Governor of Kwara State, 2019–2027
Sardauna of Ilorin Emirate · Governor of Kwara State
Chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum
President, Forum of Regions of Africa (FORAF)
He wears authority lightly, lives without ostentation.
Mall. AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq
Sardauna of Ilorin Emirate
forSenate
Kwara Central Senatorial District
ÌWÁJÚ LA ŃLỌ · Forward Ever
See the record →Who he is
AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq was born on 5 February 1960 into one of Ilorin’s best-known families, the third child of two pioneers. His father, AGF AbdulRazaq, was the first lawyer to come out of northern Nigeria. His mother, Alhaja Raliat AbdulRazaq, a philanthropist, was the first woman to sit as a councillor in Ilorin.
His father went on to serve as an ambassador, a federal minister, president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange and chairman of the Body of Benchers; Zaria made him Tafidan Zazzau, and Ilorin made him its first Mutawalli. The son grew up between Kaduna and Ilorin, in a house where public service was simply what people did. He was a Boy Scout at Capital School, Kaduna, sat his school certificate at Government College, Kaduna, in 1976, and at thirteen played football for Kwara at the National Sports Festival in Lagos.
He made his own name in business first. At 29 he founded NOPA Oil Services, the first Nigerian-owned company to trade the country’s crude and refined products on the markets of Europe, America and Asia, and later built First Fuels. For two decades he was a businessman who happened to be interested in politics, rather than the other way round. Olufolake AbdulRazaq, who met him forty years ago and is today an ambassador and a professor, remembers him then as a successful petroleum economist and “a man of quiet conviction”. They have three sons. His father died in July 2020, at 93, in the second year of his son’s governorship; his elder brother, Dr Alimi AbdulRazaq, now holds their father’s title of Mutawalli of Ilorin.
He ran for Governor of Kwara State in 2003 and lost. He ran again in 2007 and lost. He ran in 2011 and lost a third time. Most people would have stopped. He did not, and in 2019 the state that had turned him down three times gave him the office, on a wave of feeling that Kwarans summed up in two words: O to ge. Enough is enough.
His victory on 9 March 2019 ended decades in which one political family had decided who governed Kwara, and he was sworn in on 29 May that year. He came in light: a rule against private jets in his first hundred days, an entourage of two or three aides, and, in his second year, a law ending the pensions Kwara paid its former governors. On 18 March 2023 the people renewed his mandate.
Four things changed first.
9 of 16commissioners in his first cabinet were women
The highest share in any Nigerian cabinet. In December 2021 he made the principle law: at least 35 per cent of political appointments in Kwara go to either gender. In 2024 UN Women named him a global HeForShe Champion.
870public primary schools in KwaraLEARN
Begun in May 2022 in four Local Government Areas: tablets, trained teachers and a new curriculum, and by the state’s count the share of children not learning fell from 73 to 56 per cent in two years. A University of Education followed, and new KWASU campuses at Osi and Ilesha Baruba.
3general hospitals made teaching hospitals
Ilorin General became the teaching hospital for KWASU’s new medical school. Omu-Aran’s now trains doctors for Thomas Adewumi University, and Sobi’s was upgraded and handed to Al-Hikmah University.
1 of 3states that can pay salaries without federal allocation, by the state’s account
Years of unpaid salaries, promotions and gratuities were cleared. Owo Arugbo now puts a regular payment into the hands of ten thousand of the state’s oldest and poorest citizens.
And then the city changed shape. Two flyovers, one since renamed for the Emir of Ilorin and the other named for General Tunde Idiagbon, lifted Ilorin’s traffic off its oldest junctions; the First Lady of Nigeria opened them in January 2025. The Kwara Garment Factory was built with room for four thousand workers. A disused sugar factory became film studios, and a new Innovation Hub opened its doors in 2025.
Around them rose the International Conference Centre, the KWRS headquarters, Kwara’s first visual arts centre and its largest squash hall, while the industrial park took shape in Asa and a shea butter factory in Kaiama. Beyond the capital, the 128-kilometre Bode Saadu to Kaiama to Kosubosu road opened up the north, and the Osi to Obbo Ayegunle road finally joined Kwara to Ekiti State by tarmac.
In 2024 Ilorin got its first new master plan in decades, and its Smart City was laid out. An Education Trust Fund now backs the schools, and Kwara’s public-school pupils won the Presidential School Debate four years running, from 2022 to 2025. In 2025 Kwara United brought home the Federation Cup, the first ever won by a team from the state.
None of this made him loud. He is known across Nigeria as a man of few words, and his colleagues noticed: in May 2023 the governors of all 36 states chose him, by consensus, to chair the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.
In December 2023 the National Economic Council made him chairman of its Economic Affairs Committee, and that September he had argued at the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, that quality education for Africa’s children was “an urgency of now”.
In June 2026 the regions of Africa went further and elected him President of their continental forum, FORAF, in Tangier. In October 2026 President Tinubu named him Deputy Vice Chairman of the party’s Presidential Campaign Council, third in its order after the Senate President and the Speaker, with charge of the campaign in Kwara. He is a Commander of the Order of the Niger.
We are not here to share money; we are here to share projects and infrastructure.
We’re not here to build a dynasty. We’re here to build a legacy.
Service is not measured by how loudly it is announced, but by how faithfully it is carried out.
He is a man of few words but weighty actions — measured in speech, deliberate in thought, and sincere in intention.
He has always spoken and acted as a Nigerian first.
16 September 2026 · The Emir’s palace, Ilorin
A title is never merely a name. It is a trust.
The Emir of Ilorin, Alhaji (Dr) Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, conferred the title on him in August 2024, and turbaned him Sardauna of Ilorin two years later before the Vice President and fellow governors. He is only the second man to hold it.
The name comes down from the cavalry of the old emirates. The Sardauna stood among the foremost guardians of the emirate: he defended the realm, protected its people and kept the dignity of the throne, and he was expected to show courage in danger, wisdom in uncertainty, and loyalty when the emirate asked for sacrifice.
For a man asking Ilorin to send him to the Senate, it is the city’s own verdict on him, given in the oldest language it has.
His second and final term ends on 29 May 2027. He is asking the people of Kwara Central, the four Local Government Areas of Ilorin West, Ilorin South, Ilorin East and Asa, to send him to the Senate, where the roads, schools and hospitals below will need a voice that knows every one of them by name.
This site is that case, made the only way he has ever made it: project by project. Every entry carries the register sheet and row it came from, so anyone can check it against the source.
See the recordOne question, if you have a moment
In 2027, will you vote AbdulRazaq for Senate?
And APC for Governor?
Thank you.
