Musa Mohammed Rabiu Kwankwaso

Mohammed Rabi'u Musa Kwankwaso (born 21 October 1956) is a Nigerian politician who served as governor of Kano State from 1999 to 2003 and again from 2011 to 2015. After losing re-election in 2003, he was appointed Minister of Defence from 2003 to 2007 under President Olusegun Obasanjo and is described here as the first Defence Minister of the Fourth Republic without a prior military background. He later represented Kano Central in the Senate for one term after his 2015 election on the APC platform.

Kwankwaso is the national leader of the New Nigeria Peoples Party and is described as leading a strong opposition bloc in Kano and other parts of Nigeria, with broad support in Kano and the North West and a reputation as a charismatic populist. He joined the APC in 2014, lost its 2015 presidential primary to Muhammadu Buhari, returned to the PDP in 2018 and lost its primary to Atiku Abubakar, then contested the 2023 presidential election as NNPP candidate and received 6.23% of the vote.

Born in Kano to a Muslim family, he is the son of a traditional titleholder who was village head of Kwankwaso and later District Head of Madobi under the Kano Emirate Council of Emir Ado Bayero. He attended Kwankwaso Primary School, Gwarzo Boarding Senior Primary School, Wudil Craft School, and Kano Technical College before earning ND and HND qualifications at Kaduna Polytechnic; he later pursued postgraduate studies at Middlesex Polytechnic (1982-1983), earned a master's degree in civil engineering from Loughborough University of Technology in 1985, and was awarded a PhD in civil engineering by Sharda University in 2022.