NGScorecard

Campaigned on a 'Rescue and Rebuild Zamfara' mission built around a Six Smart Agenda, becoming the first Zamfara governorship candidate to unveil a formal manifesto ahead of an election.

The administration cites debt clearance, IGR growth, and education-debt settlement as evidence of the 'rescue' phase taking hold, but the state remains under a serious, unresolved civil-society allegation over security-vote transparency (see Governance/fraud entries), leaving the 'rebuild' phase only partially delivered.

Pledged that negotiating with bandits would 'never be part of' his security strategy, vowing that criminal groups would surrender or face the law.

The administration inaugurated a 21-member Security Trust Fund board chaired by former Inspector-General MD Abubakar and credits improved security with attracting a $200 million lithium investment; however, banditry remains an active, unresolved threat across the state, and the governor's own public remarks about knowing bandit kingpins' locations have drawn serious, unproven allegations about security-vote handling (see fraud entries).

Promised to settle the backlog of unpaid civil-service salaries, retiree pensions, and examination-body debts left by the previous administration.

The administration paid ₦1.4 billion owed to WAEC (2018-2022) and over ₦1.3 billion to NECO across multiple withheld years, securing the release of exam results withheld for up to five years, and settled outstanding salary, pension, and gratuity arrears — including pension debt dating back to 2011 — while ensuring prompt ongoing payment.

Committed to fiscal prudence given the bankrupt state of the treasury inherited from the Matawalle administration.

The Debt Management Office recorded Zamfara's domestic debt rising by ₦14.26 billion between June and December 2023, to ₦110.57 billion; Governor Lawal publicly denied his administration had borrowed anything since taking office on 29 May 2023, attributing the recorded loan to the outgoing Matawalle government, a claim not independently reconciled with the DMO's own reporting period.

Promised to overhaul Zamfara's education system as one of the Six Smart Agenda's priority areas.

Beyond clearing exam-body debts, the administration signed four executive orders establishing an integrated governance framework for education financing, school protection, quality assurance, and safe-schools implementation, and distributed the national curricula to Zamfara schools.

Listed health as a priority sector under the Six Smart Agenda.

The 2026 budget allocates ₦87 billion to health; independently verified outcome data (facility completions, staffing levels, maternal-mortality trends) was not identified for this entry.

Promised to revive agriculture as part of efforts to dismantle the 'banditry economy' that had made farming dangerous across the state.

The 2026 budget allocates ₦86 billion to agriculture, following ₦38.1 billion in the 2024 budget; independently verified yield, farmland-recovery, or farmer-return data attributable to the programme was not identified for this entry.

Argued that security reform was a precondition for unlocking Zamfara's economic potential, including its mineral resources.

Improved security conditions were credited with attracting a $200 million lithium mining investment to the state.

Implicit obligation, given the scale of public security funding channelled through the Security Trust Fund and state security votes, to account transparently for how those resources are spent.

A civil-society coalition, the Situation Room on Monitoring the War Against Banditry, publicly petitioned President Tinubu in September 2025 to freeze federal allocations to Zamfara and demanded an EFCC/DSS/NSA audit of security-vote spending, citing a viral video in which the governor acknowledged knowing the locations of bandit kingpins without describing decisive action taken; the allegation of funds being diverted to benefit criminal groups remains unproven and was disputed by the state government.