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Opinion

The Godfather Who Mistook Democracy for Personal Ownership

Published

3 months ago

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Kano Map

 

Murtala Muhammad Rijiyar Zaki

Democracy is, at its most essential, an act of trust. Citizens go to the polls, cast their votes, and place in the hands of an elected individual the authority to govern on their behalf. That authority is borrowed, not given. It is conditional, not absolute. It belongs, in the final and irreducible sense, to the people who granted it, and it must be exercised in their interest, not in the interest of whoever helped engineer its acquisition. This elementary principle, the very foundation upon which every credible democracy in the world is constructed, is the principle that Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has spent the better part of three decades systematically, deliberately, and quite unapologetically violating. His violation of it is not accidental. It is not the product of ignorance or misunderstanding. It is the logical expression of a political philosophy that has always placed personal ownership above democratic accountability, and godfather authority above the sovereign will of the people.
To understand the full weight of this charge, one must first understand what godfatherism actually means in the Nigerian political context, and why it is not merely an inconvenient feature of our democracy but a fundamental corruption of it. A political godfather, in the Nigerian tradition, is a figure who uses his resources, his organization, and his influence to install candidates in elective office, with the explicit or implicit understanding that those candidates, once elected, will govern not primarily in the interest of the electorate but in the interest of the godfather. The elected official becomes, in this arrangement, less a representative of the people and more a proxy for the man who put him there. The voters, in this model, are not principals whose mandate the elected official is obligated to honor. They are a mechanism, a crowd to be mobilized and demobilized at the godfather’s discretion, a necessary inconvenience in the process of acquiring and exercising power.
This is the model that has been perfected, refined, and deployed with extraordinary effectiveness across the entire arc of his political career. He did not invent godfatherism in Nigerian politics, and it would be unfair to suggest otherwise. But he has practiced it at a scale, with a sophistication, and with a degree of institutional embedding that sets him apart from the ordinary political patron. Kwankwasiyya is not simply a network of political supporters. It is a parallel governance structure, a shadow administration that has, for years, operated alongside whatever formal government happened to be in power in Kano, always with the understanding that the real decisions, the real appointments, the real directions of policy would be filtered through one man’s judgment and one man’s calculations.
The most instructive way to appreciate the depth of this ownership model is to examine what happened each time a political associate of Kwankwaso dared to exercise the kind of independent judgment that democracy not only permits but actively demands. The case of Governor Abdullahi Ganduje is the first and perhaps most telling exhibit. Ganduje was Kwankwaso’s deputy governor, his chosen running mate, and eventually his personally endorsed successor. He was, by every public indication, a Kwankwasiyya man to the core. When he won the governorship and proceeded to govern Kano as an elected official accountable to Kano’s people rather than as a Kwankwasiyya proxy accountable to its founder, the consequences were swift, bitter, and enormously damaging to Kano’s political stability. war enraged. The two men, former partners and political brothers, became bitter enemies whose conflict consumed years of Kano’s political energy, distorted the state’s governance, and created divisions whose effects are still visible in the state’s political landscape today.
Now, with a precision that suggests not merely repetition but pathology, the same drama is performing itself with Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf. Abba was Kwankwaso’s political son in the most complete sense of that phrase. He rose through the Kwankwasiyya structure, received the movement’s full organizational support in the 2023 governorship election, and arrived in office as the standard bearer of a movement that had just achieved its most significant electoral victory in years. By the Kwankwasiyya ownership model, Abba was supposed to govern as an instrument of the movement’s will, making appointments that the movement approved, pursuing policies that the movement sanctioned, and maintaining, above all, the fiction that the man in Government House in Kano was the governor while the man who really governed Kano lived elsewhere and wore a red cap.
Abba refused. And in refusing, he did something that deserves to be named clearly and celebrated without reservation: he honored the democratic mandate that the people of Kano had given him. The people of Kano did not vote for Kwankwasiyya’s agenda on the ballot paper they cast in 2023. They voted for Abba Kabir Yusuf. They did not elect a movement to govern them. They elected a man. And that man, exercising the authority that democratic election confers, made decisions that his judgment and his reading of Kano’s interests demanded, including the strategically essential decision to align his government with the federal administration in order to ensure that Kano’s development was not held hostage to one man’s unresolved political grievances.
Kwankwaso’s response to this exercise of democratic independence has been to cry betrayal, to mobilize his movement’s considerable media machinery against the government, and to position himself as a martyr of political ingratitude. But let us be precise about what he is actually saying when he uses the language of betrayal in this context. He is saying that an elected governor who makes decisions without his approval has broken faith with him. He is saying that the democratic mandate of millions of Kano voters is subordinate to his personal expectations. He is saying, with a candor that his language barely conceals, that he considers the governorship of Kano to be, in some meaningful sense, his property, and that its occupant’s primary obligation is not to the electorate but to the man who arranged for his installation. This is not a democratic position. It is the position of a feudal lord who has temporarily misplaced his deed of ownership and wants it returned.
The scholarship program, so frequently invoked as the centerpiece of Kwankwaso’s benevolence, must also be examined in this context of ownership and obligation. It is a program of genuine educational impact, and that impact must be acknowledged. But it was also, by the testimony of its own structure and its own cultural expectations, a mechanism for creating politically indebted citizens. Young men who received Kwankwaso’s scholarships understood, without being told explicitly, that their education came with a political price tag attached. They were expected to be Kwankwasiyya soldiers, to wear the red cap, to attend the rallies, to defend the movement on social media, and to vote, organize, and mobilize as the movement directed. The scholarship was real. The debt it created was equally real. And a democracy in which citizens are politically indebted to a patron for their education is not a functioning democracy. It is a patronage system wearing democracy’s clothing.
There is a further dimension to this ownership model that deserves careful attention, and that is its impact on the quality of governance that Kano has received across the years of Kwankwasiyya’s dominance. When a governor knows that his political survival depends not on satisfying his electorate but on satisfying his godfather, his incentives are fundamentally distorted. He makes appointments that the godfather approves rather than appointments that competence recommends. He pursues policies that maintain the movement’s patronage networks rather than policies that address the state’s developmental needs. He manages information to protect the movement’s image rather than managing resources to improve the people’s lives. The distortion is systematic, and its costs, while difficult to quantify in any single instance, accumulate across years of governance into a development deficit of enormous proportions. Kano’s persistent structural challenges, its unemployment crisis, its struggling industrial base, its dependence on federal allocations, these are not merely the products of bad luck or difficult circumstances. They are, in significant part, the products of a governance model that has been answerable to the wrong principal for far too long.
It is worth pausing here to consider what genuine political mentorship, as opposed to godfatherism, actually looks like. A true political mentor invests in the development of younger leaders because he believes that stronger leaders produce better governance for the people he loves. He gives his mentees the tools, the networks, and the confidence to govern independently and excellently. He celebrates their independence as evidence that his investment has matured. He measures his own legacy not by how many proxies he controls but by how many excellent leaders he has released into public service. By every one of these measures, Kwankwaso’s relationship with his political sons fails the test comprehensively. He has not produced independent leaders. He has produced dependents, and when they outgrow their dependence, he has declared war on them. The pattern is too consistent, too repetitive, and too damaging to be explained as personal disappointment. It is the structural consequence of a political philosophy that was always about ownership rather than mentorship.
The people of Kano have a right, a democratic and a moral right, to a government that is accountable to them and only to them. They have a right to a governor whose first, last, and only political obligation is to the mandate they granted him at the ballot box. They have a right to a political culture in which their votes are the ultimate source of political authority, not a preliminary ceremony that a godfather subsequently ratifies or overrides according to his own judgment. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf’s refusal to govern as Kwankwaso’s proxy is not a betrayal of democracy. It is democracy’s vindication. It is the system working precisely as its architects intended, returning authority to the people by insisting that their elected representative answers to them and not to the man who helped elect him.
Kwankwaso has spent decades building a movement and decades mistaking that movement for a mandate. He has confused organizational power with democratic legitimacy, confusing the ability to mobilize crowds with the right to govern through proxies, confusing the gratitude of scholarship beneficiaries with the sovereign consent of an electorate. These are not small confusions. They are the fundamental errors of a man who has been at the center of Nigerian democracy long enough to know better, and who has chosen, repeatedly and consequentially, not to.
Nigeria’s democracy is young, imperfect, and perpetually under pressure from precisely the forces that Kwankwaso represents: the forces that would reduce elections to expensive ceremonies legitimizing predetermined outcomes, that would convert public office into private property, and that would transform the people’s sovereign authority into a godfather’s personal asset. Every time a governor like Abba Kabir Yusuf insists on governing for his people rather than for his patron, he pushes back against those forces. Every time Kwankwaso responds to that insistence with outrage and accusations of betrayal, he reveals, with an honesty that his political communications never intend, exactly what he believed he owned and exactly why he was always wrong to believe it.
Kano does not belong to Kwankwaso. It never did. And the sooner his political calculations are made to reckon with that elementary democratic truth, the sooner the state can complete the transition from a political culture of patronage and ownership to one of accountability and genuine service. That transition is already underway. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, by the simple act of governing for the people who elected him, has done more to advance it than any political speech or manifesto could have achieved. That is not betrayal. That is, at long last, democracy beginning to mean what it was always supposed to mean in Kano.

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Opinion

Arewa Media Summit:A Political Jamboree-Tijjani Sarki 

Published

1 hour ago

on

July 9, 2026

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By Tijjani Sarki

The recently concluded Arewa Media Summit in Kano was presented as a platform to redefine the role of the media in Northern Nigeria. From my observation, however, it fell short of the expectations of a summit and looked more like a political jomboree than a strategic forum for regional renewal.

A summit that claims to speak for Arewa should reflect the diversity of the region’s media ecosystem by bringing together journalists, editors, broadcasters, communication strategists, digital influencers, academics, policymakers and development partners. My observation is that many of these critical voices were either missing or insufficiently represented, giving the event the appearance of a gathering of familiar faces rather than the North’s broad media constituency.

Another observation is that no communiqué or clear resolutions emerged in the public domain after the event. If a summit ends without publicly outlining its decisions, implementation framework or policy direction, it becomes difficult to measure its value beyond the speeches and photographs.

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I also observed concerns that the Honourable Commissioners of Information and Internal Affairs from the Northern states, particularly Kano State’s Comrade Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya the host state, were not visibly integrated into the programme. If that perception is accurate, it represents a missed opportunity to build a truly inclusive regional media agenda.

Politically, this was also a missed opportunity to provide an inclusive platform for constructive engagement on national issues, including the policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. Genuine dialogue requires broad participation, not selective representation.

Arewa deserves a media summit defined by vision, inclusiveness, measurable outcomes and institutional credibility, not by optics alone. Until those elements become evident, many will continue to question whether the gathering advanced the North’s aspirations or merely added another event to the calendar.

Tijjani Sarki
Good Governance Advocate and Public Policy Analyst
Can be reach via responsivecitizensinitiative@gmail.com

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Opinion

Allocations Triple, Yet Hardship Deepens Across Nigeria

Published

6 days ago

on

July 3, 2026

By

 

Despite a dramatic increase in federal allocations to states and local governments in recent years, millions of Nigerians continue to grapple with worsening poverty, inflation and a declining standard of living.

Across markets, offices, motor parks and homes, many citizens say the rising government revenues have done little to improve their daily realities. While states now receive significantly higher allocations through the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), families are struggling to afford food, transportation, housing and healthcare.

The growing concern has raised questions about how public funds are being managed and whether the benefits of economic reforms are reaching ordinary Nigerians.

The Rise In FAAC Allocations

Over the years, allocations from the Federation Account have steadily increased. In May 2022, FAAC shared N680.78 billion among the three tiers of government, representing a 6.94 per cent increase over the previous month. By July 2022, the amount had risen to N954.1 billion, while N990.19 billion was shared in December 2022.

The trend continued after the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the naira in May 2023. According to available data, the 36 states collectively received N3.35 trillion in 2022. By 2025, that figure had increased to N8.19 trillion, nearly tripling within three years.

Several states recorded substantial increases:

– Kano State: N99.31 billion in 2022 to N279.69 billion in 2025-

– Lagos State: N161.29 billion to N531.51 billion

– Taraba State: N51.74 billion to N157.56 billion

– Zamfara State: N56.62 billion to N167.20 billion

– Kogi State: N60.78 billion to N176.24 billion

– Akwa Ibom State: N314.18 billion to N497.98 billion

In March 2026 alone, FAAC distributed N2.04 trillion among the federal, state and local governments, reflecting a further increase in government revenue.

Analysts attribute the growth to tax reforms, improved revenue collection by agencies such as the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), higher crude oil earnings and policy changes directing more revenue into the Federation Account.

A Different Reality for Nigerians

While government revenues continue to rise, many Nigerians say their living conditions are moving in the opposite direction.

In Kano, civil servant Musa Abdullahi says his monthly salary can no longer sustain his family.

“Food prices have doubled. We hear that allocations are increasing, but we are not seeing the impact in our daily lives,” he said.

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For traders, the story is much the same. Zainab Sani, a petty trader, said customers now buy less because household incomes have been stretched beyond their limits.

In Lagos, many families have been forced to make difficult adjustments. Dayo Oluwa, a resident, explained that items such as meat and fish have become luxury goods in many homes.

“Before, N2,000 could cook a decent pot of stew. Today, even N5,000 may not be enough,” she said.

Workers say transportation costs have also become unbearable. Some civil servants now limit their movement or seek additional jobs just to meet their basic needs.

In Kogi State, several workers have reportedly taken up commercial transportation, farming and small-scale businesses to supplement their incomes. Similar stories have emerged from Taraba, Zamfara and Akwa Ibom states, where residents describe an economy that continues to squeeze the average citizen.

Poverty Amid Rising Revenue

The contradiction between increasing government revenue and growing hardship has become one of Nigeria’s most pressing economic concerns.

According to the World Bank, about 140 million Nigerians were living in poverty by 2025, representing approximately 63 per cent of the population. Earlier reports by the National Bureau of Statistics also showed that millions of Nigerians lacked adequate access to food, healthcare and decent housing.

Economic experts argue that while subsidy removal boosted government earnings, inflation and currency depreciation have significantly weakened the purchasing power of citizens.

As prices continue to rise, salary increases and government interventions have struggled to keep pace with the cost of living.

The Accountability Question

The increase in allocations has also renewed calls for transparency and accountability.

Experts insist that the issue is no longer about whether governments have enough money, but whether those resources are being effectively utilised.

Development economists have repeatedly argued that increased revenue should result in better roads, improved healthcare services, stronger educational systems, job creation and targeted support for vulnerable populations.

Civil society groups have also urged citizens to take a greater interest in how public funds are spent. They argue that taxpayers have a right to know how government revenues are allocated and utilised.

The editorial position expressed by several policy analysts is clear: rising allocations should not merely exist as figures on paper; they should translate into measurable improvements in people’s lives.

Beyond the Numbers

The growing FAAC allocations represent a positive development for Nigeria’s public finances. They demonstrate that revenue generation has improved and that the country is gradually diversifying beyond its traditional dependence on oil earnings.

However, for millions of Nigerians struggling to afford daily necessities, the true measure of success is not how much money enters government accounts, but how effectively those funds improve the quality of life of citizens.

As governments continue to receive larger allocations, expectations will continue to rise. Nigerians increasingly want evidence that public resources are being invested in meaningful development, economic opportunities and social welfare.

Until the benefits of rising revenues are reflected in households, communities and businesses across the country, many citizens will continue to ask the same question: if government allocations are increasing, why is life becoming more difficult?

Written By: Mfe Mesuur Perpetual (Abuja),
200 level student of Development and strategic communication, University of Abuja.

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Opinion

What Saheeba Taught Me About Waiting for Love

Published

1 week ago

on

July 1, 2026

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By Auwal Sani

Stories have a curious way of finding the places we pretend no longer exist. A few nights ago, I settled in to watch Saheeba, the ongoing Hausa mini series that has quietly earned a place in the hearts of many viewers. I expected to follow the lives of its characters. Instead, somewhere between the pauses, the longing, and the things left unsaid, I found myself confronting a story I have been carrying since 2018. By the time the episode ended, I was no longer thinking about the people on my screen. I was thinking about the quiet spaces within me.

I have always loved love stories. Not because they always end happily, as many of them do not, but because they reveal something profound about the human heart. It is perhaps the only part of us that refuses to become entirely logical. It believes after disappointment, hopes after silence, and waits even when waiting appears unreasonable. Love stories remind us that the heart possesses a resilience that the mind often struggles to understand.

There is a kind of loneliness that rarely announces itself. It is not the loneliness of being surrounded by no one. Rather, it is the loneliness of having family, friends, meaningful work, and personal achievements, yet still sensing that one important space remains unoccupied. It quietly accompanies you to weddings, birthdays, and ordinary evenings. It reminds you that some places within us cannot be filled by ambition, success, or the passage of time.

That has been my reality since 2018.

People often say that time heals all wounds. I have come to believe otherwise. Time, by itself, does not heal. It simply teaches us how to carry what has not healed. Over the years, I have questioned myself more than I have questioned fate. Perhaps my expectations of love are unrealistic. Perhaps I desire too much in a generation that seems increasingly comfortable with temporary connections and convenient relationships. Or perhaps I simply long for a kind of love that still believes commitment is worth choosing every single day.

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What I know with certainty is that love has always been my greatest vulnerability. I have never learned the mathematics of guarded affection. I do not know how to give ten percent when my heart insists on giving everything. It has always seemed ironic to me that we encourage people to pursue their dreams without reservation, yet advise them to ration kindness, vulnerability, and love. More than once, I have discovered that not every heart knows what to do with genuine affection. Some admire it, some misunderstand it, and others receive it without ever intending to give anything in return.

Perhaps that is why love remains such a mystery. We write poems about it, compose songs because of it, and build entire futures around the hope of finding it. Yet no definition has ever been large enough to contain all that it is. Those who understand love most deeply are not always those who found it. Sometimes, they are those who have lived through its absence. They know what it means to smile while carrying invisible disappointments, and they understand that loneliness is not merely the absence of people, but the absence of the one person with whom silence would have been enough.

Watching Saheeba reminded me that love is rarely sustained by grand declarations or dramatic sacrifices alone. More often, it survives through patience, consistency, understanding, and the quiet decision to keep choosing someone even after the excitement has faded. The series is still unfolding, and perhaps that is why it resonates so deeply with me. Like life itself, its ending has not yet been written. Every episode quietly reminds us that uncertainty is part of every meaningful journey.

The human heart has an astonishing ability to survive what should have broken it. It remembers tenderness after betrayal, imagines tomorrow after years of unanswered prayers, and continues to believe long after experience suggests it should stop. There was a time when I considered hardening my heart because it seemed safer. After all, disappointment cannot wound a heart that no longer expects anything. But I eventually realised that the opposite of heartbreak is not peace. It is indifference. And indifference is far more frightening because it asks us to stop feeling altogether. I would rather carry hope than become indifferent.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson Saheeba has offered me. Not that love is guaranteed, or that every story reaches the ending we imagine, but that there is quiet courage in remaining emotionally available despite life’s disappointments. To continue believing after years of waiting is its own form of resilience. Hope is not weakness. It is evidence that the heart has refused to surrender.

So I still love love stories. Not because they promise happy endings, but because they remind me that every ending is also the possibility of another beginning. They remind me that hope is never foolish, and that the heart’s willingness to believe again is one of the quiet miracles of being human.

Perhaps the greatest miracle is not finding love. Perhaps it is refusing to let disappointment convince us that love is no longer worth finding. And maybe, just maybe, the most beautiful chapter of my own story has not been written yet.

Auwal Sani is a Lecturer in the Department of Development and Strategic Communication, University of Abuja. He writes on communication, society, culture, and the quiet experiences that shape everyday life.

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