On 5th December 2014, Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, OFR won the party primaries and emerged as the APC candidate for Governor of Kaduna State. He won the 11 April 2015 gubernatorial election and was formally declared governor-elect of Kaduna State on Sunday, 12 April 2015. Since taking office on 29 May 2015, he has pursued a policy of cutting costs, shrinking the government and devoting state resources to the delivery of public goods in Education, Health, Agriculture, Infrastructure and Job creation.
After four years of great strides in making Kaduna State great again, Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai contested for a second term as Governor to consolidate on gains made in his first tenure. He won the fiercely contested March 23rd 2019 gubernatorial elections and was issued his certificate of return on March 28th, 2019.
In 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him to run the privatisation programme as Director-General of the BPE. President Obasanjo later charged him to run Abuja as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory from 2003 to 2007.
As Minister, he restored Abuja to the dream of its founders, gave Nigeria its first computerised land registry and made it possible for ordinary Nigerians, 27,000 of them, to own land in Abuja once they followed simple, but clear, procedures. Many more were to benefit from his supervision of the sale of government houses following the adoption of the monetisation policy by the Federal Government. El-Rufai initiated the process of pension reforms that birthed the new contributory pension scheme, led the planning team for a new national identity mechanism and coordinated the bureau of public service reforms.
He was an adviser to the government of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, working on the Policy Implementation and Monitoring Committee (PIMCO) that designed and delivered the 1998-1999 transition programme. In that capacity, he interfaced with the World Bank, the IMF and other agencies, and helped draft the legislation that established the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE. He founded the firm of El-Rufai and Partners after qualifying as a chartered Quantity Surveyor.
Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai graduated with first class honours in Quantity Surveying.
