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Restoring the Glory That Was Always There: Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf and the Historical Vision Behind Kano First

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2 months ago

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

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Kano does not need to be invented. That is a truth so fundamental, so historically self-evident, that it should not need to be stated at all, and yet the circumstances of recent decades have made its restatement not merely appropriate but urgent. There is a tendency, in the discourse of Nigerian development, to treat every governance initiative as a beginning, as though the society being governed had no prior history of achievement, no accumulated wisdom, no tested traditions of institutional excellence on which new efforts might be built. This tendency is not merely intellectually lazy, but it is, in the specific context of Kano, a form of historical injustice, a failure to reckon honestly with the civilizational inheritance that this state carries and that its people have never entirely abandoned, even through the long and painful decades in which their institutions were hollowed out, their values eroded, and their confidence systematically undermined by the combined weight of misgovernance, corruption, and the slow cultural dislocation that follows when a society loses trust in the institutions that are supposed to embody its highest aspirations.
Kano was, long before Nigeria existed as a political entity, one of the most sophisticated and enduring centers of civilization in West Africa. Its greatness was not the greatness of conquest or of externally imposed order. It was the greatness of organic development, of a society that built, over centuries, a coherent and self-sustaining civilization on foundations that were simultaneously material and moral. The trans-Saharan trade networks that made Kano a commercial hub of continental significance were sustained not merely by geography or by the availability of goods, but by a culture of commercial integrity, of trust between trading partners, of contractual reliability, and of the kind of reputational accountability that makes markets function across distances and between strangers. The Islamic scholarship that gave Kano its intellectual authority was not merely a religious tradition. It was a governance philosophy, one that placed knowledge, justice, accountability, and the subordination of personal interest to public duty at the center of what it meant to hold power. The traditional political institutions that maintained Kano’s social order were not instruments of oppression but, at their best, mechanisms of consultation, legitimacy, and the managed resolution of social conflict.
These were not accidental achievements. They were the products of deliberate cultivation, of generations of Kano’s people choosing, consciously and consistently, to organize their collective life around values that made both individual flourishing and communal solidarity possible. That is what a civilization is: not a collection of buildings or a record of territorial expansion, but a living tradition of values, practices, and institutions that enables a human community to achieve, across time, more than any individual generation could accomplish alone. Kano built such a civilization. And the question that every serious governor of Kano must eventually confront, whether they frame it in these terms or not, is whether they are adding to that civilization or subtracting from it.
It is against this civilizational backdrop that the Kano First Initiative under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf must be understood, not as a new idea imported into Kano from outside, not as a political slogan invented to win elections and abandoned when the votes are counted, but as a deliberate act of historical retrieval, an attempt to reach back through the debris of recent decades and recover the foundations on which Kano’s genuine greatness was built. The initiative’s framework document states this explicitly and without embarrassment: Kano’s most persistent challenges are not solely infrastructural or economic in nature. They are fundamentally behavioral, normative, and narrative failures, accumulated over time and reinforced by weak value transmission, fragmented authority, and uncoordinated messaging. This is a diagnosis of remarkable historical honesty, and it is one that only a governor with a genuine understanding of what Kano has been and what it has lost could have authorized.
Governor Yusuf’s historical vision is not nostalgic in the sentimental sense of the word. He is not proposing a return to a romanticized past that never existed in the uncomplicated form that nostalgia requires. He is proposing something simultaneously more modest and more ambitious: the recovery of specific values, specific institutional principles, and specific civic traditions that demonstrably worked, that demonstrably sustained Kano’s coherence and productivity over centuries, and that demonstrably began to break down when they were displaced by the governing logic of extraction, patronage, and the systematic subordination of public interest to private accumulation. Islamic ethical governance, communal responsibility, the dignity of productive labor, respect for legitimate authority, the centrality of knowledge in public life, these are not abstract ideals. They are the operational principles of a civilization that actually functioned, and their recovery is not a romantic aspiration but a practical governance imperative.
The intellectual architecture through which this recovery is being pursued bears the clear fingerprints of the Honourable Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs, Comrade Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya, whose contribution to the Kano First Initiative has been, in every meaningful sense, the contribution of a man who understands both what Kano is and what it needs. The framework he has championed integrates three traditions that, taken together, give the initiative both its cultural legitimacy and its analytical credibility: the Islamic ethical governance tradition that historically underpinned Kano’s stability and justice, Kano’s own sociocultural heritage of communal solidarity and institutional accountability, and the modern behavioral change communication science that provides the methodological tools for translating values into measurable social outcomes. This integration is not accidental. It reflects a deep conviction, shared by both the governor and his commissioner, that genuine renewal cannot be achieved by importing foreign solutions but only by excavating and rebuilding on Kano’s own foundations.
The scale of what has been lost must be honestly acknowledged if the scale of what is being attempted is to be properly appreciated. Kano today carries wounds that decades of misgovernance have inflicted on its social fabric with a thoroughness that cannot be undone quickly or easily. Youth disaffection has reached levels that express themselves in drug abuse, street violence, and the nihilistic political thuggery that represents, at its core, the rage of young people who were promised a future and received instead a void. Institutional trust, once the bedrock of Kano’s civic life, has been so systematically eroded that the default posture of many citizens toward their government is not engagement but cynicism, not participation but withdrawal. The digital media ecosystem, which should be a tool of civic enlightenment, has in too many instances become a vehicle for the amplification of the very misinformation, polarization, and moral dislocation that the Kano First Initiative is designed to address. These are not small problems, and they will not yield to small solutions.
What gives the Kano First Initiative its historical seriousness is precisely that it does not pretend otherwise. The four-phase implementation framework, stretching from 2026 through 2030, is built on the recognition that the restoration of a civilization’s normative foundations is a generational project, not a political campaign. Phase One builds the empirical foundation, the baseline surveys, perception mapping, and narrative architecture that genuine social intervention requires. Phase Two deploys coordinated, multi-channel behavioral activation across youth networks, religious institutions, traditional authorities, and community organizations. Phase Three scales what works and deepens digital engagement. Phase Four embeds the initiative permanently into Kano’s governance architecture through a dedicated directorate and the annual Kano Values Index. This is not the timeline of an administration managing its image. It is the timeline of a government that has looked honestly at the depth of the challenge and committed itself to the depth of response that the challenge demands.
There is an emotional dimension to this story that deserves to be named directly, because it is one that the purely analytical framing of policy discourse tends to obscure. Kano’s people love their state with an intensity and a pride that is, even in a country of fierce regional loyalties, remarkable. They carry within them the memory of a greatness that their grandparents knew and that they themselves have glimpsed, in fragments and in moments, even through the long decades of disappointment. When Governor Yusuf speaks of restoring Kano’s glory, he is not merely making a political argument. He is speaking to something that lives in the hearts of ordinary Kano citizens, something that has survived misgovernance, political manipulation, and cultural erosion with a resilience that is itself a testament to the depth of Kano’s civilizational roots. That emotional resonance is not a weakness in the Kano First philosophy. It is one of its greatest strategic assets, because renewal that connects with people’s deepest sense of identity and pride generates the kind of civic energy that no top-down programme can manufacture.
The work of restoring that glory belongs, ultimately, not to government alone but to every institution, every community leader, every journalist, every religious scholar, every teacher, every trader, and every young person in Kano who chooses, in their daily conduct, to live by the values that made this civilization great. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has provided the vision, the institutional framework, and the personal example of a leader who is willing to pay the political costs that genuine commitment to the public good always exacts. Comrade Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya has provided the intellectual architecture and the communication infrastructure through which that vision can be translated into civic reality. The rest, as it must always be when a society is serious about its own renewal, belongs to the people.
Kano’s glory was never lost. It was covered over, layer by layer, by the accumulated debris of decades of bad governance, institutional betrayal, and the slow erosion of the values that once made it shine. The Kano First Initiative is not building something new on empty ground. It is clearing the ground of debris so that what was always there can breathe again, grow again, and reclaim the space in Nigeria’s national life and in West Africa’s historical memory that Kano has always, by right of civilization, deserved to occupy. That is the historical vision behind Kano First. And it is a vision worth every effort, every sacrifice, and every ounce of collective will that Kano’s people can bring to its realization.

 

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

Amnesty International Report and My Questions to Them

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1 week ago

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May 7, 2026

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– Sufyan Lawal Kabo

sefjamil3@gmail.com

 

The recent condemnation issued by Amnesty International against the Kano State Government over the alleged killing of five persons during activities surrounding the swearing in of the new Deputy Governor has continued to raise serious concerns among many observers in Kano.

 

While every responsible citizen condemns violence and the loss of innocent lives, many are asking whether Amnesty International acted professionally and fairly before rushing to issue a strong public accusation against the government of Kano State.

 

Amnesty International, can a government that has invested heavily in ending political thuggery and street violence genuinely be accused of sponsoring the same violence it is fighting to eliminate?

 

Would a government that established the Safe Corridor Kano Model, profiled thousands of repentant youths, and committed over six hundred million naira for rehabilitation, empowerment and reintegration of former thugs suddenly turn around to encourage killings and chaos?

 

Can Amnesty International deny the fact that Kano has battled political thuggery and Yan Daba violence for decades, long before the present administration came into office? And among previous administrations, which government confronted the problem more directly than the administration of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf?

 

What political benefit would any serious government gain from encouraging violence against citizens at a time it is working to secure public trust ahead of future elections?

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Before issuing its condemnation, did Amnesty International contact the Kano State Government, the Police, DSS, Civil Defence, or any recognised security agency in Kano to verify the allegation properly? Or has social media content now become sufficient evidence for an international organisation claiming credibility and neutrality?

 

How did Amnesty International arrive at such a sensitive conclusion without presenting verifiable evidence to the public? And how sure are the people of Kano that those supplying information to the organisation are not politically biased individuals determined to damage the image of the present administration?

 

Is it professional for a respected international body to release emotionally charged reports involving deaths and violence without balanced investigation, fair hearing, or proper engagement with relevant authorities?

 

Can Amnesty International also deny the visible security efforts of the Kano State Government under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, including stronger collaboration with security agencies, community security initiatives, deployment of operational support, and consistent public warnings against political violence and hooliganism?

 

If the government’s objective was violence, why would it continue investing public resources into youth rehabilitation, anti thuggery programmes and community peace initiatives?

 

The truth remains that Kano State Government has already condemned every act of violence connected to the incident and security agencies are reportedly investigating the matter. The government has also maintained its commitment to bringing perpetrators to justice according to law.

 

Amnesty International must therefore understand that careless or poorly verified reports on sensitive matters can create unnecessary tension, damage public confidence and unfairly malign governments making visible efforts to solve difficult social problems.

Kano deserves fairness. The people deserve peace. And organisations claiming international credibility must uphold professionalism, objectivity and thorough investigation before issuing reports capable of inflaming public emotions and damaging institutional reputations.

 

Sefjamil writes from Abuja

 

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Opinion

Evidence First: Why Amnesty International’s Kano Claims Cannot Stand-Mamman Iro

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1 week ago

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May 7, 2026

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By Mamman Iro Kano

May 7, 2026

On May 5, 2026, Kano State witnessed a moment of constitutional significance. Alhaji Murtala Sule Garo was formally sworn in as Deputy Governor, completing the executive structure of an administration that has navigated months of political turbulence with a clarity and a purposefulness that its governance record continues to validate. Within hours of that ceremony, Amnesty International released a report alleging that five people had been killed in connection with the event. The Kano State Government, in a formal press statement signed by the Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs, Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya, described the claim as misleading, unfounded, and mischievous, stating that active inquiries conducted with relevant security agencies produced no official report or credible evidence to support it, and that no violent incident occurred at the Kano State Government House or its surroundings during the official function. That irreconcilable gap between what Amnesty International alleged and what verified institutional assessments confirm is where this analysis begins, and where the evidence, examined honestly and without partisan filter, must ultimately speak for itself.

Let us be precise about what Amnesty International has alleged, because precision about the nature of an allegation determines the standard of evidence required to sustain it. This is not a vague claim about generalised insecurity in a northern Nigerian state. It is a specific allegation that five human beings were killed in direct connection with a formal state government ceremony, at or near the seat of the Kano State executive. That is among the most serious categories of claim available in the vocabulary of human rights reporting, and it carries a correspondingly heavy evidentiary burden. It attributes to a sitting administration not merely a failure to prevent violence but a direct and operational causal relationship between its own institutional activities and the deaths of five people. The fundamental question this analysis asks is straightforward: does the available evidence meet that burden? On the basis of the documented record, the answer is no.

The government’s rebuttal, issued through Commissioner Waiya on the same day as the Amnesty International report, establishes several institutionally grounded counter-claims that any responsible assessment must engage with seriously rather than dismiss as reflexive political defensiveness. The government states that it conducted active inquiries with relevant security agencies specifically to investigate the alleged incident and found no official report or credible evidence to support it. It states that no violent incident occurred at Government House or its surroundings during the swearing-in ceremony. It further notes that the Nigerian leadership of Amnesty International has, in its assessment, repeatedly demonstrated bias and unprofessional conduct in reports relating to Kano State while overlooking comparable developments elsewhere in the country, and it has called upon the organisation’s international leadership to monitor its Nigerian chapter’s activities in order to protect the organisation’s global integrity. These are specific, falsifiable, and institutionally grounded positions. They deserve the same investigative engagement that Amnesty International’s original allegations received, and the absence of independent forensic confirmation of the alleged deaths from any local security structure, community stakeholder, or civil society organisation with verifiable on-the-ground presence represents a critical and unresolved gap in the evidentiary foundation upon which the international narrative rests.

The methodological questions raised by this incident go beyond the specific facts of May 5, 2026, and engage with a broader and more consequential concern about how international human rights monitoring is conducted in environments as politically complex as Kano State. In today’s digital information environment, allegations circulate at velocities that far outpace the deliberate, forensically grounded verification processes that responsible documentation requires. Video content spreads without verified timestamps, geographic authentication, or editorial context. Short clips are selectively edited and repurposed, constructing plausible-seeming narratives from fragmentary and decontextualised evidence. Responsible human rights reporting, particularly in a state with Kano’s political and security complexity, must demonstrably rise above these limitations. Any attempt to directly implicate a state government in acts of organised violence must be supported by credible forensic evidence establishing verifiable operational linkages between institutional authority and the specific conduct alleged, verified intelligence assessments from recognised security structures, a documented understanding of the longstanding criminal rivalries and territorial disputes operating among youth groups in the affected communities, and independent on-the-ground verification involving community leaders, traditional authorities, and civil society organisations before conclusions are publicly disseminated. The Unifier Project’s considered assessment is that the claims advanced against Kano State on May 7, 2026, do not demonstrably meet these standards.

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Beyond the specific facts of May 5, the broader institutional record of the Kano State Government presents a body of documented evidence that fundamentally complicates the narrative of state-sponsored violence. The administration’s Safe Corridor Kano Model, its flagship rehabilitative intervention targeting youth restiveness and street violence, has already profiled over 2,030 repentant youths for enrollment into its structured rehabilitation and reintegration programme. More than six hundred million naira has been approved for the first phase alone, targeting one thousand beneficiaries through vocational training, psychosocial support, and community reintegration pathways. These are not aspirational policy commitments. They are quantified, budgeted, and operationally active institutional investments in dismantling the conditions that produce youth violence. The logical incompatibility between an administration that has committed over N600 million to youth rehabilitation and an administration simultaneously accused of orchestrating the killing of citizens at its own official functions is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a substantive evidentiary consideration that any responsible investigation is obligated to address directly and honestly before reaching the conclusions that Amnesty International has chosen to advance.

The full governance record of this administration further deepens that incompatibility. Kano State is implementing a N1.477 trillion budget for 2026, the largest in its history, with 68 percent directed at capital projects. It has invested over N800 million in youth empowerment programmes benefiting more than 5,300 young people, disbursed over N334 million directly to 6,680 women entrepreneurs across all 44 local government areas, and deployed 2,000 trained Neighbourhood Watch operatives as a community-centred security intervention designed to reduce violent confrontations at the grassroots level. Kano ranked first in Nigeria’s 2025 NECO results. Its hospitals are being upgraded. Its roads are being rebuilt. Its farmers are receiving fertiliser, its dams are being constructed, and its young people are being empowered with tools, capital, and opportunity. This is the operational context within which any characterisation of this administration’s relationship to the welfare and safety of its citizens must be situated. It is a context that demands engagement rather than dismissal from any monitoring body that claims to be conducting evidence-based human rights assessment.

There is a further dimension to this controversy that must be named clearly and without diplomatic evasion. The perception, held by a growing number of informed observers within Kano’s civic and political communities, that Amnesty International applies differential levels of scrutiny to Kano State relative to comparable or more severe situations elsewhere in Nigeria, is not a fringe complaint or a partisan deflection. It is a concern about the institutional evenhandedness that determines whether human rights advocacy functions as a genuine instrument of accountability or as a mechanism of selective narrative construction. When a state government with a documented N600 million rehabilitation investment, a quantified youth empowerment record, and a formal security agency finding of no evidence for the alleged incident is subjected to internationally amplified allegations of organised violence without the forensic verification that such allegations require, the credibility deficit that results belongs not only to the monitoring organisation but to the broader enterprise of international human rights advocacy whose authority depends on its perceived consistency and impartiality. This is a concern that the international leadership of Amnesty International, if it takes its institutional mission seriously, cannot afford to disregard.

The position advanced in this commentary is neither anti-accountability nor pro-impunity. It is, precisely and unambiguously, pro-evidence. Accountability without evidence is not accountability. It is accusation. And accusation, however institutionally prestigious its source, does not become fact through repetition, amplification, or the authority of the body advancing it. It becomes fact through verification, corroboration, and the honest and transparent application of the evidentiary standards that distinguish responsible human rights documentation from the uncritical transmission of unverified claims. Kano State, its government, its institutions, and its 20 million people deserve to be assessed on the basis of verified evidence rather than viral narratives. The international community deserves human rights reporting that it can trust because it has earned that trust through methodological rigour rather than claimed through institutional reputation. And the communities of Kano State, who live with the real and daily consequences of how their home is characterised to the world, deserve nothing less than the truth, told with the honesty, the precision, and the evidentiary integrity that their situation demands. Evidence must come first. It must always come first. And until it does, claims of the gravity advanced against Kano on May 7, 2026, cannot, in good conscience, be allowed to stand unchallenged.

 

 

 

Mamman Iro Kano wrote in from Gwarzo Road, Kano, Kano State.

May 7, 2026

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Opinion

The Unifier Perspective: Unifier Project Formally Contests the Evidentiary Basis of Amnesty International’s Claims Regarding the May 5 Kano Incident

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1 week ago

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May 7, 2026

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Issued by the Unifier Project, Kano State

May 7, 2026

The Unifier Project, a strategic grassroots coordination and civic engagement initiative with operational structures across all 44 Local Government Areas of Kano State, has formally and comprehensively contested the evidentiary basis, the methodological framework, and the investigative rigour of the claims recently circulated by Amnesty International regarding the unfortunate events of May 5, 2026. In a statement issued from its State Secretariat in Kano, the organisation expressed serious concern about what it characterises as a pattern of premature conclusion-drawing that privileges the velocity of digital content circulation over the deliberate, community-engaged, and forensically grounded verification processes that responsible human rights documentation demands.

The Unifier Project wishes to state unequivocally that its position in this matter is not one of reflexive institutional defensiveness or partisan political alignment. It is a principled insistence on the application of the same evidentiary standards, the same contextual rigour, and the same methodological discipline that credible human rights advocacy demands of the governments and institutions it monitors. The organisation stands firmly for truth, due process, and the protection of community peace, and it is precisely those values that compel it to challenge characterisations of the May 5 incident that, in its assessment, rely disproportionately on fragmented viral content and speculative interpretive frameworks rather than verified, independently corroborated, and contextually grounded investigative evidence.

The incident of May 5, 2026, as assessed by local security institutions, community stakeholders, and civil society organisations with direct knowledge of the affected communities, involved individuals and groups with longstanding criminal histories, territorial disputes, and inter-factional rivalries whose origins significantly predate the current administration and whose dynamics are embedded in the specific social and geographic conditions of the communities in which they operate. The Unifier Project maintains that any credible and responsible investigation of events in these communities must engage substantively with this documented local context before advancing conclusions about political motivation, institutional complicity, or state-level orchestration. To assign political causation to events whose most proximate and most documented explanation is criminal confrontation, in the absence of forensic evidence establishing direct operational linkages between political decision-making and the conduct alleged, is to substitute analytical convenience for investigative integrity.

The organisation draws particular attention to the documented policy commitments of the Kano State Government as a body of institutional evidence that any serious investigative framework is obligated to engage with rather than treat as irrelevant background. The administration has pursued a structured, programmatically defined, and resource-backed approach to addressing youth restiveness and street violence through the Safe Corridor initiative, a rehabilitative framework explicitly designed to create pathways for the social reintegration, vocational empowerment, and psychosocial recovery of vulnerable young people previously associated with organised criminality and street violence. The internal coherence of any allegation of state-sponsored violence must be evaluated against the totality of a government’s documented institutional behaviour. An administration that has invested public resources, political capital, and programmatic infrastructure in a deescalation framework of this scope cannot credibly be implicated, without compelling forensic evidence, in the simultaneous engineering of the very instability that its own institutional architecture is demonstrably designed to eliminate.

The Unifier Project also draws attention to the broader governance context within which the events of May 5, 2026, must be situated. The Kano State Government is currently implementing its most ambitious development budget in the state’s recorded history, a N1.477 trillion appropriation for 2026 with 68 percent directed at capital expenditure spanning education, infrastructure, healthcare, and social protection. It has invested over N800 million in youth empowerment programmes benefiting more than 5,300 young people across the state, disbursed over N334 million directly to 6,680 women entrepreneurs across all 44 local government areas, and deployed 2,000 trained Neighbourhood Watch operatives as a community-centred security intervention explicitly designed to reduce violent confrontations and strengthen civilian-security cooperation at the grassroots level. These are not abstract policy commitments. They are documented, verifiable, and independently assessable institutional actions that constitute the operational context within which any characterisation of this administration’s relationship to violence and instability must be rigorously evaluated.

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With respect to the methodological concerns that this incident raises for the broader practice of international human rights monitoring, the Unifier Project wishes to articulate clearly the evidentiary standards that it considers non-negotiable for any responsible investigative conclusion regarding events of this nature. These include credible forensic evidence establishing verifiable operational linkages between institutional decision-making authority and the specific conduct alleged, verified intelligence assessments from recognised and accountable security structures with direct knowledge of the affected communities, a demonstrated and documented understanding of the longstanding rivalries, territorial histories, and criminal network dynamics operating among youth groups in the specific localities concerned, and independent on-the-ground verification processes that meaningfully engage traditional authorities, community leaders, civil society organisations, and relevant law enforcement institutions before conclusions are formed and publicly disseminated. Without these foundational standards, investigative outputs risk functioning not as instruments of accountability but as mechanisms of institutional narrative-building that may, whether intentionally or otherwise, distort rather than illuminate the complex realities they purport to document.

The organisation further notes that the long-term credibility and institutional authority of global human rights bodies depend critically on the perceived consistency, proportionality, and methodological evenhandedness of their monitoring activities across different regions, different administrations, and different categories of political actor. Investigative patterns that appear to apply differential evidentiary thresholds or differential levels of scrutiny to different communities generate, among those communities, a perception of selective activism that is difficult to distinguish from politically motivated monitoring, and that ultimately undermines the culture of civic accountability that responsible human rights organisations exist to strengthen rather than selectively deploy. The Unifier Project does not raise this concern to deflect legitimate scrutiny. It raises it because the integrity of international human rights advocacy as a global public good depends on its practitioners holding themselves to the same standards of evidence, consistency, and contextual honesty that they demand of others.

Kano State is a community in active, measurable, and documented transformation. Its urban renewal programmes, governance reforms, public sector modernisation initiatives, and community stabilisation efforts represent a sustained and verifiable commitment to building a safer, more inclusive, and more prosperous society for its more than 20 million residents. The Unifier Project, with its operational presence across all 44 Local Government Areas and its direct engagement with ward-level civic structures throughout the state, is positioned to affirm, from direct community knowledge, that this transformation is real, that it is generating tangible improvements in the daily lives of ordinary citizens, and that it deserves to be assessed on the basis of its documented outcomes rather than characterised through the lens of allegations that remain forensically unsubstantiated and contextually inadequate.

The Unifier Project reaffirms its commitment to civic accountability, community protection, and the defence of due process as foundational values of democratic governance. It respectfully but firmly urges Amnesty International to engage in a more collaborative, locally informed, and forensically rigorous investigative process, one that prioritises direct engagement with community stakeholders, traditional authorities, security institutions, and civil society actors with verifiable local knowledge, before issuing globally amplified conclusions whose reputational, political, and institutional consequences for the communities concerned are significant and lasting. Allegations of the gravity advanced in this instance should carry only one weight, the weight of independently verified, contextually grounded, and forensically corroborated evidence. The Unifier Project will continue to discharge its responsibility to the people of Kano State by ensuring that the state’s story is told with the accuracy, the balance, and the contextual integrity that its communities deserve.

About the Unifier Project: The Unifier Project is a strategic grassroots coordination and civic engagement initiative committed to community mobilisation, administrative transparency, civic participation, and the strengthening of socio-political unity across Kano State. With operational structures spanning all 44 Local Government Areas and active engagement at ward and polling unit levels throughout the state, the organisation serves as a community-anchored platform for informed civic advocacy, responsible public discourse, and the protection of Kano’s social and institutional integrity.

Signed:

Unifier Project, Kano State

Media and Strategic Communications Unit

May 7, 2026

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