Kano North's Jubrin Barau emerges as the frontrunner to become next senate president

SENATOR Jubrin Barau the lawmaker representing the Kano North Senatorial District and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations has emerged as the frontrunner to become Nigeria's next senate president.

With Asiwaju Bola Tinubu from the southwest elected as president and Senator Kashim Shettima from the northeast elected as vice president, the race for the senate president is open to candidates from all of the other four geo-political zones. Ranking senators from the southwest, south-south, southwest and north central geo-political zones are already positioning themselves for the coveted position, three months before elections are due.

There is talks that the APC may likely favour the zone that gave it its strongest support and cooperation and that will favour the northwest which gave the highest number of votes. This has been the tradition in the past, where the region that gives the ruling party its support is most favoured for such positions.

During President Olusegun Obasanjo's era, it was easy to zone the seat of the senate president to the southeast because the region voted overwhelmingly for the  PDP. During the Umaru Yar’Adua -Goodluck Jonathan administrations, the north central zone was favoured due to the same reasons.

At the moment, the northwest boasts of an array of rankings legislators who are eminently qualified to occupy the seat. Top on the list is Senator Jibrin Barau from Kano State and the odds favour Kano due to its strategic importance as one of the super states in the Nigerian power equation.

Also, the need for the APC government to consider Kano has become more imperative due to the threat of annihilation by the Rabiu Kwankwaso-led New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) which inflicted considerable damage on the APC in the last elections. One of the few people who was able to withstand the NNPP onslaught and return to the senate was Senator Jibrin Barau, a fourth-term legislator who has won his seat three consecutive times.

With that feat, it has become clear that Senator Barau has the capacity not just to check the excesses of the NNPP and return Kano fully to the APC but can provide the needed leadership for the success of the APC-led government. He was in the House of Representatives between 1999 to 2003 where he served as the chairman of the committee on appropriation and came back to the National Assembly in 2015, this time as a senator.

Senator Barau, 64, retained the seat in 2019, defeating the NNPP which claimed the other two senatorial seats in Kano State. In the past, he has served as the chairman of Kano State Investment and Properties, as the Kano State commissioner of science and technology in and as a member of a committee to review Nigeria’s Budgetary process.