Sir: November 16, 2022, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, wrote Nigerians a letter. In that letter, the INEC chairman said that there were only a hundred days left for the general elections in 2023.  The part of Yakubu’s letter which struck home was in paragraph three wherein he said that ‘‘our INEC loyalty is to Nigerians who want free, fair, credible and verifiable elections.’’

We are here once again confronted with some of the issues which starred us in the face in 2014 and 2019. In 2014, Nigerians were promised good roads, strong naira, efficient medical care and stiff campaign against corruption. Hardly did any of these happened. And one hundred days before the general elections in 2023, we are still where we were in 2014.

Gombe State looks verily like Nigeria. Formerly, a local government, Gombe was carved out of Bauchi State in 1996. According to Wikipedia, Gombe has 24 State House Assembly members, 11 Local Government Areas and 14 Emirates/chiefdoms. It has three senators and six members at the National Assembly.  Gombe has over two million Nigerians. Some years ago, it had an annual GDP of 42.5 billion, a per capita income of $1.036 and a low human development Index of 34 out of the 36 states of Nigeria. Gombe people are some of the greatest farmers in Nigeria, contributing the melons, carrots, beans and sorghum, meat and allied foodstuffs which find their way down Edo, Delta and Lagos.

Presently, two Gombe sons will go head to head in the coming elections in 2023. One is the incumbent governor, Alhaji Inuwa Yahaya of the All Progressives Congress, APC, while the other is Alhaji Jibrin Muhammadu Barde of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. We advise Gombawa to pay close attention to the duo in order for us to chart the way forward with the political, economic and cultural destiny of Gombe State and Nigeria.

First, Alhaji Inuwa, incumbent governor of Gombe State reportedly trained as an accountant from the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. His rival, Alhaji Muhammad Jibrin Barde is a lawyer and banker, who trained as an Economist from the University of Abuja (1995).

On the face of their antecedents, these two Gombe sons appear perfect for the job of strategically harnessing the potentials of this state and aligning them in accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. Gombe people will need to look beyond the surface to identify which of the two candidates to elect as governor in 2023
Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku is an Abuja-based journalist, who has visited Gombe.