Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya

When Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf made the bold and courageous decision to align Kano State with the Federal Government under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the critics were loud, the cynics were louder, and the doubters were everywhere. They called it political betrayal. They called it opportunism. Some called it the ultimate act of ingratitude toward a man who had invested years, resources, and political capital in building the career of the Kano governor. What they failed to see, or perhaps refused to acknowledge, was the singular and unwavering motivation behind that decision: the welfare of the ordinary men and women of Kano State, the market trader in Kurmi, the widowed mother in Dawakin Tofa, the unemployed graduate in Gwale, and the small business owner struggling to keep his shop open in Farm Centre.
In less than a year of active federal alignment, Kano State has gone from being a politically isolated outlier to becoming one of the most strategically positioned states in the entire federation. Federal presence, federal investment, and federal goodwill are flowing into Kano with a consistency and velocity that was simply impossible under the previous arrangement, where governance was dictated not by the needs of the people, but by the personal wishes of a political godfather seated comfortably in Abuja. For too long, Kano, a state that by every measure of population, commerce, history, and strategic importance deserves to sit at the very centre of Nigeria’s development conversation, was standing at the margins, watching other states benefit from federal partnerships while its own people paid the price of political stubbornness.
The clearest and most visible evidence of this transformation is the forthcoming flag off of the Energise Commercialisation Now initiative, a landmark federal programme spearheaded by the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology under the Honourable Minister, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN, scheduled to hold in Kano from April 23 to 25, 2026. The programme, designed to mobilise innovation, attract investment, and accelerate industrial production across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, has chosen Kano as the venue for its national launch and North West zonal deployment. That choice is not accidental. It is not logistical. It is a deliberate federal acknowledgement of Kano’s strategic importance as the commercial and industrial heartbeat of Northern Nigeria, and a direct reward for Governor Yusuf’s visionary and courageous leadership.
The Energise Commercialisation Now initiative represents a structured national platform to identify commercially viable innovations, connect them with investors and manufacturers, and scale them into enterprises that create jobs and generate wealth. For a state like Kano, with its rich history of commerce, its dense network of small and medium enterprises, its vibrant informal economy, and its large population of young, talented, and ambitious people, this programme is not merely a federal event passing through. It is a genuine economic opportunity of generational significance.
More significantly, the programme will be flagged off by no less a personality than Her Excellency Senator Oluremi Tinubu, CON, the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the personal champion of the ECoN initiative. Her presence in Kano is a statement of the highest order. In Nigerian political culture, when the First Lady travels to a state to commission a programme, it is not a routine governmental act. It is a personal signal from the Presidency itself. It is Aso Rock saying, in the clearest possible terms, that Kano is seen, Kano is valued, Kano is a priority, and Kano will not be left behind in Nigeria’s march toward industrial and economic transformation.
For Governor Yusuf, whose critics questioned whether his alignment with the APC and the Tinubu administration would translate into anything concrete for his people, Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s visit to Kano on April 23 is the most powerful possible answer. It says that the partnership is real, the commitment is genuine, and the dividends are already arriving.
But beyond the symbolism and the political significance, what does all of this mean for the ordinary Kano citizen?
It means that the innovator in Fagge, the young entrepreneur in Tarauni, the female small business owner in Nasarawa, and the graduate sitting at home in Ungogo and all other localities in Kano now have a real, structured, and government-backed platform to showcase their ideas, access funding, connect with investors, and build enterprises that can employ others. It means that Kano’s universities, polytechnics, and research institutions, which for years have produced brilliant graduates and groundbreaking research that never left the laboratory, will now have a direct pipeline to the market. It means that the textile artisan in Kofar Mata, the leather craftsman in Yan Kaba, and the food processing entrepreneur in Dorayi can look at this programme and see themselves as legitimate participants in Nigeria’s industrial future.
This is precisely the promise of Governor Yusuf’s Kano First Agenda, an agenda that places the prosperity of Kano people above every political consideration, above every personal loyalty, and above every partisan calculation. When the governor stood before his people and declared that Kano would come first in every decision his administration makes, he was not making a campaign promise. He was entering into a sacred covenant with millions of people who had entrusted him with the highest office in the state.
Every decision his administration has taken since then, including the historic and difficult decision to align with the centre, has been guided by that covenant. The governor has consistently and publicly maintained that he answers to the people of Kano, not to any individual, not to any movement, and not to any political structure whose primary interest is the perpetuation of personal power rather than the advancement of public good. Kano State, he insists, is no longer remotely controlled. The elected chief executive is fully in charge, and fully accountable to the people alone.
The results of this philosophy are not abstract. They are measurable, verifiable, and visible to anyone willing to look beyond the noise of political controversy.
A N1.477 trillion budget for 2026, the largest in Kano’s history, with 68 percent allocated to capital projects. Over N334 million disbursed to 6,680 women across all 44 local government areas of the state, each receiving a monthly stipend of N50,000 to grow their businesses and support their families. More than N800 million invested in youth empowerment programmes benefiting over 5,300 young people. Kano ranking first in Nigeria’s 2025 NECO results, a historic educational achievement that signals a transformation in the state’s human capital investment. A health sector receiving N212.2 billion, with hospitals upgraded, the Abba Care Scheme launched, and healthcare access expanded across the state. An infrastructure allocation of N346.2 billion, covering urban roads, solar streetlights, housing development, and market renovation across all 44 local government areas.
These are not political talking points. These are not figures conjured for a press conference. These are the measurable, auditable, and undeniable fruits of purposeful, people-centred governance under a leader who understands that the ultimate test of political courage is not the decision itself, but what that decision delivers to the people it was made for.
As Kano prepares to host the First Lady of Nigeria and welcome the nation’s attention on April 23, one truth stands clear, unambiguous, and beyond reasonable dispute: Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf did not align with the centre for himself. He did not do it for political survival. He did not do it for personal gain. He did it for Kano. He did it for the market trader, the young graduate, the nursing mother, the struggling entrepreneur, and every ordinary citizen who deserves a government that fights for them at every level of power.

By Najeeb Nasir Ibrahim DG, Unifier Project 19 April 2026

There is a moment in the life of every great city when history and opportunity arrive at the same address, at the same time, and demand an answer. For Kano, that moment is April 23, 2026. On that day, Her Excellency Senator Oluremi Tinubu, CON, First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, will stand in the commercial heartbeat of Northern Nigeria to flag off the Energise Commercialisation Now initiative, a federal programme that carries within it the most ambitious and consequential blueprint for decentralised industrial transformation that this country has attempted in a generation.
For decades, Nigeria’s development architecture has been built on a fundamentally flawed assumption: that economic transformation can be designed, directed, and delivered exclusively from the federal centre. The result of that assumption is visible in every part of the country. Universities full of brilliant graduates producing research that never leaves the laboratory. Agricultural communities harvesting commodities that travel hundreds of kilometres to be processed elsewhere, returning as finished goods at prices that bear no relationship to the value that local hands created. Industrial estates, once productive and purposeful, standing as monuments to the gap between policy intention and economic reality.
Nigeria is not a poor country. It is a country that has consistently failed to convert its wealth into wellbeing, its potential into production, and its knowledge into commercial power. The distance between what Nigeria has and what Nigeria does with what it has is the central economic problem of our time. And the answer to that problem, as the Energise Commercialisation Now initiative correctly identifies, does not lie in Abuja alone. It lies in Kano, in Kaduna, in Sokoto, in Kebbi, in Jigawa, in Katsina, and in Zamfara. It lies in the 774 local government areas of this federation, where the real economic activity of 220 million people actually happens.
The concept of sub-national economic and resource mapping sits at the intellectual core of the ECoN initiative, and it deserves a more precise explanation than it typically receives in policy documents and press releases.
Resource mapping, in this context, is not simply a geological survey or an agricultural inventory. It is a comprehensive strategic framework designed to identify, organise, and connect every category of productive asset within a state or local government area, including indigenous technologies developed in informal workshops, academic research sitting unpublished in university repositories, skilled human capital that has never been matched to an appropriate industry, natural endowments that have never been processed beyond their raw state, and entrepreneurial energy that has never been channelled into structured enterprise.
The goal is to create what the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology describes as a National Innovation Asset Register, an integrated, living database that maps local strengths against national industrial priorities and identifies the specific interventions, whether financing, technology transfer, standards certification, or market access, required to convert each asset from potential into production.
For a state like Kano, whose economic assets span ancient leather craft traditions, a dense network of small and medium enterprises across 44 local government areas, three major universities conducting active research, a N1.477 trillion state budget with 68 percent allocated to capital projects, and an agricultural hinterland producing groundnuts, sorghum, millet, and cowpea across millions of hectares, the creation of such a register is not an administrative exercise. It is an economic revolution in its earliest and most critical stage.
Kano does not come to this conversation as a passive participant or a grateful recipient of federal attention. It comes as a city with a 500-year commercial pedigree, a proven capacity for enterprise, and a state government that has already been doing the foundational work that makes innovation-driven industrialisation possible.
Consider the evidence. Under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf’s administration, Kano ranked first in Nigeria’s 2025 NECO results, a milestone that signals a transformation in the quality of human capital the state is producing for its economy. The administration has recruited 400 Mathematics teachers, established Kano State Polytechnic in Gaya to expand technical and vocational education in the state’s southern corridor, and invested N405.3 billion in education within its 2026 budget alone. It has planted over 5.5 million trees under its Climate Change Policy, approved 11 mini-dams to support year-round agricultural production, and procured 199,000 bags of fertiliser for distribution to farmers. It has cleared N32 billion in pension backlogs, trained 2,000 Neighbourhood Watch operatives for community security, and disbursed over N334 million directly to 6,680 women entrepreneurs across all 44 local government areas.
These are not disconnected welfare gestures. They are the deliberate construction of an enabling environment for exactly the kind of innovation-driven industrialisation that ECoN is designed to accelerate. A sub-national resource mapping exercise arriving in a state with functional schools, improved security, empowered women entrepreneurs, and a government committed to agricultural productivity is a mapping exercise that will find real assets, not empty promises.
One of the most economically consequential arguments embedded in the ECoN framework is its emphasis on regional value addition, and it is an argument that Kano’s history makes more powerfully than any policy document can.
For generations, the economic tragedy of Northern Nigeria has been the export of raw materials and the import of finished goods. Kano’s groundnut farmers have watched their harvest leave the state as unprocessed commodity and return as refined oil at prices that enrich processors elsewhere. Its leather craftsmen have seen raw hides travel to tanneries in other cities and come back as finished goods that command international prices the original producers never see. Its cotton farmers have supplied raw fibre to textile mills that, when they were still operating, captured the majority of the value chain’s economic benefit.
The ECoN framework’s insistence on processing and manufacturing at the source represents a direct challenge to that extractive economic model. By connecting Kano’s raw material producers with the technologies, the financing, and the market linkages required to process their outputs locally, the programme creates the conditions for a fundamental redistribution of economic value within the North West. More jobs created locally. More revenue retained within the state. More enterprises built around Kano’s natural and agricultural endowments. More young people employed in productive industries rather than idle in urban centres.
The ripple effects of that redistribution, sustained over a period of years, are the difference between a city that hosts commerce and a city that drives it.
The ECoN initiative’s ambition does not stop at the borders of the North West. One of its explicitly stated objectives is to prepare Nigerian innovators, startups, and SMEs for international trade platforms, including the Intra-African Trade Fair scheduled for 2027. That objective places Kano’s entrepreneurs, quite literally, on a pathway to continental and global markets.
The African Continental Free Trade Area, which came into force in 2021 and represents a combined market of 1.3 billion people and a GDP of approximately three trillion dollars, remains, for most Nigerian SMEs, an abstract aspiration rather than a practical opportunity. The gap between aspiration and opportunity is filled by exactly the kind of structured support that ECoN provides: standards certification, intellectual property protection, export readiness training, investment facilitation, and access to the institutional networks that make international trade possible for enterprises that would otherwise navigate it alone.
For Kano, whose merchants have been trading across international boundaries for five centuries, the prospect of reconnecting that commercial tradition to a structured, government-backed, and internationally recognised framework for African trade is not merely exciting. It is historically resonant.
It would be intellectually dishonest to discuss Kano’s hosting of the ECoN national launch without acknowledging the political context that made it possible. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf’s decision to align Kano State with the Federal Government under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was, and remains, a subject of vigorous political debate. But beneath the political noise lies a developmental logic that this moment validates with striking clarity.
A state in productive alignment with the federal centre is a state that can nominate its priority innovations for national programmes, mobilise its stakeholders for federal platforms, host engagements that connect its entrepreneurs to national and international investors, and position its industrial clusters for the federal attention and investment that can reverse decades of decline. That is precisely what Kano is doing on April 23. And the people who will benefit most from it are not politicians. They are the innovator in Fagge, the female entrepreneur in Nasarawa, the agricultural processor in Gezawa, and the young graduate in Ungogo who has spent years waiting for a structured opportunity to match his talent.
What Kano is demonstrating, through the hosting of this initiative, is something that every state government in Nigeria needs to study and internalise: that the future of Nigeria’s prosperity is not a centralised project. It is a distributed one. It is built state by state, local government by local government, enterprise by enterprise, and innovation by innovation. The federal government can provide the framework, the financing, and the convening power. But the actual work of converting Nigeria’s extraordinary natural and human endowments into commercial and industrial wealth must happen at the sub-national level, driven by state governments with the vision, the capacity, and the political will to lead.
Kano has that vision. It has demonstrated that capacity. And under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, it is exercising that political will with a consistency and a purposefulness that is already producing measurable results.
Nigeria’s innovation revolution will not be won in a single federal ministry or announced in a single presidential executive order. It will be won in the markets of Kano, the workshops of Aba, the farms of Benue, the fishing communities of Bayelsa, and the technology hubs of Lagos. It will be won by the collective energy of a nation that has finally, through initiatives like ECoN, begun to recognise and systematically harness the extraordinary economic intelligence embedded within its states and local communities.
Kano’s moment is here. And if properly harnessed, with the state government’s commitment to enabling infrastructure, human capital investment, and federal partnership providing the foundation, this moment will not be remembered merely as a successful event. It will be remembered as the day Kano reclaimed its place at the centre of Nigeria’s economic story, and began writing the next chapter with the confidence, the competence, and the conviction that the chapter deserves.

H

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.