26-year-old Rukayat Motunrayo Shittu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, has been declared the winner of Owode Onire state constituency of Asa Local Government Area in Kwara State House of Assembly election.
Ms Shittu polled 7,521 to defeat her closest rival in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 6,957 during Saturday’s election.
This makes her one of the youngest female candidates in Nigeria to contest and win a political seat.
Young Shittu is a journalist and a former Senate President of the Congress of NOUN Students (CONS) at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)
She attended Baptist Primary School LGEA in Ilorin, and Government Girls Day Secondary School, Oko Erin, where she obtained her Senior Secondary School Certificate in 2011.
She proceeded to Kwara State College of Arabic and Islamic Legal Studies affiliated with Bayero University Kano where she obtained a diploma certificate in Mass Communication and Islamic Studies in 2015.
After her diploma, she enrolled in a fashion school. In 2017, she was admitted to the National Open University of Nigeria and graduated in 2022.
According to her, she enjoined her parents unflinching support, “I have the best parents anyone could pray for on earth. They are the backbone of my political aspirations and it has been like that since I was an undergraduate. My dad usually advised me to contest positions in school and I mostly got finances for the contests from him. Their disposition regarding my political aspiration is so firm,” she added.
“My dad studied me and knows what is best for me so he doesn’t hesitate when I aspire for things. I had been class reps since primary school days and that continued until I graduated from National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) as the first female senate president of the Congress of NOUN Students (CONS), heading the legislative arm of the students’ association in over 85 study centers across the federation.”
This is a big win for women, coming at a time when women participation in politics is nose-diving.
Notwithstanding the fact that some women were deliberately disenfranchised Miss Shittu stood her ground and today she attained the enviable height at a very young age.
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