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From Aminu Kano to Kano First: Reviving a Tradition of People-Driven Politics

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5 months ago

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Kano Map

 

There are political From Aminu Kano to Kano First: Reviving a Tradition of People-Driven Politics that arrive in their time and there are political ideas that arrive before their time, ideas whose significance is not fully understood until the moment has passed and history, with its characteristic unhurried clarity, has arranged the evidence into a pattern that the present could not see. The philosophy of Malam Aminu Kano was, for much of its duration, one of the latter. In the political environment of mid-twentieth century Northern Nigeria, dominated by the patrician certainties of the NPC and the conservative social order that sustained them, Aminu Kano’s insistence that politics must belong to the talakawa, to the ordinary men and women who had for so long been governed without being consulted, was radical enough to be dismissed, marginalised, and persistently defeated at the ballot box. Yet the idea refused to die. It lodged itself in the political consciousness of Kano’s people with a tenacity that no electoral defeat could dislodge, and it shaped, over the decades that followed, the civic culture of a state that has consistently demanded more of its leaders than most Nigerian states have ever thought to ask.
It is against the backdrop of that long, unfinished democratic inheritance that the Kano First philosophy of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf must be understood and assessed. The connection between Aminu Kano’s people-driven politics and the Kano First Initiative is not merely rhetorical or historical. It is structural. Both rest on the same foundational conviction: that the legitimacy of governance derives not from the power of those who govern but from the quality of service rendered to those who are governed, that politics is not a competition for personal advancement but a vocation of collective service, and that the measure of a leader is not the durability of his hold on power but the tangible improvement he delivers to the lives of the ordinary citizens who trusted him with it. Aminu Kano articulated this conviction in the language of his era. Governor Yusuf is attempting to institutionalize it in the language and the instruments of his.
The historical significance of this attempt should not be underestimated. Kano’s political culture, for all its celebrated civic consciousness, has not been immune to the distortions that have afflicted Nigerian democracy more broadly. The decades that separated Aminu Kano’s era from the present have not been, in the main, decades of deepening democratic practice. They have been decades of military interruptions, institutional decay, the rise of godfatherism as a governing logic, the progressive colonization of public resources by private interests, and the gradual but devastating erosion of the civic values that once made Kano’s political culture a genuine source of national inspiration. The generation of young Kano citizens that Governor Yusuf now governs is a generation that has inherited the memory of Aminu Kano’s idealism without, in most cases, having experienced the kind of governance that idealism was supposed to produce. Their political consciousness is real and it is sharp, but it has been sharpened more by disappointment than by affirmation, more by the evidence of what governance has failed to deliver than by the experience of what it can achieve when it is genuinely committed to the people’s welfare.
The Kano First Initiative is, in its deepest ambition, an attempt to change that experience. Not through grand proclamations or the manufactured optimism of political communication, but through the patient, evidence-based, institutionally serious work of rebuilding the relationship between Kano’s government and Kano’s citizens on foundations of genuine trust, demonstrated accountability, and the visible alignment between what government says and what government does. The comprehensive policy framework produced under the intellectual stewardship of the Honourable Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs, Comrade Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya, the man widely and deservedly known as the Limamin Kano First, is the most concrete expression of this ambition. It draws on Islamic ethical governance, on Kano’s own sociocultural heritage, and on the modern science of behavioral change to construct a framework for societal renewal that is simultaneously rooted in Kano’s deepest traditions and responsive to the challenges of its contemporary reality. Aminu Kano would have recognized its spirit immediately.
The administration’s approach to youth inclusion deserves particular emphasis, because it addresses what is perhaps the most politically consequential dimension of Kano’s current social reality. Kano is an overwhelmingly young society, a society in which the aspirations, energies, and frustrations of a vast and rapidly growing youth population represent both the greatest potential resource and the most serious governance challenge that any administration must navigate. The deliberate opening of leadership opportunities to young professionals, the integration of youth into governance structures rather than merely into election campaigns, and the linking of youth-focused communication with concrete economic empowerment programmes, including skills development, entrepreneurship support, and market-based outreach, all reflect an understanding that political engagement divorced from economic opportunity is ultimately unsustainable. Young people who are given a genuine stake in their society’s progress do not become agents of its destabilization. They become its most committed defenders.
The policy record across education, healthcare, and economic empowerment provides the material evidence on which the Kano First narrative ultimately depends for its credibility. Teacher recruitment, school renovation, the expansion of access to learning resources, the strengthening of free and compulsory education, the upgrading of primary healthcare facilities in rural communities, the introduction of economic empowerment programmes targeting small businesses, farmers, and artisans, these are not merely programmatic achievements to be listed in a governance report. They are, taken together, the concrete expression of a governing philosophy that insists on the connection between political commitment and lived improvement, between the language of people-first governance and the reality of people-felt results. In the tradition of Aminu Kano, who always insisted that politics must be judged by what it delivers to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, it is precisely this connection that gives the Kano First Initiative its moral weight.
The role of strategic communication in sustaining this connection between policy and public understanding cannot be overstated, and it is here that Comrade Waiya’s contribution to the Kano First project becomes most visibly consequential. In the information environment of contemporary Kano, where social media platforms amplify misinformation with a speed and reach that no previous generation of communicators has had to contend with, the quality of government communication is not merely a matter of public relations. It is a governance necessity. Citizens who do not understand the policies that are being implemented in their name cannot meaningfully participate in the civic life that those policies are designed to strengthen. The ministry’s investment in grassroots communication networks, in the training of information officers across all forty-four local government areas, in partnerships with media organizations and civil society bodies, and in the development of Hausa-language content that reaches the communities that matter most, is the infrastructure of democratic participation, built deliberately and maintained consistently in the service of the people-driven politics that both Aminu Kano and the Kano First Initiative champion.
The broader implications of the Kano First philosophy for Nigeria’s democratic evolution are worth stating explicitly, because they extend well beyond the boundaries of a single state. Nigeria is a country whose democratic experience has been persistently disfigured by the subordination of governance to politics, by the tendency of those who gain power to use it primarily in the service of their own continuation rather than in the service of the citizens who granted it. The Kano experience, if it succeeds in demonstrating that people-centered governance is not merely an aspirational slogan but a practical, institutionally realizable commitment, has the potential to contribute something genuinely valuable to the national conversation about what democratic leadership in Nigeria can and should look like. Kano has done this before. The political education that Aminu Kano provided to an entire generation of Nigerian democrats did not stay within Kano’s boundaries. It traveled, through the networks of civic consciousness that genuine political ideas always generate, into the broader national conversation. The Kano First Initiative has the same potential, if it is sustained with the seriousness and consistency that its intellectual foundations deserve.
Like any political philosophy, the long-term success of Kano First will ultimately be measured not by the quality of its documentation or the sophistication of its communication, but by the depth of its penetration into the daily experience of Kano’s citizens, by whether the young woman in Sabon Gari market feels that her government has genuinely prioritized her welfare, by whether the farmer in Rano Local Government Area has seen tangible improvement in the services available to him, by whether the student in a Kano public school has reason to believe that the system she is part of is genuinely committed to her future. These are demanding tests, and they will not be passed overnight. But they are the right tests, and the fact that the Kano First Initiative has chosen to submit itself to them, rather than retreating to the easier metrics of political performance, is itself a demonstration of the seriousness that the legacy of Aminu Kano demands.
Aminu Kano spent a lifetime insisting that the people of Kano deserved better. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, through the Kano First Initiative and the governing philosophy it represents, is making the same insistence in the language and the instruments of a new era. Whether that insistence is vindicated by history will depend on many things, on the quality of implementation, the resilience of commitment, the engagement of citizens, and the willingness of every institution in Kano’s civic life to claim this agenda as its own. But the insistence itself, grounded in the same democratic conviction that animated one of Nigeria’s greatest political figures, is already something worth honoring. Kano has always known, at its best, what politics is for. The Kano First Initiative is an invitation to remember.

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Munir I. Publisher is a political historian and governance analyst based in Kano State.

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Opinion

Kano Governor Yusuf Shortlisted for Africa’s SANKOFA Award of Excellence in Infrastructural Development

Published

5 days ago

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July 25, 2026

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By Abba Anwar

Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf makes a list of potential Awardees across West African sub-region, observed and screened by an African association named Réseau des Jeunes du Sahel pour le Progrès, le Développement et la Démocratie (Network of Sahel Youth for Progress, Development and Democracy), on infrastructural development in their respective states.

The top most Award from the association, called Sankofa Award of Excellence across various sectors, is given to people or leaders who excel in their respective areas of work or responsibilities.

With the recent disclosure made by the Commissioner of Public Procurement, Projects Monitoring and Evaluation, Nura Ma’aji Sumaila, on the state of infrastructural development and payments of contracts in the state, the association included Kano to be part of the states across Nigeria and West African countries, screened for an Award of Excellence.

Source close to the association reveals that, Governor Yusuf’s achievements in the area of infrastructural development, could not be neglected and the Governor stands a better position to be seen and amplified across the globe. As a result of his commitment and service to humanity.

Parts of the major reasons that informed the association’s decision to include Governor Yusuf for Sankofa Award of Excellence for Infrastructural Development in West Africa is his genuine inclusion of infrastructures that are human centred, modern, location specified and standardization process and procedures.

According to the source, the Screening Committee saddled with the responsibility of selecting qualified personalities across West Africa are in their final stage of releasing the result. Assuring that, under infrastructural development, Kano excels. Though not officially announced.

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When Governor Yusuf gets this Award, he will be the second person from Nigeria who bags the Award. Last year the Deputy Senate President Barau I Jibrin, PhD, CFR, got the SANKOFA Award for Legislative Excellence in Africa. Coincidentally, Governor Yusuf who is also from Kano state, would be the second Nigerian in this category.

The President of the association Mr Fassoko Doumbia, from Mali, confirmed to my source that, from all indication, “Kano State Governor, from Nigeria, Mr Abba Kabir Yusuf is in the forefront of those screened for the Award.”

With this recognition of excellence, the Award places Governor Yusuf to be one of the best Nigerian governors. And the best across West Africa on infrastructural development. One good thing about the Award is, it will as well serve as an engine oil for state commitment and unwavering service delivery.

Mr Doumbia reveals further that “… it is amazing looking at the unmatched number of completed and ongoing projects as Kano has 799 completed projects and 709 projects at various stages of completion. It is encouraging to see that Governor Yusuf is executing over 1,508 developmental projects across all 44 LGAs.”

What keeps hope and commitment alive are the transparent monitoring, evaluation and effective payment to contractors. Of which out of N928 Billion of the total contract sum, the state has already paid over N600 Billion, that’s 64.7% payment rate.
Unlike in many states in Nigeria and West Africa. The association believes that Kano institutionalized transparency through the Ministry of Public Procurement, Projects Monitoring and Evaluation.

The screening committee appreciated Kano’s strategic and balanced infrastructure spread, between urban and rural areas plus improved security. For urban renewal it has the sum of N169 Billion. While there are 5km roads in 38 LGAs with the sum of N118 Billion. They appreciated the rural infrastructure across 44 LGAs with the sum of N397 Billion for roads, education, healthcare, and social services.

While under security infrastructure the total sum of N6.863 Billion for Neighborhood Security Watch offices in 36 LGAs. This assured deliberate, balanced development with value for money, quality delivery, and measurable impact on the lives of the people. All courtesy Governor Yusuf.

It serves also as indices of how Governor Yusuf makes the list for such Award, that his infrastructures are signals for the delivery of landmark, human-centered projects as Kano completed tangible projects that directly improve lives of the citizenry, with 40 metropolitan roads, 44 PHCs, 120 schools, 5 water plants, with the ongoing Dan Agundi and Tal’udu flyovers at over 80% completion.

It has also been discovered that, Kano enjoys proven technical leadership and political will. Which glaringly displays the political will and technical competence required to drive massive infrastructure without corruption or delays. This is part of the major engagements being identified, which eventually resulted into the popular Sankofa Award of Excellence.

Anwar writes from Kano
Saturday, 25th July, 2026

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Opinion

Beyond the Numbers: What the Ekiti 2026 Governorship Results Reveal About Coalition Politics and Path to 2027

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1 week ago

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July 20, 2026

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By Abass Sherifat Taiwo

Returning Officer Adenike Oladiji, a professor and Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, announced the results in the early hours of Sunday, at roughly 3:13 a.m. Incumbent Governor Biodun Oyebanji of the APC won comfortably, polling 319,224 votes across the state’s 16 local government areas. His closest challenger, the PDP’s Oluwole Oluyede, trailed far behind with 40,543 votes, while the ADC’s Dare Bejide came in third with 12,872 votes.

Of the 384,940 voters accredited for the election, 375,777 cast valid votes, a validity rate of about 97.6%, suggesting relatively few spoiled or rejected ballots.

Oyebanji’s win carries added weight as the first consecutive re-election in Ekiti’s history, a state known for unseating incumbents since 1999. His dominance was also total: he won all sixteen LGAs, and even his closest contest, in Ikere, was still a comfortable margin. His five strongest councils alone delivered nearly half his statewide votes, showing concentrated rather than thin support.

Elite alignment mattered too. For the first time, every living former Ekiti governor backed his re-election, leaving the opposition without any prominent defectors to rally behind. This unified backing functioned as a coordinated endorsement strategy, a visible signal of consensus that opposition parties had no comparable message to counter.

Between the opposition parties, PDP’s showing is more telling than ADC’s. ADC placing third as a newer platform isn’t surprising, but PDP, a long-established national party, barely crossed 3,000 votes in most councils, pointing to weak grassroots structure rather than just a bad cycle. The deeper question is whether this reflects a structural failure or a failure to sustain visibility and message presence at the ward level between election cycles.

Party | Votes | % of Valid Votes
APC | 319,224 | 84.95%
PDP | 40,543 | 10.79%
ADC | 12,872 | 3.43%
ADP | ~1,289 | 0.34%
Accord | 564 | 0.15%
LP | ~263 | 0.07%
AAC | ~188 | 0.05%

When the vote totals of every opposition party are combined, they amount to roughly 55,719 votes, or about 14.83% of all valid votes cast, a stark contrast to the APC’s dominant 84.95% share on its own. Even in a hypothetical scenario where every opposition party ran on a single, fully united ticket, their combined total would still fall short of the APC’s by approximately 263,505 votes. This gap illustrates just how commanding Oyebanji’s victory was: it was not simply a matter of a divided opposition splitting votes among several parties, but a result that would have withstood even total opposition unity.

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Following the Ekiti result, APC framed it as proof of growing national support ahead of 2027, pointing to the rise in its vote totals in the state from about 187,000 in 2022 to roughly 318,000 in 2026, and projecting even higher numbers for Tinubu in 2027. Opposition parties, including the ADC and SDP, pushed back, arguing that Ekiti’s off-cycle, low-turnout nature makes it a poor predictor of a national contest.

Both claims need scrutiny. APC’s growth trend is real, but it happened in a state the party already governs, where incumbency and federal attention worked in its favour, so it says more about consolidating an existing stronghold than expanding into contested territory. The opposition’s caution is fair, but understates that APC’s structural advantages, incumbency and federal resources, aren’t unique to Ekiti and could repeat elsewhere. The more accurate takeaway is that Ekiti confirms APC’s strength where it already holds power, without proving it can replicate that in genuinely competitive states by 2027.

ADC’s third-place finish in Ekiti, just 3.43% of the vote, looks unremarkable on its own, but it only makes sense next to the party’s national story. A year earlier, ADC had positioned itself as the face of a new opposition coalition, pulling in heavyweight names like Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi with the promise of a unified front against the APC. That promise hasn’t held: Obi and Kwankwaso have since defected to a rival platform, the NDC, while ADC battles leadership disputes and court cases that put its own 2027 participation in doubt.

That is the real lesson here for coalition politics as a communication problem, not just a structural one. ADC did not fail for lack of big names, it had plenty. What it could not do was hold one coherent message together once multiple egos and regional bases began pulling in different directions. Whether it can still become the platform it promised by 2027 is uncertain, but Ekiti is an early sign of a bigger unraveling.

Beyond Ekiti, the result speaks to a deeper pattern in Nigerian opposition politics: alliances are far easier to announce than to sustain. This suggests APC’s greatest advantage going into the next general election may not be its own performance, but the opposition’s continued inability to stay united. The near-total validity rate and one-sided outcome in Ekiti also raise questions about how genuinely competitive Nigeria’s state elections currently are, and whether low-turnout, off-cycle polls like this one can reliably signal national voter sentiment.

The Ekiti result is less a story about Oyebanji’s popularity alone than about the opposition’s structural fragility. Even a fully united opposition ticket would not have closed the gap, which means the problem isn’t vote-splitting, it’s organisational weakness, unstable coalitions, and the absence of a party capable of matching APC’s machinery and incumbency advantages. What Nigeria’s opposition needs before 2027 isn’t just structural unity, but a coherent, disciplined communication strategy capable of sustaining one message across factions, something no coalition has yet demonstrated. Until Nigeria’s opposition can build a coalition that survives contact with real electoral pressure, results like Ekiti’s are likely to repeat themselves in APC strongholds heading into 2027.

By Abass Sherifat Taiwo
Department of Development and Strategic communication University of Abuja
200level

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Opinion

Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf Has Earned a Vote of Confidence on Education

Published

2 weeks ago

on

July 19, 2026

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By Hon. Muhammad Sanusi S. Kiru, FCIA
(Former Commissioner of Education, Kano State)

There comes a time in public discourse when fairness must prevail over partisanship and facts must take precedence over preconceived opinions. That moment has come in my assessment of the educational reforms being implemented by the administration of His Excellency, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf.

As a former Commissioner of Education and someone who has consistently evaluated government performance with candour, I owe the people of Kano State an honest appraisal of the Governor’s performance in the education sector. After objectively reviewing the administration’s interventions from 2024 to 2026, particularly its determined efforts to address the acute shortage of teachers, I have reached an inescapable conclusion: Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf deserves a vote of confidence for his outstanding commitment to the development of education in Kano State.

One of the greatest challenges confronting our educational system has been the persistent shortage of teachers, resulting in unfavourable teacher-pupil and teacher-student ratios across many public schools. This problem has adversely affected the quality of teaching and learning for many years.

The present administration has confronted this challenge with courage and determination. Between 2024 and 2026, the government recruited or absorbed 8,715 permanent teachers and engaged 3,688 temporary BESDA Cohort V teachers, bringing the documented total to 12,403 education personnel. With recruitments by other education agencies, the overall figure is widely estimated at approximately 13,000 teachers.

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This represents one of the largest teacher recruitment exercises in the history of Kano State. More importantly, it is a strategic investment in the future of our children and in the long-term development of the state. By substantially reducing the teacher deficit, the administration has strengthened both the basic and post-basic education subsectors and created a stronger foundation for improved educational outcomes. The new recruitment not only means making our classrooms more vibrant and ensuring that teaching is consistently taking place, but it also signifies a positive shift in the narrative reflected in monitoring reports, the annual school census, and national personnel data.

Looking at the tangible achievements now before us, particularly in education, it is clear that the administration has made significant and commendable progress. Leadership should always be judged by measurable accomplishments, and in this regard, the Governor has acquitted himself admirably.

One area where the administration must, however, improve is public communication. Many of its remarkable achievements have not received the publicity they deserve. A well-coordinated and effective publicity strategy would ensure that citizens fully appreciate the scope and impact of these landmark interventions.

As His Excellency prepares to personally attend the special ceremony for the presentation of appointment letters to the newly employed teachers on Tuesday, 21st July 2026, I consider it appropriate to congratulate him on this historic milestone. The ceremony is more than a presentation of appointment letters; it is a celebration of renewed hope for thousands of families, a reaffirmation of government’s commitment to quality education, and a significant step towards building a stronger educational system for future generations.

I wish His Excellency a successful and hitch-free ceremony and pray that Almighty Allah grants him wisdom, good health, and continued strength to sustain the ongoing transformation of the education sector. May this programme mark the beginning of even greater achievements in the quest to provide every child in Kano State with access to quality education delivered by competent and dedicated teachers.

Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf deserves sincere commendation for these giant strides. If this policy of continuous recruitment and investment in teachers is sustained, it will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the defining legacies of his administration. Future generations will look back on this period as a turning point in the educational history of Kano State.

I therefore extend my heartfelt congratulations to His Excellency and offer him a well-deserved vote of confidence. I also wish him every success as he formally presents appointment letters to these newly recruited teachers on Tuesday. May the occasion be memorable, successful, and another milestone in the march towards educational excellence in Kano State.

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