A 26-YEAR-OLD JOURNALIST IS ELECTED TO THE KWARA ASSEMBLY.

Miss Rukayat Motunrayo Shittu, a journalist with an online media outlet in Kwara state, won the state House of Assembly elections in the Owode Onire state constituency of the Asa Local Government Area of the state. She is 26 years old.

One of the youngest candidates in Nigeria to run for and win a political seat was Miss Shittu, a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

She served as the Congress of NOUN Students’ (CONS) Senate President at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).

Shittu won the election on Saturday with 7,521 votes, beating out Abdullah Magaji of the PDP, who received 6,957 votes, according to Professor Akeem Olasunkanmi Ijaiya, the INEC returning officer for the process.

She is hereby declared the election winner because she received the most votes and met all legal conditions. Professor Ijaiya said.

Shittu won the House of Assembly seat in the 2023 House of Assembly elections, becoming the state’s youngest representative and possibly the youngest in the nation.

After quitting her job to pursue politics in 2022, the former web journalist entered the contest.

After she made her declaration, her constituents were ecstatic and flocked to the streets to celebrate her victory.

The APC candidate “thanked the people of my constituency for voting en masse for me” in response to the victory.

Ms Shittu obtained her senior secondary school certificate in 2011 after attending Baptist Primary School LGEA in Ilorin and Government Girls Day Secondary School in Oko Erin.

She continued to Kwara State College of Arabic and Islamic Law Studies affiliated with Bayero University Kano where she received a diploma certificate in Mass Communication and Islamic Studies in 2015.

Upon graduation, she enrolled in a fashion institute. She was accepted in 2017 and received her degree in 2022 from the National Open University of Nigeria.

She was the head of the news division for Just Event Online, a Kwara-based online publication.