NGScorecard

Implicit in contesting in 1999 and 2003 on the ANPP platform, as one of the northern opposition governors facing the PDP-controlled centre.

Bafarawa was elected in 1999 and re-elected in 2003, serving two full terms to 29 May 2007. He then founded the Democratic People's Party and ran for president in 2007.

To upgrade the state's road network and expand access to education.

The administration is credited with significant improvements to road quality and with upgrading schools and raising enrolment, promoted alongside assurances that morals and Islamic religious instruction would be taught. Independent, quantified outcomes for the term are not well documented.

To bring Sokoto into the group of northern states adopting Islamic criminal law after 1999.

Sokoto adopted Sharia during the term. Bafarawa publicly rejected the federal justice minister's position that Sharia was unconstitutional. In a high-profile early case, a Sokoto Sharia court in March 2002 freed Safiya Hussaini, who had been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, on appeal.

To manage state revenue and contracts for public purposes.

Bafarawa was charged by the EFCC after leaving office over the alleged diversion of about ₦13–15 billion in Sokoto State funds. In 2018 a Sokoto State High Court discharged and acquitted him, the judge holding the prosecution's evidence 'contradictory and imaginary'; no misappropriation of state funds was established. A separate EFCC case opened in 2024 concerns federal security funds from the Office of the National Security Adviser, not the state treasury.