He attended Talata Mafara Township Primary School, then proceeded to Government Teacher's College in Bakura from 1979 to 1984. He finished his tertiary education at Sokoto Polytechnic from 1991 to 1994 where he obtained a certificate and later a Diploma in Secretarial Studies in 2004. He also attended Kebbi Polytechnic for a Graduate Diplomain Public Administration in 2008.
Political career
Yari began his political career in 1999 when he served as the Secretary of the then All Nigeria People's Party between 1999 and 2003. He was elected Chairman of ANPP Zamfara State in 2003 and later rose to the position of ANPP National Financial Secretary and served in this position till 2007 when he was elected as Member representing Anka/Talata Mafara Federal Constituency from 2007 to 2011. On April 26, 2011, Abdul-aziz Yari Abubakar was elected Governor of Zamfara State on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party. Again in the 2015 gubernatorial elections, he was re-elected as Governor under the platform of the All Progressive Congress. On May 18, 2015, Hon. Yari's colleagues in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum unanimously elected him as their Chairman, succeeding Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi. In addition, when Zamfara State GovernorMahmud Shinkafi defected to the PDP in January 2009, taking the ANPP's state executive committee with him, the ANPP's National Headquarters in Abuja was forced to create a Caretaker Committee headed by Yari. The committee's tenure was repeatedly extended. Yari was elected Governor of Zamfara State, Nigeria in the 26 April 2011 national elections, running on the All Nigeria Peoples Party platform. Similarly, Yari is the son-in-law of incumbent Governor Mahmud Aliyu Shinkafi of the People's Democratic Party, whom he defeated in the election by 514,962 votes to Shinkafi's 460,656 votes. He said concerning the 2019 election that it is time to repay Buhari's bailout gesture.
Senate race (2019)
As his term of office as governor of Zamfara State drew to a close Yari ran for the Zamfara West senate seat and won with a very wide margin on the platform of the ruling APC. But his election and other APC candidates in the 2019 general election in Zamfara State were nullified by the Supreme Court on the ground that they were not validly nominated through party primaries. The court ordered INEC to declare candidates who were the second runner-up in the elections winners. Senator Kabiru Marafa, a member of APC who was running for governorship tick of the APC had complained that APC did not conduct primaries in Zamfara and asked the court to invalidate the primaries purportedly conducted by the leader of the party Yari of the APC.
