2023 Plateau State gubernatorial election

The 2023 Plateau State gubernatorial election was held on 18 March 2023, to elect the Governor of Plateau State, concurrent with elections to the Plateau State House of Assembly as well as twenty-seven other gubernatorial elections and elections to all other state houses of assembly. The election — which was postponed from its original 11 March date — will be held three weeks after the presidential election and National Assembly elections. Incumbent APC Governor Simon Lalong was term-limited and could not seek re-election to a third term. Caleb Mutfwang, a former Mangu Local Government Chairman, gained the office for the PDP by a margin of ~4% over APC nominee Nentawe Yilwatda.

Party primaries were scheduled for between 4 April and 9 June 2022 with the Peoples Democratic Party nominating Mutfwang on 25 May while the All Progressives Congress nominated Nentawe Yilwatda on 26 May. In August, former commissioner in Plateau State, Patrick Dakum — a withdrawn aspirant in the APC primary — won the nomination of the Labour Party in a rerun primary.

In the afternoon of 20 March, Mutfwang was declared the winner by INEC after results showed him winning about 525,000 votes (~49% of the vote) compared to Yilwatda's total of about 481,000 votes (~45% of the vote) while Dakum came a distant third place with roughly 60,000 votes (~6% of the vote). However, Yilwatda rejected the results and commenced a legal battle that initially succeeded as a Court of Appeal judgement in November overturned the result and declared Yilwatda as the rightful winner. However, the Supreme Court upheld the election of Mutfwang in a January 2024 ruling. Much like the election period, the post-election legal battles led to tensions across the state with sporadic protests and unrest.