When Governor Dauda Lawal assumed office in May 2023, Zamfara State was facing existential threats that demanded a leader prepared to do things differently. The condition of the state was precisely why Lawal had entered the governorship race in the first place. During his 2023 governorship campaign, he repeatedly described his mission as one to “rescue and rebuild Zamfara,” arguing that the state had failed to fulfil its potential and that its people were demanding something fundamentally new: security, functioning schools and hospitals, good roads, economic opportunities, food and a government capable of delivering basic services.
By the time he took the oath of office, the scale of the challenge became even clearer. Insecurity had wreaked havoc on the state’s economy—farmers had been forced to abandon their farms, rural roads had become unsafe and increasingly impassable, commercial activities had been severely disrupted, while the dilapidated schools and healthcare facilities were in urgent need of rehabilitation. Clearly Governor Lawal inherited a development crisis that cut across security, agriculture, education, healthcare, the economy and human welfare—the six areas that are the pillars of his Rescue Mission.
For Governor Lawal for the Rescue Mission to achieve its objectives, its priority areas must be interconnected and reinforce one another. The significance of this approach is that each pillar addresses a weakness that could otherwise undermine the success of the others. Improved security, for instance, will enable farmers to return to their farms and restore agricultural production; good roads will make it easier to move farm produce from rural communities to the markets; a functional education system will produce the skilled workforce required to drive development; while an effective healthcare system will protect the wellbeing and increase the productivity of the people. That working together, these interventions will create the conditions for a stronger and more diversified economy, capable of generating jobs, expanding opportunities and ultimately reducing poverty.
That is the part of the Lawal administration’s record that can easily be missed when governance is reduced to awards of contracts. The deeper and unseen story is the implementation of the policies to rebuild a state whose productive, economic and social systems had been progressively weakened. The objective of the Rescue Mission is therefore broader than the delivery of individual projects. In that sense, the different interventions are intended to reinforce one another, gradually restoring the foundations on which a functioning and prosperous state depends.
The question now is not whether Zamfara State’s problems have disappeared—they have not—but whether the rebuilding work has started producing the results?
For an agrarian state, Governor Dauda Lawal’s response has gone beyond urging farmers to produce more. He has invested in the inputs and infrastructure required to achieve objectives of improved income and the overall economy. More than ₦22.5 billion has been committed to rural road construction across all 14 local government areas, including the Mallamawa–Bukkuyum–Masamar–Mudi corridor and the ₦6.6 billion Rawayya–Furfuri–Kurya Madaro road. The major Gusau–Magami–Dansadau road, of about 105 kilometres and valued at approximately ₦20 billion, forms part of the same effort to improve traveling and transportation of products.
The significance of these investments is in what they are intended to unlock. For the Governor Lawal administration better rural connectivity is to reduce the hardship that farming communities had consistently suffered. That critical objective is reinforced by the administration’s wider agricultural interventions and programmes to establish 40 new markets comprising 4,000 shops. Taken together, these are not isolated infrastructure projects; they are investments through which he hopes to drive Zamfara’s rural economy which has proven capacity to generate greater economic activity and improve livelihoods.
In an agricultural economy, critical infrastructure are valuable links in the production chain. They also determine whether farm inputs can reach farmers, whether harvested crops can get to aggregation points and whether traders can reach producing communities.
The agricultural component of the Rescue Mission similarly goes beyond the traditional practice of just the distribution of inputs and an end of the matter. Zamfara’s agricultural potential is substantial, but getting production right is only the first step in the chain. Storage, aggregation, irrigation, mechanisation, transportation, processing, packaging, financing, and access to markets all determine whether the increased production will actually translate into higher incomes.
This is particularly important in a state where agriculture remains central to household livelihoods. The state government has estimated that more than 80 per cent of its population is engaged in agriculture. Mechanisation can drastically reduce production constraints, and increase the issue of post-harvest losses. Irrigation will ensure round the year farming,so it’s important that government invests in it. The government is also mindful that processing will increase the value of agricultural products, but the processors need steady electricity.
The administration’s Zamfara State Development Plan 2025–2034 is intended to provide a longer-term framework for addressing precisely these structural issues, including mechanised agriculture, agro-processing, employment, food security and private-sector development. Ultimately the success depends on implementation, but the decision to place individual interventions within a ten-year development framework is significant in a state where development has often been disrupted by changing priorities.
The same thinking is visible in the administration’s approach to commerce. The completion of the ₦3.68 billion Ultra-Modern Market on the site of the old Gusau Central Market is important not simply because it replaced an ageing facility, but because the old market had become increasingly vulnerable to the very many problems that have destroyed livelihoods. In January 2024, fire swept through the Gusau Central Market, killing one person and destroying more than 150 shops, with traders losing properties worth millions of naira. Another fire incident in April 2025 reportedly destroyed goods valued at about ₦350 million. These incidents underscored the need for a major commercial centre with adequate modern infrastructure and safety provisions. Traders require secure spaces, access roads, lighting, a fire fighting station, water, sanitation, fire protection and an environment designed for orderly commercial activity. The new market therefore represents more than a replacement of old shops; it is an attempt to provide the physical infrastructure around which a safer and more productive trading economy can operate.
The private sector is another critical part of the equation. Zamfara State’s economic recovery cannot depend entirely on government contracts. It requires thousands of small businesses capable of employing people, processing agricultural products, and providing services. That means creating an environment in which businesses can start, survive and expand—not merely inviting investors to the state. Government’s role is therefore to build the necessary infrastructure and remove the bottlenecks that make private investment difficult, while allowing businesses to become the engine of sustained economic activity. For Governor Lawal, the real measure of success of his efforts is the growth of the economy.
The administration’s partnership with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria included a ₦1 billion state contribution matched by another ₦1 billion. The intervention targets businesses, artisans and agro-processors and is reported to have reached more than 2,000 beneficiaries. Further business-support interventions under the World Bank-backed SABER programme have also provided different categories of assistance for micro businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises, and larger businesses.
But capital alone will not transform Zamfara State. While investment and the enabling environment is key, but it cannot achieve the desired results if insecurity will disrupt operations, and state of fear. For the private sector to become a genuine engine of Zamfara’s recovery, the state understands that it must frontally tackle the problem of insecurity.
The administration has consequently established the Zamfara State Security Trust Fund, strengthened collaboration with federal security agencies and introduced Community Protection Guards as part of its grassroots security architecture. The security challenge remains serious,but Governor Lawal is committed to defeating the terrorists, because it’s the foundation upon which agriculture, commerce, education, healthcare and investment rest.
Unlike some governors who have been associated with negotiations with criminal groups, Governor Dauda Lawal has maintained a clear policy of refusing to negotiate with bandits or to pay ransom. His administration has consistently argued that paying criminals only creates further incentive for further abductions and strengthens the economics of banditry. Lawal has said that his position is not theoretical: when his own brothers were kidnapped in 2019 and their abductors demanded ₦300 million, he bluntly refused to pay the ransom, and they were eventually released after three months without payment.
In office, that position has been matched by spending on security rather than concessions to the criminal groups. Zamfara’s 2024 budget performance records show that the state government spent ₦14.35 billion on security. The administration has also established Community Protection Guards across the state’s 14 local government areas and continues to provide logistics and operational support to conventional security agencies. The distinction is important: the administration’s stated approach has been to invest public resources in strengthening the state’s security architecture and supporting security operations, rather than treating ransom payments as a solution to the kidnapping crisis.
The other pillars of the Rescue Mission—education and healthcare—complete the picture. In education, the administration had declared a state of emergency and subsequently undertook interventions involving the renovation and equipping of hundreds of schools. It also addressed outstanding WAEC and NECO obligations that had affected students. The governor has vowed that Zamfara State will no longer be refereed to as one of the educationally backward states.
In healthcare, the administration has also undertaken renovation and equipment interventions in hospitals and primary healthcare facilities while pursuing improvements in access to medical services. This has included the installation of solar power systems in health facilities to improve the reliability of electricity for essential services, alongside the recruitment of qualified medical professionals to address manpower shortages. The administration has also introduced incentives to encourage doctors, nurses and other health workers to serve in rural communities, where the shortage of skilled personnel is often most acute. These interventions recognise that improving healthcare is not simply about constructing or renovating buildings. Facilities must have qualified personnel, essential medicines, functioning equipment, reliable power and adequate funding if they are to provide meaningful services to the communities they are meant to serve.
None of these achievements means that Governor Lawal has solved all the problems he inherited. Zamfara’s challenges were too deep, too widespread and, in some cases, too long-standing to disappear within a single administration or through a handful of projects. Insecurity remains a serious challenge, the economy still requires deeper diversification, farmers still need stronger access to markets and finance, and significant gaps remain in education, healthcare and basic infrastructure. What is evident, however, is that the problems are being confronted rather than ignored. Across the six pillars of the Rescue Mission, the administration has continued to commit public resources, introduce interventions and pursue partnerships aimed at addressing the conditions that have held the state back. The measure of that commitment is not that every problem has been solved, but that the work of solving them has continued. For the people of Zamfara, that consistency matters because sustainable requires persistence, investment and the willingness to keep addressing difficult problems until improvements begin to take root. On that score, the administration’s commitment to improving the lives of the people is clearly visible in the direction of its policies and the interventions it has undertaken.
Governor Dauda Lawal’s determination to leave Zamfara State better than he found it is evident in the direction of his administration and the scale of the work underway across the six pillars of the Rescue Mission. His passion for the development of the state is obvious. But the work is not complete, and perhaps that is the most important point to make. The problems Governor Lawal inherited were not created in three years and cannot be expected to be resolved in three years.
That is why continuity matters. Zamfara State needs Lawal to consolidate the achievements already made, complete projects that are underway and give the Rescue Mission the opportunity to move from rebuilding to delivering deeper economic transformation. The state has spent too many years paying the price of insecurity, weak institutions, inadequate infrastructure and missed opportunities. Reversing that trajectory requires consistency, and a not disruption of a direction.
Though Nigeria is a multiparty democracy, and the 2027 governorship election will give Zamfara voters a choice among the candidates. From their past records Governor Lawal, remains the straightforward choice: the Rescue Mission has begun a process of rebuilding, but the work is unfinished. The question before Zamfara is whether that process should continue and be taken to its logical conclusion.
Gatekeepers News is not liable for opinions expressed in this article; they’re strictly the writer’s.
