Bauchi is one of the few northern states where voters have repeatedly thrown out the party in power. Since 1999 the governorship has passed from the PDP to the ANPP, back to the PDP, to the APC and back to the PDP again, and two of the five changes of government came from incumbents losing at the polls. In 2027 the man who lost in 2019, Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar, is trying to win the office back.
1999 and 2003: Mu’azu’s PDP
Adamu Mu’azu, an architect, won the January 1999 election for the PDP with 503,447 votes, about 56% of the total, against the All People’s Party candidate. In April 2003 he was re-elected with 1,198,130 votes, beating the ANPP’s Ibrahim Jarma. Mu’azu later became national chairman of the PDP in 2014, leading the party into its 2015 defeat.
2007: the ANPP takes over
Mu’azu’s chosen successor, Mohammed Nadada Umar, lost the April 2007 election to banker Isa Yuguda of the ANPP, who polled 550,251 votes to Umar’s 474,233. Yuguda, a former aviation minister, did not stay in the opposition for long: he joined the ruling PDP in 2009, the year after he married a daughter of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
2011: re-election and violence
Yuguda won a second term in April 2011 on the PDP ticket with 771,503 votes, against 238,426 for Yusuf Tuggar of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). The governorship vote came days after the presidential election had set off deadly riots across the North; Human Rights Watch estimated that about 800 people were killed in the three days of violence, and Bauchi was among the worst-hit states.
2015: the APC wave
In 2015 Bauchi went with the national swing. The APC’s Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar, a lawyer and former state attorney-general, won the April election with 654,934 votes, more than twice the 282,650 of the PDP’s Mohammed Jatau.
2019: Tafawa Balewa and a 14,488-vote upset
Abubakar’s first term was marked by a public quarrel with House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara, a Bauchi politician who left the APC for the PDP in 2018. In March 2019 the PDP candidate, former FCT minister Bala Mohammed, led on the first count, but INEC suspended collation in Tafawa Balewa local government after disputes over its results. The resumption of collation went to court, and a supplementary election was held on 23 March in polling units where voting had been cancelled. INEC declared Bala Mohammed the winner on 25 March with 515,113 votes against Abubakar’s 500,625, a margin of 14,488.
2023: Bala Mohammed’s second term
Bala Mohammed contested the PDP presidential primary in 2022, lost, and returned to the governorship race after the party’s original nominee withdrew. On 18 March 2023 he beat retired Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, a former Chief of the Air Staff, by 525,280 votes (50.8%) to 432,272 (41.8%). Halliru Dauda Jika of the NNPP came third with 60,496. The APC candidate rejected the result.
The results at a glance
| Year | Winner (party) | Votes | Runner-up (party) | Votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Adamu Mu’azu (PDP) | 503,447 | APP candidate | not published |
| 2003 | Adamu Mu’azu (PDP) | 1,198,130 | Ibrahim Jarma (ANPP) | not published |
| 2007 | Isa Yuguda (ANPP) | 550,251 | Mohammed Nadada Umar (PDP) | 474,233 |
| 2011 | Isa Yuguda (PDP) | 771,503 | Yusuf Tuggar (CPC) | 238,426 |
| 2015 | Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar (APC) | 654,934 | Mohammed Jatau (PDP) | 282,650 |
| 2019 | Bala Mohammed (PDP) | 515,113 | Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar (APC) | 500,625 |
| 2023 | Bala Mohammed (PDP) | 525,280 | Sadique Abubakar (APC) | 432,272 |
2027: the former governor returns
Bala Mohammed has served two terms and cannot run again. By March 2026 he was one of only two governors still in the PDP, as nearly all the others moved to the APC. In the APC primary in May 2026, former governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar beat former foreign affairs minister Yusuf Tuggar and five other aspirants. INEC’s final list for the 6 February 2027 election also names Adamu Usman Ahmed for the PDP and Halliru Dauda Jika, who ran for the NNPP in 2023, for the ADC.
