About 14 aspirants are set to vie for the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to contest in the 2015 governorship election in Kwara State.

The aspirants, most of who are said to have collected the party’s expression of interest form, include six from Kwara Central Senatorial District, seven from the South district and one from the North.

The aspirants from the Central District include the 2011 governorship candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Dele Belgore; Shuaib Oba Abdulraheem, who has just resigned as the chairman of the Federal Character Commission; Kale Belgore; Abdulrhaman Abdulrasaq; Akeem Lawal, son of the late former governor Muhammed Lawal; and Gbemi Saraki, daughter of the late political icon of the state, Olusola Saraki, the only female aspirant.

Those from Kwara South include Simon Ajibola, a serving senator; Suleiman Ajadi, who has just resigned as the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters; Jani Ibrahim, an industrialist; John Dara, a former aspirant in 2003; Sunday Babalola, who first showed interest in the office in 2011; and Ben Duntoye, a former commissioner in the state.

Former Speaker of the state House of Assembly, who also served as minister of transport and sports, Ibrahim Isa Bio, is the only aspirant from the North District, which produced the governor in 1992.

Some of the aspirants who have publicly declared their ambition to contest the governorship race condemned the way the state is being governed at present under the control of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and promised that, if elected governor, they would effect change in the state.

Lawal promised to promote good governance, economic prosperity and industrialization, saying that agriculture and the human capital resources of the state would be promoted to achieve economic prosperity for the people.

Bio assured that he would focus on education, agriculture, infrastructure, and sports development and run a transparent government.

He said he would provide good health care and put an end to the situation where people of the state in his Baruteen Local Government Area go to the Republic of Benin for health care because there were no health facilities to cater them in the area.

Ibrahim said he had a four-pronged agenda of job creation for the youth, agricultural revolution that would make agriculture rewarding to all, natural resource development that would ensure the potentialities of the state are exploited for the benefit of all, and infrastructural development that would cut across the state.