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The Governor Who Chose His People Over His Politics: Abba Yusuf and the Moral Courage Behind Kano First

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4 weeks ago

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

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There is a particular loneliness that attaches itself to leaders who choose the harder path. It is not the loneliness of isolation, of having no one around them, because such leaders are almost always surrounded by people, by aides and advisers, by supporters and well-wishers, by the constant human traffic of political life. It is a deeper and more demanding loneliness, the loneliness of the person who must make decisions that others will not fully understand until long after the moment has passed, who must absorb criticism that cuts personally while continuing to serve publicly, and who must find, in the space between the weight of expectation and the limits of human capacity, the daily resolve to keep going. It is the loneliness, in short, of genuine leadership. And it is a loneliness that Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State has come to know with an intimacy that his most vocal critics, comfortable in the uncomplicated freedom of opposition, will perhaps never fully appreciate.
To understand the moral courage that underlies the Kano First Initiative, one must first understand the political inheritance that Governor Yusuf carried into office. He did not arrive at Government House, Kano, as a political outsider unburdened by prior obligations and free to govern purely on the basis of his own convictions. He arrived as a product of a political movement, as a leader whose rise had been enabled by a coalition of forces, interests, and personalities whose expectations did not always align with the needs of the twenty-two million citizens whose welfare his oath of office placed in his hands. The tension between those expectations and those needs, between the claims of political loyalty and the demands of public service, is one that every Nigerian governor faces to some degree. What distinguishes Governor Yusuf’s story is not that he faced this tension, but what he chose to do when it became impossible to navigate it without choosing a side.
He chose his people. And that choice, made at considerable personal and political cost, is the foundation on which the entire moral architecture of the Kano First philosophy rests.
The financial scandals that emerged in the early period of his administration, the billion-naira deductions imposed on local governments, the Novamed controversy that drained hundreds of millions from the state’s healthcare resources, were not merely governance crises. They were personal trials of a particularly painful kind. Here was a governor, widely regarded even by his critics as genuinely humble, intellectually serious, and personally committed to the welfare of Kano’s people, discovering that the machinery beneath him had been partially rewired to serve interests other than the ones he had been elected to serve. His public acknowledgement that he had not been fully aware of the transactions in question was seized upon by political opponents as evidence of weakness or incompetence. It was, in fact, something considerably rarer in Nigerian public life: an honest man’s honest admission that he had been deceived by those he trusted.
Consider for a moment what that moment must have felt like. A governor who came to office with genuine idealism, with a sincere desire to honor the trust that millions of Kano citizens placed in him, confronted with the reality that the very people positioned closest to the levers of power were using those levers for purposes that betrayed everything he stood for. The temptation in such a moment, particularly for a leader whose political survival depended on maintaining the unity of a broad and sometimes fractious coalition, would have been to minimize, to manage, to find a quiet accommodation that preserved the alliance without confronting the rot. That is, after all, what Nigerian political culture most frequently rewards. Confrontation is costly. Accommodation is comfortable. And the short-term arithmetic of political survival almost always favors the comfortable choice.
Governor Yusuf did not make the comfortable choice. He made the courageous one. The decision to break decisively from the suffocating grip of godfatherism, to place the interests of Kano above the expectations of political patrons, and to govern on the basis of his own convictions and his own accountability to the people who elected him, was not a carefully calculated political maneuver. It was a moral act, born of the recognition that the alternative was a betrayal too profound to live with. And moral acts of that magnitude always carry a price. The price, in his case, was the loss of alliances, the intensification of opposition, and the kind of sustained political hostility that now defines Kano’s pre-election landscape. He paid that price willingly. The people of Kano should understand what that willingness cost him.
It is within this context of demonstrated moral courage that the Kano First Initiative must be understood, not as a political programme designed by a communications department, but as the governing expression of a personal conviction that has been tested under genuine pressure and has held. When Governor Yusuf says that Kano must come first, that the interests of its citizens must take precedence over every political calculation and every personal consideration, he is not reciting a slogan. He is articulating, in the language of policy, the same principle that guided his most difficult personal decisions. The Kano First philosophy and the Kano First governor are not separate things. They are the same thing, the same commitment, expressed in two different registers, one personal and one institutional.
The Kano First Initiative, developed with remarkable intellectual seriousness under the stewardship of the Honourable Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs, Comrade Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya, gives this personal commitment its institutional architecture. The comprehensive policy framework for social and institutional reorientation that the ministry has produced is not merely a communication strategy or a governance programme in the conventional sense. It is an attempt to translate a governor’s moral convictions into a durable, evidence-based, culturally grounded framework for societal renewal, one that addresses not just the material needs of Kano’s citizens but the deeper normative and behavioral foundations on which sustainable development depends. It is, in the most meaningful sense, a document that reflects the character of the man whose administration produced it.
What strikes the honest observer about Governor Yusuf, and what his critics most consistently fail to account for in their assessments, is the combination of intellectual humility and moral steadfastness that defines his leadership style. He does not govern with the theatrical confidence of the politician who has never doubted himself. He governs with the quieter and more durable resolve of the person who has examined his own convictions carefully, found them worth defending, and committed himself to defending them regardless of the political weather. That quality is not weakness. In the context of Nigerian governance, where the pressures to compromise, to accommodate, and to prioritize political survival above all else are relentless and overwhelming, it is an exceptional strength.
His supporters understand this, and their loyalty is of a kind that is not easily manufactured by political machinery. It is the loyalty of people who have watched a leader face genuine difficulty and choose principle over convenience, who have seen him absorb attacks without losing his dignity or abandoning his purpose, and who believe, on the basis of observable evidence rather than mere political faith, that the man at the head of Kano’s government is genuinely trying to do right by the people he serves. That belief is a political asset of incalculable value, and it is one that no amount of opposition noise or digital hostility can easily erode, because it is rooted not in perception management but in the accumulated testimony of lived experience.
To the people of Kano who are watching the intensifying political contest that the approach of 2027 has already set in motion, this writer offers a simple appeal: look past the noise. Look past the slogans and the counter-slogans, the social media battles and the political calculations, the claims and the counter-claims that will multiply in volume and intensity as the election approaches. Look at the man. Look at the decisions he has made when making the right decision was costly. Look at the initiative his administration has championed, not in its press releases and communication campaigns, but in its intellectual substance and its institutional seriousness. Ask yourself whether Kano has recently had a governor who brought this combination of personal integrity, moral courage, and genuine policy seriousness to the task of governing a state whose people have waited too long for a leader worthy of their loyalty.
Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf is not a perfect man, and he has never claimed to be. He governs in conditions of extraordinary difficulty, navigating resource constraints, political pressures, institutional weaknesses, and social challenges that would test the most experienced and best-resourced administration in the world. He has made mistakes, as every leader does, and he will make more. But what he has also done, and what the Kano First Initiative represents most fundamentally, is to make the choice that defines a leader’s legacy more than any project or programme ever can: the choice, when it truly mattered, to put his people before his politics. Kano has not always been fortunate enough to be able to say that about its governors. At this moment in its history, it can. And that, in the judgment of this writer, is worth far more than the political noise that currently surrounds it.
Saminu Umar Ph.D is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University, Kano. surijyarzaki@gmail.com

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Opinion

INEC, David Mark, And Coming Abachaian Coronation

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2 days ago

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April 2, 2026

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By Farooq Kperogi

With INEC’s overtly partisan, intentionally illegal, and possibly remote-controlled withdrawal of recognition for the David Mark-led ADC, Nigeria has officially reverted to full-on Abacha-era suffocation of even the wispiest pretence to competitive electoral politics.

Lawyers have said that the judgment of the appeal court, which INEC invoked as a convenient crutch to carry out a predetermined action, said the status quo should be maintained. In other words, the judgment says David Mark should remain the chairman of the ADC until the merit of the appeal has been determined.

However, it appears that INEC is in the know of what the final judgment will be and decided to jump the gun. Yet the INEC chairman is a professor of law and a SAN! He can’t even pretend to be neutral.

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It seems obvious that the ADC faction INEC will ultimately recognize, as I predicted in my column of two weeks ago, will be the faction that will merely be an extension of the APC, much like the PDP now is. They will either present dummy candidates or adopt Tinubu as their candidate, which is a distinction without a difference.

It is obvious that Tinubu wants a coronation, not a competitive election, in 2027. He is scared to death about a real electoral contest. We all know why.

Well, according to public records, it cost around ₦300–₦355 billion to conduct the 2023 presidential election. It is projected that it will cost almost ₦870 billion to conduct the 2027 election.

Why should Nigeria spend close to a trillion naira on a preset, make-believe, Abachaian coronation exercise? Let’s kuku cancel democracy and make Tinubu the supreme leader. At least we would save a trillion naira.

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Opinion

El-Rufai/Uba Sani And Pantami’s Perceived Peace Of The Graveyard

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5 days ago

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March 30, 2026

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By Bala Ibrahim.

Yesterday was Sunday, a day recognized as the first day of the week, which in the Bible, holds supreme significance as the day of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. Some Christians call it the Lord’s Day. There are many interpretations given to show the significance of Sunday. But for the purpose of this article, attention would be given to the significance of yesterday’s Sunday, (29/03/2026), with special bias to the role it played in promoting reconciliation between parties and friends, as well as how, at the National Mosque, Abuja, the wall of religious divide was unconsciously demolished, as followers of different faiths scrambled over each other, in the competition for space to participate in the funeral rites of late Hajiya Umma El-Rufai, the deceased mother of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.

By the Islamic tradition, when a Muslim dies, before he or she is taken to the grave yard, special prayers are offered on the deceased person’s body, at any convenient place, before proceeding to the cemetery. For late Hajiya Umma El-Rufai, the National Mosque Abuja, was the venue. And what happened there, is the prelude to this article.

If I say everyone that is anything in Nigeria was there, I think I am making an understatement. But that is not surprising, given the personal and political profile of the bereaved, who is Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. It may interest the reader to know that, among the early callers at the Mosque, were reputable Christians, with people like Peter Obi and Rotimi Amaechi, rubbing shoulders with Muslims, in the stampede to partake in the Islamic ceremonial practice. They know they don’t belong to the Islamic faith, but they want to share with Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, as an honour of solidarity, in the last rites given to his beloved mother. The duo of NSA Mallam Nuhu Ribadu and Governor Uba Sani were there face to face with El-Rufai. The atmosphere was solemn, sombre and clearly sorrowful.

Also present at the Mosque was Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, former Minister and renowned Islamic cleric, who seized the opportunity to advance the imperative of reconciliation in Islam. He started in the Mosque and continued at the graveyard, to the extent of persuading El-Rufai to shake hands with Uba Sani, with a soft but casual commitment from both sides, on the pleaded forgiveness. It was difficult, very difficult, especially when perused through the prism of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s position.

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Undoubtedly peace is fundamental to Islam, because it serves as a source of inner tranquillity and social harmony. The Quran has laid emphasis on reconciliation and kindness. So every Muslim is enjoined to embrace reconciliation. However, in advancing the course of reconciliation, timing is important, I think. We must not only perceive peace as merely the absence of conflict. No, it also has something to do with our state of mind. A man standing before the lifeless body of his beloved mother, at the graveyard, under intense pressure, is not in the appropriate state of mind to commit to any peace deal. Unless we are referring to the probabial peace of the graveyard.

The ambition of any reconciliation is to arrive at unity. And unity can only come after conflict, if there is healing. By definition, healing is the process of becoming healthy or whole again, encompassing the restoration of physical tissue, mental, or emotional well-being. A man under emotional pressure is not fit for commitment to any peace deal, I think. Unless we are referring to the probabial peace of the graveyard.

Peace of the graveyard is not genuine, because it could be deceptive, by resulting in forced calm, beneath which lies a deep tension. As a friend of the trio of El-Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu and Uba Sani, Sheik Pantami must go for a genuine, organic and sustainable peace agreement between the parties. More so, because they were genuine friends before.

All hands must be put on deck, to compel President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to come into the agreement. Because, he was the one who compelled Mallam Nasir El-Rufai to come into the Tinubu project in 2023. Indeed a lot of water had passed under the bridge. We should forget past misunderstandings or issues that are now irrelevant, and forgivable. Let’s move on from past disagreements and let go of grudges.That’s the only way to arrive at genuine reconciliation.

It may be recalled that the Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, had long been appealing to the President, to come out clearly and reciprocate the gesture given to him in his time of need by Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. MURIC said they were the ones who persuaded El-Rufai to support Tinubu in 2023, as a result of which, he confronted the so called Buhari cabal, the then CBN Governor and other forces that were putting spanners in the work of the Tinubu project. The result of which is now President Tinubu. MURIC said El-Rufai does not deserve to be humiliated and went further to support their argument with the quote below:

“Noteworthy is a video clip showing how President Tinubu openly asked El-Rufai to join his government and this did not happen at a private meeting. It happened at a campaign ground, in the presence of thousands of party enthusiasts.”

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Opinion

Defection: Kwankwaso’s Legacy Under Scrutiny; A Critical Look at his Political Journey Since 1999

Published

5 days ago

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March 30, 2026

By

Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso

 

When Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, the people of Kano embraced the moment with hope and expectation after years of military governance. Among the prominent figures who emerged at the time was Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, whose leadership inspired confidence among many citizens eager for progress and representation.

More than two decades later, however, Kwankwaso’s political legacy continues to generate debate, with supporters highlighting his achievements and critics questioning the long-term impact of his leadership on Kano’s development.

Kwankwaso’s first tenure as governor (1999–2003) was marked by visible infrastructure projects, including roads and public buildings, which were widely welcomed by residents. At a time when tangible government presence was limited, these developments symbolised a new beginning. Yet, some analysts argue that while these projects addressed immediate needs, they did not sufficiently tackle deeper structural challenges, particularly the decline of Kano’s once-thriving industrial economy.

Historically a major commercial hub, Kano’s economy had been weakening due to years of policy neglect and infrastructural decay. Critics maintain that a more comprehensive economic strategy might have helped revive industries and reduce dependence on federal allocations.

Kwankwaso’s defeat in 2003 by Malam Ibrahim Shekarau marked a turning point. Observers note that while the loss strengthened his political network and grassroots appeal, it also raised questions about the sustainability of the systems established during his administration. Many of the projects, though impactful, were seen as lacking the institutional depth needed for long-term continuity.

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Returning to office in 2011, Kwankwaso expanded his development agenda with increased infrastructure and an ambitious foreign scholarship programme that benefited thousands of Kano youths. The initiative is widely regarded as one of his most significant contributions, opening educational opportunities for many.

However, critics argue that despite these efforts, broader economic transformation remained limited. Rising population growth, unemployment, and declining industrial capacity continued to challenge the state’s development trajectory.

Beyond governance, Kwankwaso’s political influence has also shaped Kano’s power dynamics. His role in building a strong political movement—popularly known as the Kwankwasiyya—has been praised for mobilising grassroots support but criticised by some for reinforcing a personality-driven political structure.

Political analysts further point to the tensions surrounding the Kano Emirate as a significant episode in the state’s recent history. The controversial removal of Muhammadu Sanusi II highlighted deep divisions within the state’s political and traditional institutions, with varying opinions on the factors that led to the crisis.

In recent years, Kwankwaso’s shifting political alliances—from the PDP to the APC and later to the NNPP—have also drawn mixed reactions. While such moves are common in Nigeria’s political landscape, critics argue that they have contributed to instability and uncertainty within Kano’s political structure.

The 2023 elections brought another dimension to the discourse, with the emergence of Abba Kabir Yusuf as governor under the NNPP platform. Subsequent political developments, including evolving relationships between state and federal actors, have further shaped public debate about governance priorities and political strategy.

Today, Kwankwaso remains one of Kano’s most influential political figures, with a legacy that reflects both notable achievements and enduring controversies. While many credit him with expanding access to education and improving infrastructure, others believe that the state’s long-term economic and institutional challenges require deeper reflection.

As Kano continues to navigate its future, the assessment of past leadership—including Kwankwaso’s role—remains central to ongoing conversations about development, governance, and political direction.

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