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Saminu Umar Ph.D, Senior Lecture; Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University, Kano surijyarzaki@gmail.com
There is a particular kind of political courage that does not announce itself with drama, does not seek the validation of crowds, and does not wait for the approval of godfathers. It is the kind that sits quietly inside a budget document, inside a policy decision, inside an early morning visit to a dying industrial estate, inside the deliberate and systematic dismantling of decades of economic underperformance. It is the kind of courage that says, not in speeches but in actions, that a great city will not accept a diminished destiny.
That is the story of Kano under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf. And it is a story that is only just beginning to be fully told. To appreciate what Governor Yusuf is building, one must first confront, honestly and without sentimentality, what Kano had become before he assumed office in May 2023.
Kano was once, without serious dispute, the undisputed commercial and industrial capital of Northern Nigeria and one of the most economically consequential cities on the African continent. Its trans-Saharan trade connections, dating back more than five centuries, made it a terminal point of commerce linking sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Its groundnut pyramids, towering monuments of agricultural productivity that defined Nigeria’s pre-oil economy, symbolised a city that understood how to convert natural resources into national wealth. Its textile mills, at their peak employing hundreds of thousands of workers, made it one of West Africa’s most productive manufacturing centres. Its leather industry, anchored on the ancient Kofar Mata dye pits that have operated continuously for over 500 years, produced finished goods that travelled to markets in France, Italy, and across the Arab world.
Then came decades of policy neglect, energy poverty, deindustrialisation, and a political culture that prioritised the personal ambitions of powerful individuals over the developmental needs of a city of millions. The groundnut pyramids disappeared. The textile mills fell silent. The industrial estates, Sharada, Bompai, and Challawa, which once hummed with the sound of productive enterprise, became landscapes of rusting machinery, abandoned factory floors, and unfulfilled potential. Kano did not lose its identity overnight. It lost it slowly, painfully, and largely in silence.
Governor Yusuf inherited that silence. He is determined to fill it with something far more enduring.
The most honest and revealing thing any governor can show you is not a speech. It is a budget. Speeches are aspirations. Budgets are commitments. And the budget Governor Yusuf signed into law for 2026, a historic N1.477 trillion appropriation, the largest in Kano’s entire history, is a commitment of extraordinary ambition and clarity.
Of that figure, 68 percent, representing the overwhelming majority of public expenditure, is allocated to capital projects. Infrastructure receives N346.2 billion, education N405.3 billion, and health N212.2 billion. These are not the budget lines of a government managing decline. They are the budget lines of a government engineering a renaissance.
The infrastructure allocation alone signals the governor’s understanding that no city can reclaim commercial and industrial leadership without the physical foundations to support it. Urban road expansions, transformer procurement, solar streetlight installation across the state, housing development initiatives, and market renovation projects spanning all 44 local government areas of the state are not isolated interventions. They are components of a coherent spatial development strategy designed to make Kano physically competitive with any commercial city in West Africa.
The 2025 budget, which preceded this historic 2026 appropriation, recorded over 80 percent implementation performance, a figure that speaks not merely to financial planning but to execution capacity, the rarest and most valuable quality in Nigerian state governance.
No commercial or industrial capital can sustain itself on infrastructure alone. It requires people. Educated, skilled, healthy, and economically empowered people who can drive enterprise, absorb technology, and participate meaningfully in a modern economy. Governor Yusuf understands this with a clarity that is reflected in every major policy decision his administration has taken.
In education, the results are already visible and measurable. Kano ranked first in Nigeria’s 2025 NECO results, a historic achievement for a state that had watched its educational standards erode for years. That ranking did not emerge from luck. It emerged from a state of emergency declared on the education sector, backed by mass classroom renovations, free basic education, payment of NECO fees for students, an expanded scholarship programme, the recruitment of 400 Mathematics teachers, and the establishment of Kano State Polytechnic in Gaya to extend technical and vocational education to the state’s southern corridor.
In healthcare, the administration has invested N149.7 billion in upgrading hospitals across local government areas, launched the Abba Care Scheme to expand health insurance coverage, and partnered with international organisations to strengthen maternal and newborn health services across the North West region.
In women and youth empowerment, over N334 million has been disbursed to 6,680 women across all 44 local government areas, each receiving a monthly stipend of N50,000 to grow their businesses and support their families. More than N800 million has been invested in youth empowerment programmes benefiting over 5,300 young people. Tricycles have been distributed to enable young men and women engage in productive economic activities. These are not welfare gestures. They are deliberate investments in the human capital of a city that intends to lead.
Perhaps the most strategically significant dimension of Governor Yusuf’s industrial vision is his understanding that no state government, regardless of the quality of its internal governance, can fully reposition a city of Kano’s size and complexity without sustained federal partnership. The resources, the regulatory architecture, the trade facilitation frameworks, the innovation infrastructure, and the international connections required to make Kano the commercial and industrial capital of Northern Nigeria exist, in significant measure, at the federal level.
That understanding was at the heart of his historic decision to align Kano with the Federal Government under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Critics characterised the decision in political terms. The governor has consistently characterised it in developmental terms. The distinction matters enormously.
The immediate and most visible fruit of that alignment is the national launch of the Energise Commercialisation Now initiative in Kano from April 23 to 25, 2026, to be flagged off by Her Excellency Senator Oluremi Tinubu, CON, First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The programme, designed to identify commercially viable innovations, connect them with investors and manufacturers, and scale them into enterprises that create jobs and generate wealth, is precisely the kind of federal intervention that Kano’s industrial revival requires.
For Kano’s universities, including Bayero University Kano, Kano University of Science and Technology Wudil, and Northwest University Kano, the ECoN initiative creates a structured pipeline from academic research to commercial application. For the innovators and entrepreneurs in Kano’s vibrant informal sector, it creates access to financing, mentorship, and market connections that were previously unavailable. For the industrial estates of Sharada, Bompai, and Challawa, it signals the arrival of the investment mobilisation agenda that could finally reverse decades of industrial decline.
A commercial and industrial capital cannot ignore the productive hinterland that feeds it, supplies its raw materials, and employs the majority of its population. Governor Yusuf has not made that mistake.
His administration has procured 199,000 bags of fertiliser for distribution to farmers across the state, approved 11 mini-dams to support year-round agricultural production, and hired new agricultural extension workers to improve farming practices and productivity. It has revived garment clusters in all 44 local government areas, remodelled major markets, and strengthened SME support structures that connect small producers to larger commercial networks.
On the environment, the administration has planted over 5.5 million trees under its Climate Change Policy, cleared drainage channels across the state, and procured waste management equipment to address the urban environmental challenges that deter investment and reduce quality of life in major commercial cities. These are the actions of a government that understands that sustainable commercial and industrial leadership requires a liveable, well-managed, and environmentally responsible city.
Political analysts tracking Kano’s trajectory have begun to note a pattern that goes beyond routine governance. Governor Yusuf, they observe, has spent the past two years systematically rebuilding Kano’s institutional foundations, redirecting loyalty structures toward Government House, and positioning the state for a new era of political and economic relevance that will define not only the 2027 general elections but the decade beyond them.
The governor himself has been characteristically direct about his intentions. He designated 2026 as the Year of Youth Employment and Peace, a declaration that frames job creation not as a political promise but as a governance priority with a specific timeline and a clear accountability framework. He has engaged members of the National Assembly representing Kano in structured dialogue designed to align state executive priorities with federal legislative action, creating a coordination architecture that maximises the state’s ability to attract and deploy federal resources.
The result of all this is a Kano that is, for the first time in a generation, moving with purpose, direction, and momentum toward the commercial and industrial leadership that its history, its people, and its potential have always demanded.
Kano did not build its legacy in a day. The trans-Saharan traders who made this city a continental commercial crossroads did not do so through speeches or political rallies. They did it through consistent, disciplined, and visionary work across generations. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf is drawing on that same tradition, applying it to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, and doing so with the full weight of a state government that has finally, decisively, and irreversibly placed the interests of its people at the centre of every decision it makes.

The commercial and industrial capital of Northern Nigeria is not a title to be claimed. It is a status to be earned, sustained, and defended through the quality of governance, the depth of investment, and the courage of leadership.

Saminu Umar Ph.D, Senior Lecture; Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University, Kano surijyarzaki@gmail.com

In the entire history of Kano State, few moments have carried the weight of symbolic and substantive significance that April 23, 2026 promises to deliver. On that day, Her Excellency Senator Oluremi Tinubu, CON, First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, will stand in Nigeria’s most commercially historic city, not as a visitor passing through, but as the personal representative of a presidency that has made a conscious, deliberate, and far-reaching commitment to Kano’s industrial future. For a state that hosts one of West Africa’s busiest and most diverse commercial ecosystems, that accounts for a significant share of Nigeria’s leather, textile, groundnut, and agricultural commodity trade, and that carries within its borders an extraordinary concentration of entrepreneurial talent and industrial heritage, that commitment could not have come at a more critical time.
It is important to establish, from the outset, that Senator Oluremi Tinubu is not a conventional First Lady. In many countries, and indeed in much of Nigeria’s own political history, the office of the First Lady has been largely ceremonial, defined by social welfare appearances, ribbon cuttings, and charitable foundations. Senator Tinubu represents a sharp departure from that tradition. She served as the Senator representing Lagos Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, accumulating a legislative record that spanned poverty alleviation, women’s rights, child welfare, and economic empowerment. She understands the architecture of governance, the language of policy, and the machinery of federal bureaucracy in ways that most ceremonial First Ladies simply do not.
When the Honourable Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN, personally visited the State House in Abuja in March 2026 to brief Senator Tinubu and formally request her championship of the Energise Commercialisation Now initiative, her acceptance was not the passive endorsement of a spouse lending her name to a government programme. It was the active engagement of a political leader who understood exactly what the programme was designed to achieve, and who brought her own convictions, her own networks, and her own authority to its execution. The First Lady is not merely attending the Kano event. She is championing it, and there is a profound difference between the two.
To understand why Abuja’s commitment to Kano’s industrial future matters so enormously, one must understand what Kano already is, and what it could become with the right federal partnership.
Kano State, with an estimated population of over 20 million people, is the most populous state in Nigeria. Its Kurmi Market, one of the oldest and most historically significant trading centres in West Africa, was once the terminal point of trans-Saharan trade routes that connected sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. The city’s leather industry, centred on the ancient Kofar Mata dye pits, produces finished leather goods that have found markets across Europe and Asia for centuries. Its textile sector, once among the most productive in West Africa, employed hundreds of thousands of workers before decades of policy neglect and energy poverty began eroding its foundations. Its agricultural hinterland, stretching across 44 local government areas, produces groundnuts, sorghum, millet, cowpea, and a range of commodities with enormous value-addition and export potential.
Yet despite this extraordinary economic inheritance, Kano has consistently punched below its weight in the national development conversation, largely because of the political isolation that defined its relationship with the Federal Government for too long. A state in perpetual opposition to the centre is a state that watches federal programmes pass it by. A state whose governor answers to a political godfather rather than to his own people is a state that cannot fully mobilise its own resources in the national interest.
Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf’s decision to align with the Federal Government under President Tinubu has fundamentally altered that equation. The ECoN national launch in Kano is among the first, most visible, and most consequential expressions of that alteration.
The Energise Commercialisation Now initiative is structured around a three-day programme format that moves from political mobilisation on day one, through innovation discovery and evaluation on day two, to investment and commercialisation facilitation on day three. For Kano, each of those days carries specific and measurable potential.
On day two alone, exhibiting innovators from Kano’s universities, including Bayero University Kano, Kano University of Science and Technology Wudil, and Northwest University Kano, alongside entrepreneurs from the state’s vibrant informal sector, will have the opportunity to present their innovations to a room containing private sector investors, venture capital firms, development finance institutions, and international partners expected to include representatives from the African Development Bank, Afreximbank, WIPO, and global technology platforms. For many of these innovators, it will be the first time in their careers that they will stand before an audience with the financial capacity and institutional authority to take their ideas from concept to commercial scale.
On day three, the deal rooms and industry matchmaking sessions could potentially generate investment commitments that transform Kano’s manufacturing landscape. The state’s existing industrial clusters, including the Sharada Industrial Estate, the Bompai Industrial Area, and the Challawa Industrial Estate, all of which have faced longstanding challenges of energy supply, infrastructure maintenance, and access to capital, stand to benefit directly from the investment mobilisation agenda that ECoN is designed to drive.
The Kano State Government has not been waiting passively for federal programmes to arrive. It has been doing the foundational work that makes federal partnership productive rather than performative.

The state’s 2026 budget of N1.477 trillion, the largest in its history, allocates N405.3 billion to education, N346.2 billion to infrastructure, and N212.2 billion to health. The administration has trained 2,000 Neighbourhood Watch operatives to strengthen community security, cleared N32 billion in pension backlogs that successive administrations had abandoned, and established Kano State Polytechnic in Gaya to expand technical and vocational education access in the state’s southern corridor. It has planted over 5.5 million trees under its Climate Change Policy, procured 199,000 bags of fertiliser for distribution to farmers, and approved 11 mini-dams to support year-round agricultural production.

These investments create the enabling environment that federal programmes like ECoN require to deliver lasting impact. An innovation commercialisation programme landing in a state with functional schools, rehabilitated hospitals, improved security, and an administration committed to SME development is a programme that has a genuine chance of changing lives. Senator Tinubu is not coming to Kano to commission a programme in a vacuum. She is coming to commission a programme in a state that is ready to receive it, deploy it, and convert it into tangible, lasting prosperity for its people.
Beyond Kano, the First Lady’s visit carries a message for the entire North West geopolitical zone and indeed for every part of Nigeria watching how the Tinubu administration deploys its development programmes. It signals that federal resources follow productive partnership. It signals that states willing to engage constructively with the centre, align with its development agenda, and build their own internal capacity will be rewarded with federal presence, federal investment, and federal attention at the highest levels.
For the governors and First Ladies from across the North West who have been invited to witness the Kano event, the message is unmistakable: this is what constructive federal alignment looks like in practice. This is what it means to place the interests of your people above the dictates of political sentiment.

History does not always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it arrives quietly, in the form of a three-day programme in a city that has waited too long for its moment. When Senator Oluremi Tinubu stands before Kano on April 23, she will not merely be flagging off a federal initiative. She will be opening a chapter in Kano’s industrial story that the state’s millions of people, its traders and craftsmen, its graduates and innovators, its farmers and manufacturers, have every right to read with pride, with hope, and with the quiet, unshakeable confidence that their best days are not behind them.

By Salihu Tanko Yakasai.

In any election, the most important stakeholder is the electoral umpire. Whoever is chosen to lead the electoral body carries a heavy burden, particularly in how key players and observers perceive the independence of that umpire, whether he will be fair and just or take sides with those who appointed him.

Typically, the person appointed to head the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is expected to ensure a level playing field for all candidates, irrespective of whether they belong to the ruling party or the opposition. Over the years in Nigeria, however, some INEC chairmen have been found wanting in the discharge of their duties.

Maurice Iwu is widely regarded as one of Nigeria’s most controversial INEC chairmen, largely because the 2007 elections under his leadership were heavily criticized for irregularities and lack of credibility. Even Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who won that election, admitted the process was flawed. While some argue he operated within a weak system, his tenure is still often seen as a low point for electoral integrity in Nigeria.

If you’re looking at credibility, transparency, and public trust, his tenure is often seen as a low point for Nigeria’s electoral process.

But from all indications, the current INEC chairman, Joash Amupitan, seems to be on the verge of becoming even worse than Maurice Iwu, as his tenure has been marked by one controversy after another since his appointment.

1- Religious bias allegation

The current INEC chairman, Amupitan, has faced criticism over a past petition in which he reportedly raised concerns about what he described as “Christian genocide.” This has drawn objections from groups such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, who argue that such a position raises questions about his neutrality in a religiously diverse country and have called for his removal.

2- ADC leadership portal controversy

While citing a court order, the INEC chairman reportedly derecognized David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola as Chairman and Secretary of the African Democratic Congress, respectively. This removal from INEC’s official portal could undermine the party’s ability to field candidates. Critics see this as a move that may disadvantage opposition parties in favor of the ruling All Progressives Congress.

3- Voter revalidation exercise concerns

Another major issue was the proposed voter revalidation exercise introduced close to the election timeline, which sparked backlash. Many argued that attempting to revalidate tens of millions of voters within a short period could disenfranchise many Nigerians in the 2027 general elections. Following public pressure, the commission suspended the exercise.

4- Social media partisanship allegation

Questions have been raised about an alleged social media account linked to Amupitan, said to contain posts supportive of the APC and critical of opposition movements such as the “Obidient” movement. Although he denied ownership, some online claims suggest links to personal identifiers such as an email address and phone number, leaving the issue contested.

All these controversies are happening even before the elections. If Maurice Iwu is the yardstick for a poor election umpire, then by all accounts, Amupitan appears to be on track to surpass that record. If he can be perceived as this compromised before the elections, what should be expected on election day?

When the credibility of an election collapses, the consequences go far beyond the ballot box. Voter turnout drops as people begin to feel their votes no longer count, and the legitimacy of whoever emerges as winner is immediately questioned. This often fuels political tension, deepens divisions, and in some cases can trigger unrest. Ultimately, a flawed electoral process does not just produce disputed outcomes, it weakens public trust in democracy itself and makes governance far more difficult.

This is why all well-meaning Nigerians, as well as the international community, must lend their voices to calls for the removal of such a controversial INEC chairman. The credibility of the elections is already being questioned even before they are held. It is like a referee in a football match wearing the jersey of one of the teams, you do not need anyone to tell you that such a referee cannot be neutral.

As Kofi Annan once said, “Credible elections are the cornerstone of democracy.” When that credibility is in doubt, the very foundation of the democratic process is weakened. Nigeria cannot afford to gamble with that foundation in 2027.