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<p>By Mohammed Babagana Abubakar<br />
28 February 2026</p>
<p>In the theatre of Nigerian politics, certain actors have mastered what analysts call the distraction technique: generating maximum noise about injustice at precisely the moment their own relevance is slipping away. The recent outbursts by Alhaji Buba Galadima against His Excellency, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, and the Director of the Department of State Services (DSS) in Kano State is a clear demonstration of this manoeuvre. The claims of midnight justice and the systematic arrest of opposition voices paint a dramatic picture of a state in crisis. The facts, examined honestly, tell a fundamentally different story.</p>
<p>It is not coincidental that Galadima&#8217;s public offensive against the Governor and the DSS intensified immediately following his removal as Chairman of the Governing Council of Kano State Polytechnic in February 2026. Governor Yusuf, acting under the stated policy of his Kano First Agenda, a governance framework oriented toward institutional performance and the prioritisation of Kano&#8217;s developmental interests, relieved Galadima of the position, citing the need for optimal performance and institutional repositioning. The role was subsequently conferred on the Emir of Gaya, Alhaji Aliyu Abdulkadir, a figure whose stature and local relevance align directly with the Governor&#8217;s repositioning objectives.<br />
For a public figure who held a senior institutional appointment in a state of which he is not an indigene, a graceful and dignified exit would have been the appropriate response. Instead, Galadima chose retribution. His subsequent media campaign, escalating in intensity and in the seriousness of its allegations with each successive interview, is not the behaviour of a disinterested democratic advocate. It is the behaviour of a man whose access to institutional privilege has been withdrawn, and who is determined to exact a political cost for that withdrawal.</p><div class="m1jjx1DF" style="clear:both;float:left;width:100%;margin:0 0 20px 0;"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

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<p>The specific allegations Galadima has advanced, including claims about the arrest of a radio personality and the characterisation of security agency actions as politically motivated persecution, represent a calculated misrepresentation of the constitutional and operational realities of governance in Kano State. Kano is navigating a complex security and political environment, one shaped by the Governor&#8217;s strategic realignment with the APC and the accompanying need to stabilise the state&#8217;s politics within a new national power configuration. In that context, the actions of the DSS have been directed, as they should be, by federal law, institutional mandate, and specific credible complaints, not by partisan instruction.<br />
Freedom of expression, guaranteed under Section 39 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a right the Governor&#8217;s administration has consistently respected. However, no constitutional guarantee of free expression extends to the use of media platforms to incite public disorder, spread demonstrably false information, or engage in conduct that, under the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act of 2015, constitutes a criminal offence. When security agencies invite individuals for questioning in response to credible complaints under these provisions, that is the rule of law functioning as designed. Characterising it as political kidnapping is not democratic advocacy. It is deliberate and legally questionable misrepresentation.</p>
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<p>While Galadima has been constructing his narrative of persecution, the administration of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has been constructing something considerably more consequential: a governance record. The administration has pursued the reform of Kano&#8217;s tertiary institutions, addressing years of accumulated structural dysfunction. It has moved to clear long-overdue gratuity obligations to retired civil servants, a commitment to public workers that previous administrations allowed to languish. And it has taken deliberate steps to dismantle the architecture of godfatherism, the entrenched system of patronage-based political control that has historically subordinated Kano&#8217;s public institutions to the interests of political power brokers rather than the citizens those institutions exist to serve.<br />
It is precisely this dismantling of godfatherism that illuminates the deeper logic of Galadima&#8217;s campaign. His objection is not fundamentally to the governance philosophy of the Yusuf administration. It is to a system in which access to public institutional positions, and the patronage and influence those positions confer, is no longer guaranteed by political connection alone. The removal from the Polytechnic board was not merely an administrative decision. It was a signal that the old arrangements no longer apply. Galadima&#8217;s response has been to attempt to demonstrate, through sustained public aggression, that such decisions carry a political cost. Governor Yusuf and his administration must, and should, remain undeterred by that calculus.</p>
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<p>The people of Kano are neither passive observers nor easily manipulated audiences. They are a politically sophisticated electorate with a long institutional memory and a demonstrated capacity to distinguish between genuine democratic advocacy and the grievance politics of displaced privilege. Galadima is not fighting for the common people of Kano. He is fighting for a lost title, a withdrawn appointment, and a diminished political footprint. That is his right. But it should be named honestly for what it is.<br />
Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf was elected to govern Kano in the interest of its people, not to preserve the access arrangements of those who regard public office as personal entitlement. His administration, the DSS, and all institutions operating within their constitutional mandates must remain focused on that mission, undistracted by the noise of those whose loudness is inversely proportional to the credibility of their arguments. Kano&#8217;s future will be built on governance, performance, and accountability, not on the manufactured grievances of those left behind by the end of an era they benefited from and now seek to restore.</p>
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<p>ABOUT THE AUTHOR<br />
Mohammed Babagana Abubakar is a political commentator and analyst with a keen interest in governance, accountability, and the democratic development of Kano State and Northern Nigeria.</p>
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<p>The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not represent the position of any organisation, party, or institution.</p>
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