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<p>By Com. Munir I. Publisher<br />
28 February 2026</p>
<p>In politics, timing does not merely reveal strategy, but also reveals motive. The timing of Alhaji Buba Galadima&#8217;s recent and escalating attacks on His Excellency, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State, and the Director of the Department of State Services, is not ambiguous. These attacks did not arise from any long-standing or principled concern for democratic governance. They surfaced, with remarkable precision, in the immediate aftermath of his removal as Chairman of the Governing Council of Kano State Polytechnic, an administrative decision taken as part of a deliberate programme of institutional restructuring and performance-driven governance reform under the Governor&#8217;s Kano First Agenda. The conclusion this sequence invites is not complicated: this is not about democracy. It is about disappointment.</p><div class="UvY3NNin" 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>Galadima held his Polytechnic appointment as a matter of gubernatorial favour, not constitutional right. Public appointments of this nature are, by their very design, subject to review, performance evaluation, and administrative discretion. Governor Yusuf&#8217;s decision to reposition the Polytechnic&#8217;s governance structure, conferring the chairmanship on the Emir of Gaya, Alhaji Aliyu Abdulkadir, was an exercise of that discretion in the direct service of the administration&#8217;s institutional reform agenda. There is nothing in the Nigerian Constitution, the Education (National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions) Act, or any other applicable legal framework that grants a former appointee the right to retain a position indefinitely, or to treat its withdrawal as evidence of political persecution.</p>
<p>The pattern Galadima has followed is one that Nigerians with any length of political memory will recognise immediately. Silence, or at least the absence of public denunciation, during the period of appointment. Then, upon removal, a sudden and passionate discovery of authoritarianism, suppression, and democratic crisis in the same administration that previously deserved no such criticism. The coincidence is not merely obvious. It is instructive.</p>
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<p>Among the most troubling aspects of Galadima&#8217;s campaign is his attempt to implicate the Director of the DSS in Kano in what he characterises as a coordinated crackdown on opposition. This allegation is constitutionally illiterate at best and deliberately deceptive at worst. The DSS is a federal institution, established under the National Security Agencies Act of 1986, operating under federal authority, and accountable through the National Security Adviser to the President of the Federal Republic. Its operational decisions are not directed by state governors, and the suggestion that Governor Yusuf exercises command over its activities in Kano is a fundamental misrepresentation of how Nigerian federalism and its security architecture actually function.<br />
The DSS Director in Kano has conducted the institution&#8217;s affairs within its constitutional mandate and in response to specific, lawful complaints. Where individuals have been invited for questioning, the basis has been credible concerns under Nigeria&#8217;s existing legal framework, including the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act of 2015, which clearly defines the boundaries between protected expression and criminal conduct online. Labelling these lawful processes as political vendettas is not advocacy. It is the deliberate manipulation of public understanding for personal and partisan ends.</p>
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<p>The empirical reality of Kano under Governor Yusuf&#8217;s administration contradicts Galadima&#8217;s narrative at every significant point. Opposition figures operate and speak freely. The media, both traditional and digital, functions without systematic interference. Political organising continues across party lines. Civil society remains active and vocal. These are the observable conditions of a state in which democratic space, whatever its imperfections, is functioning. They are not the conditions of a state in the grip of authoritarian suppression.<br />
Meanwhile, the administration&#8217;s governance record is tangible and growing. Kano&#8217;s tertiary institutions are undergoing structural reform long overdue. Gratuity obligations to retired civil servants, allowed to accumulate through years of administrative neglect, are being addressed. The architecture of godfatherism, through which institutional appointments were historically distributed as political rewards rather than allocated on the basis of competence and public interest, is being systematically dismantled. These reforms will inevitably discomfort those whose influence depended on the old order. But the discomfort of the privileged is not a democratic crisis. It is a governance dividend.</p>
<p>The people of Kano are among the most politically literate and historically aware citizens in Nigeria. They have navigated decades of complex political transitions, have seen multiple iterations of the same grievance politics now on display, and have developed a refined capacity to distinguish between principled democratic criticism and bitterness rebranded as activism. That capacity must be exercised now, clearly and without sentimentality.<br />
Freedom of expression, guaranteed under Section 39 of the Nigerian Constitution, is a right this administration has not infringed. What it has done, and what it will continue to do, is ensure that the constitutional right to speak freely is not conflated with an imagined right to spread misinformation, incite disorder, or manipulate public discourse through fabricated narratives of persecution. Freedom of expression is a constitutional guarantee. Freedom to misinform is not. That distinction is not a limitation on democracy. It is a condition of its survival.</p>
<p>Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf was elected to serve the people of Kano, to reform its institutions, strengthen its governance, and build a future that belongs to its citizens rather than to the patronage networks of its political past. His administration continues that work, undistracted by the noise of those who mistake personal grievance for democratic purpose.</p>
<p>History, as it always does, will draw a clear and unsparing line between those who used their position in public life to build institutions, serve communities, and advance the common good, and those who turned to attacking those institutions the moment the privileges those institutions had conferred were withdrawn. Kano deserves serious politics grounded in policy, evidence, and genuine public interest. What Galadima is offering is none of these things. And the people of Kano, informed and politically mature as they are, know the difference.</p>
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