years of experience as a lawmaker, both at the state and federal levels, having served as a member of Cross River state House of Assembly from 1999 to 2003 and later, a member of the House of Representatives from 2003 to 2015.

Enoh is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance and a member of the Constitution Review Committee headed by the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu. His gubernatorial ambition was recently threatened with the judgment of a federal high court sitting in Calabar, which declared that Enoh was not the authentic APC governorship candidate for Cross River State. He, however, insisted that the ruling did not invalidate his candidature.

Sunny Ogbuoji The Ebonyi South Senator, who defected from PDP to APC in 2017, is Vice Chairman of the Senate Committees on Appropriation and Special Duties. He co-sponsored many bills including same sex marriage bill but solely sponsored the Nigeria Agriculture Quarantine (Establishment) bill 2015, which was assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018.

Ogbuoji, in the last few years, also ensured the employment of 123 Ebonyi indigenes including 106 senior staff and 17 junior workers into the federal civil service.

Abdulaziz Nyako Son of a former governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako, junior Nyako represents Adamawa