The Kingmaker Who Never Left: How Ibrahim Masari Keeps Delivering for Katsina

By Salisu Ishaq Kawu

In the fast-moving world of Nigerian politics, perception often travels faster than fact. A political meeting becomes a conspiracy, a strategic engagement becomes a power struggle, and two men pursuing different responsibilities are suddenly cast as enemies. That is the story now being told about Katsina State, where whispers of an alleged rift between Governor Dikko Umaru Radda and Alhaji Ibrahim Kabir Masari, Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Political and other Matters, have dominated political conversation.
But those peddling the narrative of a feud have overlooked the most inconvenient fact of all. There would be no Radda administration to quarrel with had Ibrahim Kabir Masari not built it. Before one can accuse a man of fighting a governor, one must first reckon with the record of the man who, more than any other single figure, made that governorship possible.

The evidence, examined honestly, does not merely acquit Masari of rebellion. It reveals him as the architect, the financier of goodwill, the bridge and the last man standing behind the project that delivered Katsina to the All Progressives Congress in 2023.

To understand this, one must return to the political climate that produced the Radda administration. Dikko Radda did not emerge in isolation, and he certainly did not emerge unopposed. The 2023 governorship contest in Katsina was a crowded, bruising affair, fought within a broader national struggle for the soul of the APC. Aspirants jostled, godfathers hedged, and many of the state’s political heavyweights waited to see which way the wind would blow before committing themselves. In that season of calculation and convenient loyalties, one man did not hedge. Ibrahim Kabir Masari identified the Radda project early, adopted it as his own, and championed it from the first day until the primaries to the final collation of results; when others wavered, withdrew or quietly worked against it.

It is a matter of public record that Masari’s standing within the emerging Tinubu political structure was, at that moment, without parallel in Katsina. When the presidential candidate needed a name he could trust absolutely to hold the vice-presidential slot before INEC, pending the eventual selection of Kashim Shettima, it was Ibrahim Kabir Masari he chose. No greater testament exists to a politician’s credibility than to be handed, even temporarily, a place on a presidential ticket. That singular act of trust placed Masari at the very centre of the Tinubu calculation, and he converted that position, deliberately and relentlessly, into political capital for Katsina and for Dikko Radda.

Radda, then the APC governorship candidate, needed what every candidate needs. He needs the confidence of the national party, the attention of the presidential campaign, and the goodwill of the wider APC family, from Yobe Governor Mai Mala Buni to the party’s national leadership. Masari was the man who opened those doors. He moved between Katsina and Abuja carrying the Radda project on his shoulders, vouching for the candidate before the men who mattered, and mobilising support at home when the contest was at its fiercest. Political circles in Katsina have long credited him with mobilisation, resources and organisational muscle for the campaign. Strip Masari out of the story of 2023 and the story collapses. He was not merely part of the environment that produced Radda’s victory; he was its most consistent and most consequential champion, the one man who carried the project single-handedly through its darkest stretches until the end.

A man does not labour to build a house in order to burn it down. This is the first and most obvious absurdity in the claim that Masari is fighting Radda. The second absurdity lies in what Masari has actually done with his federal influence since. If his intention were to undermine the governor, one would expect his access to the Presidency to be deployed against Katsina’s interests. The record shows precisely the opposite.

Consider what his position has meant for ordinary Katsina indigenes. By virtue of his proximity to President Tinubu, Masari has become the state’s most productive channel for opportunity in Abuja. Sons and daughters of Katsina have secured political appointments, board positions and other openings at the federal level through doors he has held open. He has understood, better than most, the oldest expectation in our politics: that a man who acquires influence at the centre owes a debt to the people who raised him. Where others have used federal office to build personal empires, Masari has used his to build a pipeline; of appointments, of projects, of attention flowing steadily from Abuja to Katsina.
The projects speak for themselves. At an APC gathering in Kafur in 2025, Masari announced federal readiness to execute major interventions in the area, including the reconstruction of the Zaria–Kafur–Malumfashi road and a proposed Federal Polytechnic. These are not the manoeuvres of a saboteur; they are the dividends of a bridge-builder.

A governor cannot sit in every federal ministry or cultivate every relationship in Abuja. When a Katsina son with direct access to the Presidency uses that access to attract roads, institutions and goodwill to the state, he is doing the governor’s work with him, not against him.

His personal generosity tells the same story. In November 2025, the Ibrahim Masari Foundation provided N300,000 each to 1,000 small-business operators in Malumfashi and another 1,000 in Kafur. That means two thousand families lifted in a single empowerment programme. And who graced that occasion? Governor Dikko Radda himself, alongside Yobe Governor Mai Mala Buni, Kaduna Governor Uba Sani and other leading political figures. If Masari were plotting against the governor, it would take remarkable imagination to explain why the governor stood beside him, publicly blessing an initiative designed to benefit Katsina residents. Indeed, in December 2025, Governor Uba Sani specifically commended Radda for his support of the Masari Foundation; hardly the choreography of a feud.

Perhaps the most decisive testimony comes from Governor Radda’s own mouth. When President Tinubu elevated Masari to Special Adviser on Political Matters in March 2026, the governor did not sulk or stay silent. He publicly congratulated him, describing the appointment as recognition of Masari’s hard work, loyalty, competence and political acumen, and calling him, in the governor’s own words, a team player and a dependable ally whose new position could benefit Katsina and the entire North-West. Governors do not describe their enemies in such terms. They describe their benefactors so.

Nor has Masari’s loyalty to the common project wavered since. In February 2026, when Katsina APC stakeholders endorsed both President Tinubu and Governor Radda for the 2027 elections, Masari was present and praised the political leadership of the state. By August 2026, he was reported to be engaging Katsina’s academics and professors, mobilising the state’s intelligentsia behind the Tinubu–Dikko 2027 project.

This is a man campaigning for the governor’s re-election, not against it.
Some quarters have sought to read a rift into the replacement of Architect Ahmed Musa Dangiwa with Engr. Dr. Muttaqha Rabe Darma as Minister of Housing and Urban Development. A sober reading suggests something quite different. It is, to me, a strategic recalibration by President Tinubu that strengthens, rather than fractures, Katsina’s position at the centre. Darma brings a rare combination of engineering, administrative and political experience.

A former PTDF Executive Secretary and former Katsina State commissioner with deep familiarity with both federal institutions and the state’s political terrain, his emergence gives Katsina yet another credible federal channel through which the state’s interests can be pressed in Abuja. Tellingly, Governor Radda publicly welcomed Darma’s appointment and commended President Tinubu for making it, while graciously acknowledging Dangiwa’s contributions.

If Darma translates his experience into visible results in housing and urban development, the appointment will stand as a political asset for the President. Particularly, consolidating support in Katsina and proving that cabinet changes can serve both governance and stability. Continuity, not confrontation, is the story here. And, it is a continuity that the Masari school of bridge-building made thinkable in the first place.

It would be naïve to expect a political environment containing a governor, a presidential adviser, former governors, legislators and countless networks to be entirely free of competing interests. There will be disagreements over strategy, differences over appointments, and rivalry among supporters. But friction among followers is not war among principals. A federal appointee can mobilise for the President without undermining his governor. A politician can cultivate relationships across the North without declaring war at home. And a man can seek opportunities for his community, as Masari has done tirelessly, without seeking to displace the leadership he himself installed.
The conclusion writes itself. Ibrahim Kabir Masari is not fighting Governor Dikko Umaru Radda.

He is the man who made him. He was the earliest, the loudest and, in the decisive moments, the only champion who carried the Radda project through to victory. He has since converted his federal standing into appointments for Katsina indigenes, projects for Katsina communities and empowerment for Katsina families. Governor Radda, for his part, has recognised that debt publicly and repeatedly, calling Masari a team player and a dependable ally. The people of Katsina should not allow merchants of rumour to poison a partnership that has served the state so well. Kingmakers do not dethrone their own kings; they defend them. And on the evidence, Ibrahim Kabir Masari is doing exactly that.

Salisu Ishaq Kawu writes in from Katsina