MAN OF THE MOMENT

The Turaki of Ilorin Mallam Saliu Mustapha is a Full time Nigerian politician and a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from 2013 till Present. He was a member of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) where he became the National Deputy Chairman of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), one of the defunct political parties that merged to form the All Progressives Congress(APC) back in 2013.

Mustapha was born on September 25, 1972 in Ilorin, Kwara state. He attended Bartholomew primary school in Zaria for his primary education and then proceeded to Command Secondary School in Kaduna for his secondary education. He studied mineral resources engineering at the Kaduna polytechnic.

Mustapha’s political career started in the early 21st century when he became the first national publicity secretary of the Progressive Action Congress (PAC), a defunct political party that contested in the 2003 Nigerian presidential election. He became a member of the ANPP and was devoted to the presidential ambition of Muhammadu Buhari. In 2009, when a breakaway faction of the ANPP led by Muhammadu Buhari formed the Congress for Progressive Change, Mustapha became the national deputy chairman of the party. He held this position until the party merged and formed the All Progressives Congress.

He contested in the 2018 Kwara state’s APC primary and got endorsed by the northern part of the state. He got disqualified from participating midway into the election. The National Working Committee of the party later apologized for the disqualification citing it as unauthorized.

Mallam Saliu Mustapha is a candidate to beat as he aspires to lead the ruling party (APC) into a new dawn. As stated by one of his political allies and loyalist Ambassador Zakary Funsho Yusuf, ‘all hands are on deck towards this aspiration’