Opinion

Rebuilding the intellectual community on the continent’-Zubair A Zubair

Published

4 years ago

October 20, 2022

Zubair A Zubair

Neo-liberalism has devastated African universities, turning them from vibrant centres of new thinking and academic comradeship into factories churning out marketable academic products and “saleable” students, according to leading Tanzanian scholar-activist Issa Shivji.

African scholars have become mere data “hunter-gatherers” instead of producers of theory; while the nascent radical intellectual community that emerged on the continent in the wake of independence has been decimated, says Shivji, who occupies the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Research Chair in Pan-African Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.

In the meantime, the Global North has retained control over the upper reaches of knowledge production since the 1970s, when higher education on the continent was devalorised and starved of public resources as African governments embraced neo-liberal prescriptions and austerity programmes.

“The very idea of the university was undermined,” says Shivji.

“The World Bank and its associates said that Africa did not need thinkers; rather, it needed only implementers of policies,” he says. “The ‘luxury’ of theorising could be left to the developed North, which would do the thinking, while Africa did the acting.”

Under the “long shadow” of neoliberalism, he says, “the market determined the form, content and depth [of] courses. Theory was eschewed; and action and a skills-oriented approach were privileged.”

“Instead of being centres of thinking and basic research, African universities were turned into sort of factories, with the academics being told to package and brand their products, including the students, to make them ‘saleable’.”

One consequence has been a devaluation of the quest for original knowledge on the continent and, in particular, theory, which Shivji views as the “highest form of knowledge”.

Quality of African scholarship has deteriorated

The trend has been made manifest, he says, in a number of ways: the content of PhDs has become increasingly descriptive rather than theoretical; the academic vocation to produce new knowledge has been undermined by scholars’ increasing dependence on consultancy work; university courses have become vocationalised, with increasing numbers of “executive evening courses” being taught; the younger generation of academics unquestioningly imbibe intellectual fads with little regard for existing scholarship; and the task of mentoring young faculty is undertaken by visiting scholars on a jaunt.

Shivji identifies a lack of seriousness among “today’s neo-liberal generation of young faculty members who neither care about nor have any sense of the traditions of their own alma mater”.

In particular, he notes that young African academics educated “outside”, in the North, tend to return as adherents of new intellectual fashions: “It is as if they want to re-invent the wheel and start all over again.”

Meanwhile, as the quality of the African scholarship on offer has deteriorated, international financial institutions have “jumped on the bandwagon”, providing funding for foreign scholars to come from the North with the goal of upgrading local scholarly standards, according to Shivji.

“These visiting academics … come for a few weeks or a couple of months; rush through a couple of courses; take time off to visit local tourist resorts; and off they go, leaving behind no sense of academic collegiality and camaraderie, which should be the stuff of university life,” he says.

However, “this is not what universities were meant to be”, he argues.

‘A site for thinking’

“Neo-liberalisation, in my view, devastated the fundamental rationale of a university just as it devastated the social fabric in Africa. The very idea of the university was undermined.”

Shivji describes his idea of the university as “rather orthodox”.

“I think a university is a site for thinking, a site for the production of knowledge, and, of course, a site where ideas clash and knowledge is developed.”

“The idea of the university should be of a kind of comradeship which is established among the faculty but also between the students and the whole academic community. The aim is not simply to produce people with certificates but rather to cultivate deep scholarship and, if possible, some societal commitment.”

In pursuit of this goal, Shivji advocates a pan-African approach under which academics across the continent collaborate to rejuvenate the African intellectual community and seek to produce a new breed of ideas.

He notes the scale of the rejuvenation effort given that “a whole generation of deep, committed scholarship” was lost under the neo-liberalisation of universities from the late 1970s.

“The few faculty members who stuck to their guns found themselves abandoned both by colleagues and students,” he notes. As a result, “the radical and nationalist faculty staff failed to reproduce itself”.

“What remained was not an intellectual community propounding, advocating and debating the idea of the university and its ethos, but only a few individuals,” he says.

A need for collective purpose

In this context, Shivji advocates for a restoration of comradeship and a sense of collective purpose among academics in order to help rebuild the intellectual community on the continent.

“Such work can only be a collective effort, not an individual task,” he explains.

“Although individuals may manage to spark debates, they cannot easily sustain them. They soon get demoralised for lack of support; and there is always a limit to how much an individual can withstand in terms of derision and ridicule from an ignorant young faculty and a hostile university administration.”

Shivji also envisages the university’s restoration as a pan-African project although, at the same time, he stresses that national governments “must be persuaded that [higher] education is a priority on the basis that, like health, it is a strategic productive sector rather than just a service sector”.

Shivji’s argument for a continent-wide pan-African approach is based on what he terms “the fragility of the idea of nationalism based on the nation-state” and separate territorial domains; and also on what he views as the strength of regionalism in the African context.

“Unlike in other continents, regionalism in Africa – that is, pan-Africanism – gave birth to territorial nationalism, not the other way around,” he says.

Accordingly, he proposes that the effort to reclaim the idea of the university and build an African intellectual community “should take place as a pan-African endeavour at the continental level”.

Reclaim the ability to theorise

Adopting such an approach, Shivji contends, the present nature of African knowledge production can be transformed and African academia can reclaim its credibility and capacity to theorise.

“I think a new breed of ideas is required, which depends on many discussions, and debates being held at every opportunity … among African intellectuals.

“So, there is a need to engage in a double process: the process of building a pan-African intellectual community; and the process of raising these important questions.”

Shivji cites the collegial nature of the former University of East Africa, which had campuses in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, as an example of the kind of pan-African collaboration that could be fostered.

“There were annual meetings bringing together the subject teachers from the different disciplines at the three sister colleges [in Dar es Salaam, Kampala and Nairobi]. Views were exchanged on the content of the courses; on the work being undertaken; on the pedagogy, and so on,” he recalls.

“These discussions were very fruitful, indicating how the task of changing orientation cannot be an individual endeavour; if it is to be effective, it must always be a collective enterprise.”

Shivji contrasts this collaboration with the present academic climate, in which, for example, “few intellectuals in universities in other African countries know about or keep track of the debates taking place in South Africa”, and vice versa.

However, such is the kind of pan-African interaction that he would like to see as “a starting point” for the restoration of African academic endeavour, although he emphasises that this “cannot be left to happen spontaneously”.

“It should be undertaken in a conscious and conscientious way.”

This is imperative, says Shivji, particularly since “the continent cannot continue to depend on the North to revive its universities”.

“The North is not interested and understandably so. Higher education has become a major export for some countries in the North. Why, then, should they invest in reviving African universities?”

From a practical point of view, Shivji advises that South Africa, which became a destination for many academics leaving other African countries as their universities were starved of resources, has the potential to provide the leadership required to rebuild the African intellectual community.

“I would hope that greater energy and thinking in the South African academy may be directed at supporting and building relations with universities in other African countries, not in a predatory fashion but in the spirit of genuine pan-African collegiality,” he says.

“In this regard, the South African academy should plug into African debates, and not be constantly overawed by European debates.”

This article is based on an interview conducted by Professor Crain Soudien for ‘The Imprint of Education’ project, which is being implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. This project, which includes a series of critical engagements with experienced scholars and thought leaders on their reimaginings of higher education in Africa, investigates current and future challenges facing the sector, including best practices and innovations. Mark Paterson and Thierry M Luescher edited the transcript for focus and length.

Related Topics:Community Intellectual Rebuilding

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Opinion

Amnesty International Report and My Questions to Them

Published

2 days ago

May 7, 2026

Nigerian Tracker

– Sufyan Lawal Kabo

sefjamil3@gmail.com

The recent condemnation issued by Amnesty International against the Kano State Government over the alleged killing of five persons during activities surrounding the swearing in of the new Deputy Governor has continued to raise serious concerns among many observers in Kano.

While every responsible citizen condemns violence and the loss of innocent lives, many are asking whether Amnesty International acted professionally and fairly before rushing to issue a strong public accusation against the government of Kano State.

Amnesty International, can a government that has invested heavily in ending political thuggery and street violence genuinely be accused of sponsoring the same violence it is fighting to eliminate?

Would a government that established the Safe Corridor Kano Model, profiled thousands of repentant youths, and committed over six hundred million naira for rehabilitation, empowerment and reintegration of former thugs suddenly turn around to encourage killings and chaos?

Can Amnesty International deny the fact that Kano has battled political thuggery and Yan Daba violence for decades, long before the present administration came into office? And among previous administrations, which government confronted the problem more directly than the administration of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf?

What political benefit would any serious government gain from encouraging violence against citizens at a time it is working to secure public trust ahead of future elections?

Before issuing its condemnation, did Amnesty International contact the Kano State Government, the Police, DSS, Civil Defence, or any recognised security agency in Kano to verify the allegation properly? Or has social media content now become sufficient evidence for an international organisation claiming credibility and neutrality?

How did Amnesty International arrive at such a sensitive conclusion without presenting verifiable evidence to the public? And how sure are the people of Kano that those supplying information to the organisation are not politically biased individuals determined to damage the image of the present administration?

Is it professional for a respected international body to release emotionally charged reports involving deaths and violence without balanced investigation, fair hearing, or proper engagement with relevant authorities?

Can Amnesty International also deny the visible security efforts of the Kano State Government under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, including stronger collaboration with security agencies, community security initiatives, deployment of operational support, and consistent public warnings against political violence and hooliganism?

If the government’s objective was violence, why would it continue investing public resources into youth rehabilitation, anti thuggery programmes and community peace initiatives?

The truth remains that Kano State Government has already condemned every act of violence connected to the incident and security agencies are reportedly investigating the matter. The government has also maintained its commitment to bringing perpetrators to justice according to law.

Amnesty International must therefore understand that careless or poorly verified reports on sensitive matters can create unnecessary tension, damage public confidence and unfairly malign governments making visible efforts to solve difficult social problems.

Kano deserves fairness. The people deserve peace. And organisations claiming international credibility must uphold professionalism, objectivity and thorough investigation before issuing reports capable of inflaming public emotions and damaging institutional reputations.

Sefjamil writes from Abuja

#AmnestyInternational #nigeriasenate #nationalhouseofassembly #kanoemiratecouncil #NTA #NTAnews #whitehouse #CNNInternational #CNNPolitics #Bbcnews #Apkabio #bbcworld #BBCBreaking #AREWA24 #Tinubu #AbbaKabirYusuf #AbbaGidaGida #NTAUpdates #AITNEWS #DailyNigerian #vanguardnews #VanguardNewspaper #allnigerianewspapers #trendingreelsvideo #trendingnews #kano #AlJazeera #channelstv #life #facebook #instagram

Opinion

Evidence First: Why Amnesty International’s Kano Claims Cannot Stand-Mamman Iro

Published

3 days ago

May 7, 2026

Nigerian Tracker

By Mamman Iro Kano

May 7, 2026

On May 5, 2026, Kano State witnessed a moment of constitutional significance. Alhaji Murtala Sule Garo was formally sworn in as Deputy Governor, completing the executive structure of an administration that has navigated months of political turbulence with a clarity and a purposefulness that its governance record continues to validate. Within hours of that ceremony, Amnesty International released a report alleging that five people had been killed in connection with the event. The Kano State Government, in a formal press statement signed by the Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs, Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya, described the claim as misleading, unfounded, and mischievous, stating that active inquiries conducted with relevant security agencies produced no official report or credible evidence to support it, and that no violent incident occurred at the Kano State Government House or its surroundings during the official function. That irreconcilable gap between what Amnesty International alleged and what verified institutional assessments confirm is where this analysis begins, and where the evidence, examined honestly and without partisan filter, must ultimately speak for itself.

Let us be precise about what Amnesty International has alleged, because precision about the nature of an allegation determines the standard of evidence required to sustain it. This is not a vague claim about generalised insecurity in a northern Nigerian state. It is a specific allegation that five human beings were killed in direct connection with a formal state government ceremony, at or near the seat of the Kano State executive. That is among the most serious categories of claim available in the vocabulary of human rights reporting, and it carries a correspondingly heavy evidentiary burden. It attributes to a sitting administration not merely a failure to prevent violence but a direct and operational causal relationship between its own institutional activities and the deaths of five people. The fundamental question this analysis asks is straightforward: does the available evidence meet that burden? On the basis of the documented record, the answer is no.

The government’s rebuttal, issued through Commissioner Waiya on the same day as the Amnesty International report, establishes several institutionally grounded counter-claims that any responsible assessment must engage with seriously rather than dismiss as reflexive political defensiveness. The government states that it conducted active inquiries with relevant security agencies specifically to investigate the alleged incident and found no official report or credible evidence to support it. It states that no violent incident occurred at Government House or its surroundings during the swearing-in ceremony. It further notes that the Nigerian leadership of Amnesty International has, in its assessment, repeatedly demonstrated bias and unprofessional conduct in reports relating to Kano State while overlooking comparable developments elsewhere in the country, and it has called upon the organisation’s international leadership to monitor its Nigerian chapter’s activities in order to protect the organisation’s global integrity. These are specific, falsifiable, and institutionally grounded positions. They deserve the same investigative engagement that Amnesty International’s original allegations received, and the absence of independent forensic confirmation of the alleged deaths from any local security structure, community stakeholder, or civil society organisation with verifiable on-the-ground presence represents a critical and unresolved gap in the evidentiary foundation upon which the international narrative rests.

The methodological questions raised by this incident go beyond the specific facts of May 5, 2026, and engage with a broader and more consequential concern about how international human rights monitoring is conducted in environments as politically complex as Kano State. In today’s digital information environment, allegations circulate at velocities that far outpace the deliberate, forensically grounded verification processes that responsible documentation requires. Video content spreads without verified timestamps, geographic authentication, or editorial context. Short clips are selectively edited and repurposed, constructing plausible-seeming narratives from fragmentary and decontextualised evidence. Responsible human rights reporting, particularly in a state with Kano’s political and security complexity, must demonstrably rise above these limitations. Any attempt to directly implicate a state government in acts of organised violence must be supported by credible forensic evidence establishing verifiable operational linkages between institutional authority and the specific conduct alleged, verified intelligence assessments from recognised security structures, a documented understanding of the longstanding criminal rivalries and territorial disputes operating among youth groups in the affected communities, and independent on-the-ground verification involving community leaders, traditional authorities, and civil society organisations before conclusions are publicly disseminated. The Unifier Project’s considered assessment is that the claims advanced against Kano State on May 7, 2026, do not demonstrably meet these standards.

Beyond the specific facts of May 5, the broader institutional record of the Kano State Government presents a body of documented evidence that fundamentally complicates the narrative of state-sponsored violence. The administration’s Safe Corridor Kano Model, its flagship rehabilitative intervention targeting youth restiveness and street violence, has already profiled over 2,030 repentant youths for enrollment into its structured rehabilitation and reintegration programme. More than six hundred million naira has been approved for the first phase alone, targeting one thousand beneficiaries through vocational training, psychosocial support, and community reintegration pathways. These are not aspirational policy commitments. They are quantified, budgeted, and operationally active institutional investments in dismantling the conditions that produce youth violence. The logical incompatibility between an administration that has committed over N600 million to youth rehabilitation and an administration simultaneously accused of orchestrating the killing of citizens at its own official functions is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a substantive evidentiary consideration that any responsible investigation is obligated to address directly and honestly before reaching the conclusions that Amnesty International has chosen to advance.

The full governance record of this administration further deepens that incompatibility. Kano State is implementing a N1.477 trillion budget for 2026, the largest in its history, with 68 percent directed at capital projects. It has invested over N800 million in youth empowerment programmes benefiting more than 5,300 young people, disbursed over N334 million directly to 6,680 women entrepreneurs across all 44 local government areas, and deployed 2,000 trained Neighbourhood Watch operatives as a community-centred security intervention designed to reduce violent confrontations at the grassroots level. Kano ranked first in Nigeria’s 2025 NECO results. Its hospitals are being upgraded. Its roads are being rebuilt. Its farmers are receiving fertiliser, its dams are being constructed, and its young people are being empowered with tools, capital, and opportunity. This is the operational context within which any characterisation of this administration’s relationship to the welfare and safety of its citizens must be situated. It is a context that demands engagement rather than dismissal from any monitoring body that claims to be conducting evidence-based human rights assessment.

There is a further dimension to this controversy that must be named clearly and without diplomatic evasion. The perception, held by a growing number of informed observers within Kano’s civic and political communities, that Amnesty International applies differential levels of scrutiny to Kano State relative to comparable or more severe situations elsewhere in Nigeria, is not a fringe complaint or a partisan deflection. It is a concern about the institutional evenhandedness that determines whether human rights advocacy functions as a genuine instrument of accountability or as a mechanism of selective narrative construction. When a state government with a documented N600 million rehabilitation investment, a quantified youth empowerment record, and a formal security agency finding of no evidence for the alleged incident is subjected to internationally amplified allegations of organised violence without the forensic verification that such allegations require, the credibility deficit that results belongs not only to the monitoring organisation but to the broader enterprise of international human rights advocacy whose authority depends on its perceived consistency and impartiality. This is a concern that the international leadership of Amnesty International, if it takes its institutional mission seriously, cannot afford to disregard.

The position advanced in this commentary is neither anti-accountability nor pro-impunity. It is, precisely and unambiguously, pro-evidence. Accountability without evidence is not accountability. It is accusation. And accusation, however institutionally prestigious its source, does not become fact through repetition, amplification, or the authority of the body advancing it. It becomes fact through verification, corroboration, and the honest and transparent application of the evidentiary standards that distinguish responsible human rights documentation from the uncritical transmission of unverified claims. Kano State, its government, its institutions, and its 20 million people deserve to be assessed on the basis of verified evidence rather than viral narratives. The international community deserves human rights reporting that it can trust because it has earned that trust through methodological rigour rather than claimed through institutional reputation. And the communities of Kano State, who live with the real and daily consequences of how their home is characterised to the world, deserve nothing less than the truth, told with the honesty, the precision, and the evidentiary integrity that their situation demands. Evidence must come first. It must always come first. And until it does, claims of the gravity advanced against Kano on May 7, 2026, cannot, in good conscience, be allowed to stand unchallenged.

Mamman Iro Kano wrote in from Gwarzo Road, Kano, Kano State.

May 7, 2026

Opinion

The Unifier Perspective: Unifier Project Formally Contests the Evidentiary Basis of Amnesty International’s Claims Regarding the May 5 Kano Incident

Published

3 days ago

May 7, 2026

Nigerian Tracker

Issued by the Unifier Project, Kano State

May 7, 2026

The Unifier Project, a strategic grassroots coordination and civic engagement initiative with operational structures across all 44 Local Government Areas of Kano State, has formally and comprehensively contested the evidentiary basis, the methodological framework, and the investigative rigour of the claims recently circulated by Amnesty International regarding the unfortunate events of May 5, 2026. In a statement issued from its State Secretariat in Kano, the organisation expressed serious concern about what it characterises as a pattern of premature conclusion-drawing that privileges the velocity of digital content circulation over the deliberate, community-engaged, and forensically grounded verification processes that responsible human rights documentation demands.

The Unifier Project wishes to state unequivocally that its position in this matter is not one of reflexive institutional defensiveness or partisan political alignment. It is a principled insistence on the application of the same evidentiary standards, the same contextual rigour, and the same methodological discipline that credible human rights advocacy demands of the governments and institutions it monitors. The organisation stands firmly for truth, due process, and the protection of community peace, and it is precisely those values that compel it to challenge characterisations of the May 5 incident that, in its assessment, rely disproportionately on fragmented viral content and speculative interpretive frameworks rather than verified, independently corroborated, and contextually grounded investigative evidence.

The incident of May 5, 2026, as assessed by local security institutions, community stakeholders, and civil society organisations with direct knowledge of the affected communities, involved individuals and groups with longstanding criminal histories, territorial disputes, and inter-factional rivalries whose origins significantly predate the current administration and whose dynamics are embedded in the specific social and geographic conditions of the communities in which they operate. The Unifier Project maintains that any credible and responsible investigation of events in these communities must engage substantively with this documented local context before advancing conclusions about political motivation, institutional complicity, or state-level orchestration. To assign political causation to events whose most proximate and most documented explanation is criminal confrontation, in the absence of forensic evidence establishing direct operational linkages between political decision-making and the conduct alleged, is to substitute analytical convenience for investigative integrity.

The organisation draws particular attention to the documented policy commitments of the Kano State Government as a body of institutional evidence that any serious investigative framework is obligated to engage with rather than treat as irrelevant background. The administration has pursued a structured, programmatically defined, and resource-backed approach to addressing youth restiveness and street violence through the Safe Corridor initiative, a rehabilitative framework explicitly designed to create pathways for the social reintegration, vocational empowerment, and psychosocial recovery of vulnerable young people previously associated with organised criminality and street violence. The internal coherence of any allegation of state-sponsored violence must be evaluated against the totality of a government’s documented institutional behaviour. An administration that has invested public resources, political capital, and programmatic infrastructure in a deescalation framework of this scope cannot credibly be implicated, without compelling forensic evidence, in the simultaneous engineering of the very instability that its own institutional architecture is demonstrably designed to eliminate.

The Unifier Project also draws attention to the broader governance context within which the events of May 5, 2026, must be situated. The Kano State Government is currently implementing its most ambitious development budget in the state’s recorded history, a N1.477 trillion appropriation for 2026 with 68 percent directed at capital expenditure spanning education, infrastructure, healthcare, and social protection. It has invested over N800 million in youth empowerment programmes benefiting more than 5,300 young people across the state, disbursed over N334 million directly to 6,680 women entrepreneurs across all 44 local government areas, and deployed 2,000 trained Neighbourhood Watch operatives as a community-centred security intervention explicitly designed to reduce violent confrontations and strengthen civilian-security cooperation at the grassroots level. These are not abstract policy commitments. They are documented, verifiable, and independently assessable institutional actions that constitute the operational context within which any characterisation of this administration’s relationship to violence and instability must be rigorously evaluated.

With respect to the methodological concerns that this incident raises for the broader practice of international human rights monitoring, the Unifier Project wishes to articulate clearly the evidentiary standards that it considers non-negotiable for any responsible investigative conclusion regarding events of this nature. These include credible forensic evidence establishing verifiable operational linkages between institutional decision-making authority and the specific conduct alleged, verified intelligence assessments from recognised and accountable security structures with direct knowledge of the affected communities, a demonstrated and documented understanding of the longstanding rivalries, territorial histories, and criminal network dynamics operating among youth groups in the specific localities concerned, and independent on-the-ground verification processes that meaningfully engage traditional authorities, community leaders, civil society organisations, and relevant law enforcement institutions before conclusions are formed and publicly disseminated. Without these foundational standards, investigative outputs risk functioning not as instruments of accountability but as mechanisms of institutional narrative-building that may, whether intentionally or otherwise, distort rather than illuminate the complex realities they purport to document.

The organisation further notes that the long-term credibility and institutional authority of global human rights bodies depend critically on the perceived consistency, proportionality, and methodological evenhandedness of their monitoring activities across different regions, different administrations, and different categories of political actor. Investigative patterns that appear to apply differential evidentiary thresholds or differential levels of scrutiny to different communities generate, among those communities, a perception of selective activism that is difficult to distinguish from politically motivated monitoring, and that ultimately undermines the culture of civic accountability that responsible human rights organisations exist to strengthen rather than selectively deploy. The Unifier Project does not raise this concern to deflect legitimate scrutiny. It raises it because the integrity of international human rights advocacy as a global public good depends on its practitioners holding themselves to the same standards of evidence, consistency, and contextual honesty that they demand of others.

Kano State is a community in active, measurable, and documented transformation. Its urban renewal programmes, governance reforms, public sector modernisation initiatives, and community stabilisation efforts represent a sustained and verifiable commitment to building a safer, more inclusive, and more prosperous society for its more than 20 million residents. The Unifier Project, with its operational presence across all 44 Local Government Areas and its direct engagement with ward-level civic structures throughout the state, is positioned to affirm, from direct community knowledge, that this transformation is real, that it is generating tangible improvements in the daily lives of ordinary citizens, and that it deserves to be assessed on the basis of its documented outcomes rather than characterised through the lens of allegations that remain forensically unsubstantiated and contextually inadequate.

The Unifier Project reaffirms its commitment to civic accountability, community protection, and the defence of due process as foundational values of democratic governance. It respectfully but firmly urges Amnesty International to engage in a more collaborative, locally informed, and forensically rigorous investigative process, one that prioritises direct engagement with community stakeholders, traditional authorities, security institutions, and civil society actors with verifiable local knowledge, before issuing globally amplified conclusions whose reputational, political, and institutional consequences for the communities concerned are significant and lasting. Allegations of the gravity advanced in this instance should carry only one weight, the weight of independently verified, contextually grounded, and forensically corroborated evidence. The Unifier Project will continue to discharge its responsibility to the people of Kano State by ensuring that the state’s story is told with the accuracy, the balance, and the contextual integrity that its communities deserve.

About the Unifier Project: The Unifier Project is a strategic grassroots coordination and civic engagement initiative committed to community mobilisation, administrative transparency, civic participation, and the strengthening of socio-political unity across Kano State. With operational structures spanning all 44 Local Government Areas and active engagement at ward and polling unit levels throughout the state, the organisation serves as a community-anchored platform for informed civic advocacy, responsible public discourse, and the protection of Kano’s social and institutional integrity.

Signed:

Unifier Project, Kano State

Media and Strategic Communications Unit

May 7, 2026