Looking back on my time at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, one change I value most is how the public came to see the sector itself. Environmental protection became a stronger part of conversations about our health, neighbourhoods, livelihoods, and Kano’s future. People increasingly joined the work, supported our programmes, and held us accountable.

For that, I thank the people of my dear state.

This journey began for me on 6 January 2025, when His Excellency, Alhaji Abba Kabir Yusuf, the Executive Governor of Kano State, entrusted me with the responsibility of leading the Ministry.

The challenges were clear. Facilities had deteriorated, policies needed updating, enforcement was weak, and frontline workers were owed outstanding payments. Yet His Excellency saw what the Ministry could become and gave us the support to begin rebuilding it.

Our government-owned nurseries tell part of that story. Eight facilities that had become non-functional were fully rehabilitated, restoring our capacity to produce seedlings locally. Building on the administration’s three-million-tree planting programme in 2024, the programme grew to five million in 2025 and ten million in 2026, with all seedlings raised in government-owned nurseries. Behind those numbers was the recovery of public facilities that could continue serving Kano for years to come.

The same determination guided the restoration of the Kano State Pollution Control Laboratory. We renovated, equipped, and recommissioned it, giving the State the scientific capacity to test, monitor pollution, and support enforcement. We operationalised the Environmental Pollution Control Law and developed the Environmental Pollution and Waste Control Regulations to give that work a stronger legal foundation.

At REMASAB, reforms improved the coordination of waste collection, evacuation, and disposal. Waste management became more organised and responsive, with operations supporting the evacuation of approximately one million metric tonnes of waste. The Dorayi Compost Plant was also brought back into operation, restoring the capacity to turn organic waste into useful compost and creating opportunities for investment.

Across flood-prone communities, we undertook drainage construction, clearance and erosion control. The stormwater harvesting intervention in Toranke and work on the Kano State Drainage Master Plan formed part of our effort to move towards better protection and long-term planning.

We also restored four public parks, with more underway. Spaces that had suffered neglect were given new management arrangements and a clear responsibility for maintenance. Families now have more welcoming places to spend time together, while the parks’ combined annual revenue increased from around ₦5 million to ₦90 million.

Alongside these projects, we rebuilt the policy foundations of the sector. We developed the Kano State Climate Change Policy, its implementation plan and results framework; advanced the Climate Change Bill; and reviewed the Forestry Law after more than five decades. We also developed the Climate Finance Reform Action and Implementation Plan and the Green Bond Framework to prepare Kano for environmental and climate investment.

Kano’s third-place finish in the just-concluded 2026 Climate Governance Performance Ranking, and the opportunity to present our work at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, gave us reasons to be thankful. They also reminded us how far consistent support and collective effort could take the state.

None of this work could have continued without the people delivering it every day. With His Excellency’s backing, we cleared nine months of salary arrears for 2,369 verified street sweepers and doubled their stipends, re-engaged inspectors and forest guards, and doubled the stipends of 875 sanitation vanguards. I remain grateful for their service.

Today, as His Excellency separates the ministries and appoints a new Commissioner for Environment and Climate Change, my strongest feeling is gratitude.

To His Excellency, thank you for trusting me with this responsibility, listening to our proposals and supporting the decisions needed to carry them through.

To our staff and agencies, community leaders, development partners, civil society organisations, young volunteers, businesses and residents: thank you for standing with us. Your participation, patience and constructive criticism helped us improve. These achievements belong to everyone who contributed.

I congratulate the incoming Honourable Commissioner and offer my full cooperation to sustain the work we began together.

Serving the people of Kano State in this capacity has been a privilege. Thank you for the trust and support.

Dr. Dahir M. Hashim, Honourable Commissioner
Ministry of Water Resources, Kano State, writes from Kano.

By Abba Anwar

In Kano North, a strange miracle is happening. One building can become three institutions at the same time. In the morning it is a NOUN Study Centre, in the afternoon it is a FUDMA Satellite Campus, and in the evening it is an ICT E-Learning Centre.

Same roof, same paint, three different press releases. And this is being celebrated as three different achievements of the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Barau I. Jibrin. Mine is just to reassess what many call constituency projects. As 2027 general election is around the corner knocking our doors day in day out.

For a Senator who has been in the National Assembly since 1999, then as a member of House of Representatives, from Tarauni federal constituency, who controlled the national budget as Chairman of the House Appropriation Committee then, and started as a Senator from 2015, who is now the number two citizen of the Senate, Kano North expected bulldozers, not signboards. They expected completed roads, not N19 Billion and N37 Billion allocations that disappear into a 90-kilometer road that is still at 40%. They expected Immigration and Civil Defence training schools that train officers, not structures that have remained “under construction” for two years after fanfare.

This reassessment is stemmed from a process, auditing commitment, hard work, enthusiasm and due allocations versus achievements, of announcements versus reality on ground in the 13 Local Governments of Kano North.

To me personally the way I see it is this, that our Distinguished Senator should be celebrating completed projects in Kano North. Instead, his constituency is celebrating allocations, approvals and foundations.

A detailed analysis of six major projects credited to him shows a disturbing pattern, big announcements, big budgets, little completion.

1. Kano-Gwarzo-Dayi road of N56 Billion Released, Road Still A Death Trap. This is the most important road in Kano North. 90.65km dual carriageway from Kano to Dayi, linking Kano to Katsina and Kebbi. It was awarded on December 1, 2020, to CGC Nigeria Limited for N62.711 Billion and flagged off on June 10, 2021, with a promise of 24 months completion.

Five years later, what is on ground?

The road was abandoned for over three years 2022-2024. Motorists endured hardship. Communities praised God when contractors returned in 2026.

Why did they return? Because Senator Barau facilitated N19 Billion in 2025 Budget and another N37 Billion in 2026 Budget – a total of N56 Billion fresh injection outside the original N62 Billion. But up to now, the story isn’t something to write home about.

Yet, even with N56 Billion, the road is only 35-40% completed as of October 2026.

The question Kano North people are asking is, if you attracted N56 Billion, who supervises the contractor? Why should a road that got N56 Billion in two years still be at 40%? A performing Senator does not just lobby projects, he ensures delivery.

2. Immigration Training School, Bichi and NSCDC School, Gwarzo. Two years after facilitation, still under construction.

In January 2024, the DSP announced with fanfare that he has facilitated the establishment of a State-of-the-Art Immigration Training School in Bichi and NSCDC Training College in Gwarzo.

The statement then was: “From A to Z, we will ensure it is constructed and equipped.”

As at late 2025 and October 2026, the official status of both schools remains “Currently under construction.” Immigration School in Bichi is at 60-70%, NSCDC College in Gwarzo is at 50-60%. Two years after facilitation, no single officer has been trained there. They are structures, not institutions yet.

As the bitter truth for a Senator who wants to be Governor, building and abandoning is not a good record. The way he follows to facilitate, lobby and bring to the table, absence of follow-up for completion purpose is a bad omen.

3. Federal University Of Science And Technology, Kabo, the only success that is not yet a success.

This is the only project in Kano North that has achieved 100% legislative completion. The Federal Polytechnic Kabo was converted to Federal University of Science and Technology, Kabo after Presidential Assent on May 27, 2025.

Yes, it is now a University on paper. Admission for 2026/2027 has been announced on JAMB CAPS. But visit Kabo today and you will see a Polytechnic being hurriedly painted to become a University. Laboratories are still Polytechnic standard. Lecture halls are still Polytechnic size. There is no teaching hospital, no Senate building, no Professorial offices befitting a University of Science and Technology. So, while the law is complete, the University is not.

4. I won’t call this biggest deceit. But look at it, NOUN Campuses that are E-Learning Centres, and E-Learning centres that are NOUN Campuses.

There was a claim for the establishment of 13 National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) Study Centres across all 13 LGAs of Kano North: Bichi, Bagwai, Shanono, Gwarzo, Danbatta, Dawakin Tofa, Gabasawa, Kabo, Tofa, Rimi Gado, Kunchi, Makoda and Tsanyawa.

There was also a claim for the establishment of Federal University Dutsinma (FUDMA) Satellite Campuses in Gwarzo, Danbatta, Dawakin Tofa and Gabasawa.

There was also claim for the establishment of ICT/E-Learning Centres in Gwarzo, Tofa, Bichi, Kabo and Dambatta.

The truth on ground? They are the same buildings being used for three different names.

Investigation shows that the ICT Centre in Gwarzo is the same building called NOUN Study Centre Gwarzo, which is also called FUDMA Satellite Campus Gwarzo. The one in Bichi is the same. The one in Kabo is the same.

One Centre, Three Names, Three Press Releases.

And even at that, the original 2015 NITDA contract for 5 E-Learning Centres at N193 Million awarded to a contractor was found by Kano Focus investigative report to have no computers, no furniture, no internet years after construction. They were empty buildings where students still travel far to write JAMB.

Today, the new Centres under Barau Foundation are operational at 90%, but they are simply equipped versions of the same empty buildings of 2015. So for 8 years 2015-2023, the Centres existed only on signboards.

During my tour to hear from people of Kano North in preparation for my series of documentaries, I came to understand that Kano North needs completed roads, functional schools, and real universities.

If a 90km road cannot be completed with N56 Billion in two years, if two security training schools remain under construction for two years, and if one building is being counted as three different projects, then there is need for the Senator to put more effort in serving his people well. The bitter truth!

Allocations make headlines. Completed projects make history.
Kano North is still waiting for history.

In subsequent write-ups and about to be produced documentaries for our local communities, I will concentrate on local government by local government analysis of Kano North in relation to His Excellency Distinguished Senator Barau I Jibrin, PhD, CFR.

Anwar writes from Kano
Tuesday, 27th October, 2026

By Muttaqa Yusha’u

It was the Gulbenkian Commission’s report, Open the Social Sciences, that first came to my mind while reflecting on what to write in tribute to a scholar par excellence, Mallam Ibrahim Muazzam of the Department of Political Science, Bayero University, Kano.

The report raises fundamental questions about how knowledge is produced, the boundaries of academic disciplines, and the methods through which we understand society. These questions have remained central to my intellectual journey, one that began in Mallam Muazzam’s classroom.

Mallam Muazzam is a household name for anyone who passed through Bayero University, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. His intellectual influence cuts across disciplines, and generations of scholars have benefited from his scholarship, critical engagement, and commitment to expanding the frontiers of knowledge.

I first encountered Mallam as an undergraduate student through his course on Political Ideas. His eloquence and critical engagement with ideas were second to none. In his classroom, we encountered a wide range of political traditions, including liberalism, anarchism, and many others. More importantly, we were encouraged to interrogate these ideas rather than merely memorise their central arguments.

I was particularly fascinated by anarchism. Beyond its popular misconception as a doctrine of lawlessness, anarchism represents a political and social tradition that envisions a society organised around freedom, voluntary association, and collective self-management. I remember the famous idea associated with Mikhail Bakunin that a free society would have administration of things rather than government over people. This challenged conventional assumptions about authority, the state, and how society could be organised.

The idea resonated even more with me in 2012, when I undertook an MA in Labour Policies and Globalisation at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. There, I encountered Professor Lucien van der Walt, who deepened our understanding of anarchism as a libertarian tradition grounded in workers’ self-management and the possibility of organising society beyond hierarchical authority.

I found this idea reflected in practical experience during our visit to a community in Kassel, Germany, in 2018, when members of the community interacted with us as alumni of the Global Labour University. I can no longer recall the name of the community, but I vividly remember how its members shared their experiences of organising around anarchist principles of self-management. It was a fascinating encounter that brought to life the possibility of organising collective existence differently.

Looking back, I can trace an intellectual journey from Mallam Muazzam’s classroom, where I first encountered these ideas, to their deeper theoretical exploration and practical expression years later. This is one of the enduring values of a good teacher: the ideas introduced in the classroom continue to travel with the student, opening new horizons of thought and experience long after the formal encounter has ended.

You cannot celebrate Mallam without recognising his contribution to critical knowledge production in our society. His scholarship challenged the academic boundaries that compartmentalise the social sciences into separate disciplines. For anyone who took his MSc course on Contemporary Political Analysis, the references attached to the course outline were enough to leave you intimidated. There were over a hundred classical sources to engage with. Yet, beyond the sheer volume of reading, what mattered was the intellectual disposition he cultivated: an insistence that understanding society requires serious engagement with competing traditions of thought.

What was even more important to me was how Mallam challenged orthodoxy in the production of knowledge, particularly the methods and methodologies adopted in the social sciences and humanities. As graduate students, we encountered highly elevated debates about research methods, often influenced by positivist and behavioural approaches. What counted as knowledge was frequently understood in terms of what could be established through scientific methods, measurement, observation, and the search for regularities in social behaviour.

Through Mallam, I became fascinated by how knowledge could also be produced and analysed using interpretivist methodologies. I began to appreciate alternative ways of understanding social reality beyond the assumptions of dominant methodological traditions. Social reality could not always be adequately understood by reducing human experience to measurable variables; it also required an engagement with meaning, historical context, lived experience, and the ways people interpret the world around them.

If you studied under Mallam, listened to him, or engaged with him, you must have encountered the key words epistemology and ontology, alongside the questions he would ask you to factor into your analysis. What do we know? How do we know it? What constitutes reality? Whose knowledge is recognised, and whose experiences are excluded from the production of knowledge? These are not merely philosophical questions. They shape the theories we adopt, the methods we use, and the conclusions we draw about society.

It was never an accident that, when I met my PhD supervisor, Professor Ahmad Murad Mohd Noor Merican, a scholar of media studies in Malaysia, in 2014, I encountered another intellectual spirit who reminded me of Mallam Muazzam. Professor Merican, now a professor at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation, shared Mallam’s concern with the intellectual ferment within the social sciences and humanities. Scholars who questioned dominant approaches, particularly the privileging of quantitative methods, could find themselves marginalised within the university environment.

Both scholars encouraged us to look beyond conventional norms in understanding reality. Their interdisciplinary approaches brought together insights from the sociology of knowledge, literature, history, philosophy, and other fields. I believe this openness to different intellectual traditions explains their significant influence on scholars across disciplinary boundaries.

For me, this is what makes Mallam Ibrahim Muazzam a heterodox scholar. Heterodoxy is not simply a disposition to disagree with established ideas or reject mainstream scholarship. It is a commitment to questioning the assumptions upon which dominant intellectual traditions are built, examining the power relations that shape knowledge, and remaining open to alternative ways of understanding social reality. Mallam embodied this intellectual disposition by refusing to confine the study of society within narrow disciplinary and methodological boundaries.

His intellectual orientation resonates with the central concern of the Gulbenkian Commission’s report, Open the Social Sciences: the need to rethink the historical organisation of knowledge and the rigid boundaries that separate academic disciplines. To open the social sciences is not merely to encourage interdisciplinary research. It is also to interrogate the intellectual hierarchies through which certain theories, methods, and traditions acquire authority while others are relegated to the margins.

Mallam Muazzam was never a passive scholar. He was an organic public intellectual who connected knowledge with society. I remember him introducing us to the work of Archie Mafeje on democracy and democratisation in Africa as we grappled with the democratic challenges confronting Nigeria during its transition. These engagements encouraged us to look beyond formal democratic institutions and interrogate deeper questions of political power, popular participation, and the conditions necessary for meaningful democratic transformation.

Mallam’s days at the Centre for Research and Documentation (CRD) were memorable for the way knowledge was connected with public life. His intellectual engagement extended beyond the university classroom, bringing scholarship into conversation with the realities and challenges of society. The significance of this tradition lies in its refusal to treat knowledge as an end in itself, detached from the historical conditions, social struggles, and aspirations of the people among whom it is produced.

The last time I met Mallam was at a Marxist conference held in Keffi, Nasarawa State, in 2018. The conference was organised around a series of historic Marxist milestones, including the bicentenary of Karl Marx’s birth, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Das Kapital, and the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Its theme, “Capitalism, Imperialism and Revolutions in the 21st Century,” captured the continuing relevance of Marxist thought to understanding contemporary society and the contradictions of global capitalism.

The gathering brought together academics, intellectuals, and activists seeking to interrogate the ferment within society, particularly the challenges confronting the labour movement and the broader struggle for social transformation. Mallam presented a paper on the Nigerian Left, a subject that brought together many of the questions that had long occupied his intellectual engagement with politics, social change, and the struggles of ordinary people.

I remember seeing Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, Mallam Y. Z. Yau, the late Professor Nuhu Yaqub, Dr Amina Salihu, who coordinated the discussion, Salihu Lukman, Nura Iro Maaji, Gbenga Komolafe, Aliyu Dahiru, Joh Odah, the late Abiodun Aremu, Comrade Salisu Mohammed, among others. These are the people I can still remember from that gathering. Their different intellectual, political, and organisational engagements reflected the longstanding relationship between critical scholarship and progressive social movements in Nigeria.

That conference remains memorable to me because it demonstrated Mallam’s continuing engagement with the Nigerian Left and the labour movement. His contribution was not simply that of a scholar analysing political developments from a distance; it was that of an intellectual participating in the collective effort to understand the contradictions of our society and the challenges confronting the struggle for a better one.

The theme of the conference also reminds us that the questions raised by Marx remain relevant to understanding capitalism, imperialism, class relations, and the possibilities of social transformation in the twenty-first century. These questions cannot be adequately addressed through an intellectual tradition that separates political economy from history, sociology from politics, or the production of knowledge from the material conditions of society. They require precisely the kind of intellectual openness that Mallam represented.

Mallam’s retirement from the university comes at a time when democratic credentials are increasingly under strain across the world. We inhabit a post-truth society in which critical approaches to understanding reality are often dismissed as unnecessary nuisances. The labour movement risks losing its organic links with critical intellectual traditions, while an academic environment increasingly shaped by the commodification of knowledge threatens to suppress the emancipatory impulse of the social sciences and humanities.

The danger is not simply that universities may produce less critical scholarship. It is that knowledge itself may increasingly be treated as a commodity, valued primarily for its marketability rather than its capacity to illuminate social contradictions, challenge power, and expand the possibilities of human freedom. In such a context, the need for heterodox scholars and organic public intellectuals becomes even more urgent.

Mallam Y. Z. Yau, my teacher and mentor, deserves special commendation for initiating a platform to immortalise Mallam Muazzam through the Ibrahim Muazzam Philosophy Institute, which seeks to train young people in philosophy and critical thinking. All students of Mallam, at home and abroad, should support this initiative. It is a worthy effort to ensure that the intellectual tradition he represents continues to inspire generations of young people.

The establishment of such an institute is particularly important at a time when critical thinking, philosophical inquiry, and independent intellectual engagement need to be strengthened among young people. To immortalise Mallam should mean more than preserving his name or celebrating his achievements. It should mean creating spaces in which young people can question established ideas, engage competing traditions of thought, and develop the intellectual confidence to interrogate the realities confronting their society.

We need to open the social sciences and connect them more closely with the task of understanding our society. We need to question established orthodoxies and explore alternative ways of understanding social reality. We need to challenge the artificial boundaries separating disciplines and recognise that the problems confronting our society—poverty, inequality, political domination, labour exploitation, and democratic deficits—cannot be understood through narrow disciplinary lenses.

Above all, we need social sciences that illuminate the struggles and aspirations of our people and help us imagine a better society. For those of us in the labour movement, this intellectual task is particularly important. Workers’ struggles are not simply struggles over wages and conditions of employment; they are also struggles over power, the distribution of social resources, democratic participation, and the kind of society we wish to build.

To honour Mallam Ibrahim Muazzam is therefore to sustain this critical intellectual tradition and keep open the possibilities of understanding and transforming our society. It is to recognise that the university must remain a space for questioning, debate, and the contestation of ideas, rather than merely a site for reproducing established orthodoxies.

As we celebrate Mallam and the enduring intellectual legacy he has given to generations of students and scholars, I wish him many more years of good health, strength, and fulfilment. May he continue to inspire younger generations with his wisdom, critical spirit, and commitment to knowledge and society.

To honour Mallam Ibrahim Muazzam is to keep the social sciences open, keep critical thought alive, and keep alive the possibility of a better society

Dr Muttaqa Yushau wrote this from Abuja