By Shuaibu Shuaibu
Following his endorsement by Governor Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe, Jamilu Isyaku Gwamna was adopted and ratified as the consensus governorship candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress during the party’s primary last month.
Gwamna will have overcome the challenge from Bala Tinka of the African Democratic Congress and Isa Pantami of the People’s Democratic Party. Both Tinka and Pantami only recently joined the ADC and PDP after losing the APC ticket.
While announcing Gwamna as the consensus candidate, Governor Yahaya described him as a seasoned politician and an accomplished technocrat with deep grassroots appeal.
Gwamna, he said, has the capacity, credibility and reach to secure victory for our party.
Expressing gratitude and honour for the trust, Gwamna committed himself to sustaining the development strides of the present Gombe government and taking the state to new heights.
The ruling party’s endorsement and ticket mark a significant break from the past. Gwamna first ran for governor in 2007 under the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party.
During the 2007 campaign, Gwamna visited the headquarters of LEADERSHIP Group, where he expounded on his early aspirations and vision for the state.
20 years is a long time to wait. But the ticket of the ruling party, which he has never had, takes him one step closer to finally living up to his name, which is a Hausa mutation of the word governor.
In 2011, he watched as his cousin, Ibrahim Dankwambo, retired from the federal civil service and snatched the ticket of the then-ruling PDP to become governor.
Eight years later, there was no way one brother could hand the governorship seat to another. And in 2022, after losing the PDP ticket, Gwamna dumped the party to support the second-term aspiration of Governor Yahaya of the APC.
Gwamna, in 2022, even denounced the PDP, saying it was not ready for power. He said, “For me, this is a personal decision, and since I am not ready to retire from active politics, I needed to find an option, and the option is to go back to the APC.”
He still claimed at the time that his willingness to abandon the PDP and instead support Inuwa wasn’t about him but about the state and his conviction that Inuwa was doing well and would do more for Gombe.
That confidence appeared to have paid off as Governor Inuwa has decided to reciprocate the gesture.
