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From Aminu Kano to Kano First: Reviving a Tradition of People-Driven Politics

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3 months ago

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Kano Map

 

There are political From Aminu Kano to Kano First: Reviving a Tradition of People-Driven Politics that arrive in their time and there are political ideas that arrive before their time, ideas whose significance is not fully understood until the moment has passed and history, with its characteristic unhurried clarity, has arranged the evidence into a pattern that the present could not see. The philosophy of Malam Aminu Kano was, for much of its duration, one of the latter. In the political environment of mid-twentieth century Northern Nigeria, dominated by the patrician certainties of the NPC and the conservative social order that sustained them, Aminu Kano’s insistence that politics must belong to the talakawa, to the ordinary men and women who had for so long been governed without being consulted, was radical enough to be dismissed, marginalised, and persistently defeated at the ballot box. Yet the idea refused to die. It lodged itself in the political consciousness of Kano’s people with a tenacity that no electoral defeat could dislodge, and it shaped, over the decades that followed, the civic culture of a state that has consistently demanded more of its leaders than most Nigerian states have ever thought to ask.
It is against the backdrop of that long, unfinished democratic inheritance that the Kano First philosophy of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf must be understood and assessed. The connection between Aminu Kano’s people-driven politics and the Kano First Initiative is not merely rhetorical or historical. It is structural. Both rest on the same foundational conviction: that the legitimacy of governance derives not from the power of those who govern but from the quality of service rendered to those who are governed, that politics is not a competition for personal advancement but a vocation of collective service, and that the measure of a leader is not the durability of his hold on power but the tangible improvement he delivers to the lives of the ordinary citizens who trusted him with it. Aminu Kano articulated this conviction in the language of his era. Governor Yusuf is attempting to institutionalize it in the language and the instruments of his.
The historical significance of this attempt should not be underestimated. Kano’s political culture, for all its celebrated civic consciousness, has not been immune to the distortions that have afflicted Nigerian democracy more broadly. The decades that separated Aminu Kano’s era from the present have not been, in the main, decades of deepening democratic practice. They have been decades of military interruptions, institutional decay, the rise of godfatherism as a governing logic, the progressive colonization of public resources by private interests, and the gradual but devastating erosion of the civic values that once made Kano’s political culture a genuine source of national inspiration. The generation of young Kano citizens that Governor Yusuf now governs is a generation that has inherited the memory of Aminu Kano’s idealism without, in most cases, having experienced the kind of governance that idealism was supposed to produce. Their political consciousness is real and it is sharp, but it has been sharpened more by disappointment than by affirmation, more by the evidence of what governance has failed to deliver than by the experience of what it can achieve when it is genuinely committed to the people’s welfare.
The Kano First Initiative is, in its deepest ambition, an attempt to change that experience. Not through grand proclamations or the manufactured optimism of political communication, but through the patient, evidence-based, institutionally serious work of rebuilding the relationship between Kano’s government and Kano’s citizens on foundations of genuine trust, demonstrated accountability, and the visible alignment between what government says and what government does. The comprehensive policy framework produced under the intellectual stewardship of the Honourable Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs, Comrade Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya, the man widely and deservedly known as the Limamin Kano First, is the most concrete expression of this ambition. It draws on Islamic ethical governance, on Kano’s own sociocultural heritage, and on the modern science of behavioral change to construct a framework for societal renewal that is simultaneously rooted in Kano’s deepest traditions and responsive to the challenges of its contemporary reality. Aminu Kano would have recognized its spirit immediately.
The administration’s approach to youth inclusion deserves particular emphasis, because it addresses what is perhaps the most politically consequential dimension of Kano’s current social reality. Kano is an overwhelmingly young society, a society in which the aspirations, energies, and frustrations of a vast and rapidly growing youth population represent both the greatest potential resource and the most serious governance challenge that any administration must navigate. The deliberate opening of leadership opportunities to young professionals, the integration of youth into governance structures rather than merely into election campaigns, and the linking of youth-focused communication with concrete economic empowerment programmes, including skills development, entrepreneurship support, and market-based outreach, all reflect an understanding that political engagement divorced from economic opportunity is ultimately unsustainable. Young people who are given a genuine stake in their society’s progress do not become agents of its destabilization. They become its most committed defenders.
The policy record across education, healthcare, and economic empowerment provides the material evidence on which the Kano First narrative ultimately depends for its credibility. Teacher recruitment, school renovation, the expansion of access to learning resources, the strengthening of free and compulsory education, the upgrading of primary healthcare facilities in rural communities, the introduction of economic empowerment programmes targeting small businesses, farmers, and artisans, these are not merely programmatic achievements to be listed in a governance report. They are, taken together, the concrete expression of a governing philosophy that insists on the connection between political commitment and lived improvement, between the language of people-first governance and the reality of people-felt results. In the tradition of Aminu Kano, who always insisted that politics must be judged by what it delivers to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, it is precisely this connection that gives the Kano First Initiative its moral weight.
The role of strategic communication in sustaining this connection between policy and public understanding cannot be overstated, and it is here that Comrade Waiya’s contribution to the Kano First project becomes most visibly consequential. In the information environment of contemporary Kano, where social media platforms amplify misinformation with a speed and reach that no previous generation of communicators has had to contend with, the quality of government communication is not merely a matter of public relations. It is a governance necessity. Citizens who do not understand the policies that are being implemented in their name cannot meaningfully participate in the civic life that those policies are designed to strengthen. The ministry’s investment in grassroots communication networks, in the training of information officers across all forty-four local government areas, in partnerships with media organizations and civil society bodies, and in the development of Hausa-language content that reaches the communities that matter most, is the infrastructure of democratic participation, built deliberately and maintained consistently in the service of the people-driven politics that both Aminu Kano and the Kano First Initiative champion.
The broader implications of the Kano First philosophy for Nigeria’s democratic evolution are worth stating explicitly, because they extend well beyond the boundaries of a single state. Nigeria is a country whose democratic experience has been persistently disfigured by the subordination of governance to politics, by the tendency of those who gain power to use it primarily in the service of their own continuation rather than in the service of the citizens who granted it. The Kano experience, if it succeeds in demonstrating that people-centered governance is not merely an aspirational slogan but a practical, institutionally realizable commitment, has the potential to contribute something genuinely valuable to the national conversation about what democratic leadership in Nigeria can and should look like. Kano has done this before. The political education that Aminu Kano provided to an entire generation of Nigerian democrats did not stay within Kano’s boundaries. It traveled, through the networks of civic consciousness that genuine political ideas always generate, into the broader national conversation. The Kano First Initiative has the same potential, if it is sustained with the seriousness and consistency that its intellectual foundations deserve.
Like any political philosophy, the long-term success of Kano First will ultimately be measured not by the quality of its documentation or the sophistication of its communication, but by the depth of its penetration into the daily experience of Kano’s citizens, by whether the young woman in Sabon Gari market feels that her government has genuinely prioritized her welfare, by whether the farmer in Rano Local Government Area has seen tangible improvement in the services available to him, by whether the student in a Kano public school has reason to believe that the system she is part of is genuinely committed to her future. These are demanding tests, and they will not be passed overnight. But they are the right tests, and the fact that the Kano First Initiative has chosen to submit itself to them, rather than retreating to the easier metrics of political performance, is itself a demonstration of the seriousness that the legacy of Aminu Kano demands.
Aminu Kano spent a lifetime insisting that the people of Kano deserved better. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, through the Kano First Initiative and the governing philosophy it represents, is making the same insistence in the language and the instruments of a new era. Whether that insistence is vindicated by history will depend on many things, on the quality of implementation, the resilience of commitment, the engagement of citizens, and the willingness of every institution in Kano’s civic life to claim this agenda as its own. But the insistence itself, grounded in the same democratic conviction that animated one of Nigeria’s greatest political figures, is already something worth honoring. Kano has always known, at its best, what politics is for. The Kano First Initiative is an invitation to remember.

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Munir I. Publisher is a political historian and governance analyst based in Kano State.

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Opinion

The Rise of AI Delusion: A Student’s Perspective on How AI is Reshaping Relationships, Mentorship, and Counselling

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6 hours ago

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June 19, 2026

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Modern campus life is undergoing a quiet but profound psychological shift. If you walk into any university hostel or library late at night, you will see students intensely staring at their screens. They are not just scrolling through social media or typing out assignments; many are having deep, highly personal conversations with artificial intelligence. Faced with intense academic pressure, social isolation, and a volatile job market, students are increasingly treating generative AI chatbots not just as functional engines, but as emotional lifelines.

This emerging phenomenon highlights what can be called the “AI Delusion”—the psychological tendency for users to attribute real human consciousness, genuine empathy, and authentic wisdom to automated language models that are simply predicting words based on statistical data. From a student’s perspective, this reliance is quietly reshaping the three foundational pillars of the higher education experience: interpersonal relationships, academic mentorship, and mental health counselling.

First, AI is radically changing the landscape of campus relationships. Loneliness remains a massive hurdle in student environments, prompting many undergraduates to turn to AI companion applications for immediate interaction.

These applications are available 24/7, never judge, and offer a simulated space of comfort. However, the delusion occurs when a student confuses this simulated, one-sided validation with a real, reciprocal relationship. While data on conversational AI shows these tools can temporarily lower perceived feelings of isolation, psychologists confirm they do not resolve structural clinical symptoms. Human relationships are naturally messy. They require conflict resolution, compromise, and mutual vulnerability. By retreating into digital relationships with chatbots, students risk letting their real-world social skills atrophy, making genuine human interaction feel too exhausting to pursue.

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Second, the delusion is altering the nature of academic and career mentorship. Guidance traditionally came from professors, older peers, or university alumni who shared lived experiences, industry networks, and personal failures. Today, students frequently bypass this human network entirely, asking AI to evaluate their skills and map out their professional futures. While generative AI tools excel at formatting resumes or providing structured career advice, they carry a high risk of user over-reliance.

Educators confirm that automated tools fundamentally lack the nuanced relational, situational, and developmental depth that defines authentic human mentorship. Students who depend solely on automated advisors miss out on the critical “hidden curriculum” of professional networking and human intuition that an algorithm simply cannot simulate.

Third, and perhaps most critically, AI is transforming mental health counselling on campus. University wellness centres globally face extreme backlogs, high costs, and institutional bottlenecks, forcing students to look for alternative solutions. Consequently, an increasing number of youth now utilize AI chatbots as standalone “pocket therapists” to process anxiety and trauma. The delusion of the digital counsellor poses serious psychological risks. Large language models do not possess clinical judgment or genuine empathy. Medical experts warn that while evidence-based digital therapy apps can serve as helpful administrative or basic self-help scaffolds between sessions, they cannot substitute for a qualified human therapist. Relying on pattern-recognition robots during a severe psychological crisis can result in superficial coping mechanisms or dangerously isolated coping loops.

Ultimately, analyzing this trend from a student’s perspective reveals that technology must have strict emotional and practical boundaries. AI is an incredible tool for brainstorming, accelerating research, and enhancing productivity, but it becomes a delusion the moment we allow it to replace human depth. If our generation is to thrive in a digital future, we must treat AI as a bicycle for the mind rather than a replacement for the human heart. True growth, emotional resilience, and professional success will always require real human connections, authentic mentors, and real human empathy.

Adeyemi Ige Taiwo Oluwatosin
200-level student, Department of Development and Strategic Communication, University of Abuja.

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Opinion

Question Over Killings, Kidnappings, and Bandit Attacks: What Exactly Will Homeland Security Change?

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8 hours ago

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June 19, 2026

By

Abraham Victory

 

By Abraham Victory

When more than forty schoolchildren were abducted during coordinated attacks on schools in Borno in May, Nigerians were reminded of one of the country’s darkest security nightmares: the return of large-scale school kidnappings.

Only weeks later, reports emerged of fresh bandit attacks in Zamfara, where farmers were killed while working on their farmlands. Across parts of Benue and the Middle Belt, communities continued to mourn victims of deadly attacks that left many families displaced and fearful about what tomorrow might bring.

For ordinary Nigerians, these incidents are no longer isolated headlines. They have become symbols of a broader security crisis that has persisted despite the presence of numerous security agencies and repeated government reforms.

It is against this backdrop that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s creation of the office of Special Adviser on Homeland Security deserves serious public scrutiny.

The appointment has generated debate among security experts, policymakers, and citizens alike. Supporters argue that Nigeria’s growing internal security challenges require specialised attention. Critics worry that the country may be creating another layer of bureaucracy without addressing the real problem.

The question Nigerians should be asking is straightforward: Would another office have prevented these attacks?

The answer depends on how one understands Nigeria’s security challenge.

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Take the recent school abductions. The issue was not the absence of security institutions. Nigeria already has the military, police, DSS, civil defence, intelligence agencies, and the Office of the National Security Adviser. The challenge was whether intelligence was gathered early enough, shared effectively, and acted upon before the attacks occurred.

The same question applies to the recurring attacks in Benue and the resurgence of bandit activities across the North-West. In many cases, local communities claim warning signs existed before attacks occurred. Yet security responses often arrived after lives had already been lost.

This suggests that Nigeria’s greatest security challenge may not be a shortage of institutions but a shortage of coordination.

The Office of the National Security Adviser was created precisely to address this problem. The NSA coordinates intelligence activities, advises the President on security matters, and facilitates cooperation among agencies. If Homeland Security is established as a parallel structure with overlapping responsibilities, the risk is that coordination problems could become even more complicated rather than less.

Who receives intelligence first? Who coordinates domestic threat responses? Who bears responsibility when security failures occur?

These questions matter because effective security management depends on clear authority and accountability.

None of this means Homeland Security is unnecessary. The recent wave of kidnappings, bandit attacks, and mass killings demonstrates that Nigeria’s internal security challenges require specialised attention. However, specialisation should strengthen coordination, not weaken it.

A Homeland Security structure can add value if it operates under the strategic framework of the National Security Adviser, focusing specifically on domestic threat management, emergency preparedness, critical infrastructure protection, and internal intelligence integration.

What Nigerians need today is not another competition among security institutions. They need a system capable of preventing the next school abduction, stopping the next bandit attack, and protecting the next vulnerable community before tragedy occurs.

The success of Homeland Security will therefore not be measured by the title of the office or the prestige of the appointment.

It will be measured by a far simpler standard: whether fewer children are kidnapped, fewer communities are attacked, and fewer Nigerians lose their lives to insecurity.

That is the question the government must answer, and it is the result Nigerians deserve.

Abraham Victory
Department of Development and Strategic Communication
200 Level
Abuja, Nigeria

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Opinion

The Prophet’s Mosque, Al-Rawdah, and the Inner Peace of the Visitor’s Mind

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6 days ago

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June 13, 2026

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By Abubakar Dangambo

Madinah Al-Munawwarah, the radiant city of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), occupies a unique place in the hearts of Muslims across the world. Located about 450 kilometers from Makkah, it is a city of peace, spirituality, and immense historical significance. For millions of believers, visiting Madinah is not merely a journey; it is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

Unlike many great cities of the world that are known for their skyscrapers, industries, or commercial activities, Madinah is known for something far more precious—tranquility. The moment a visitor enters the city, he is greeted by an atmosphere of calmness and serenity that is difficult to describe in words. The city seems to embrace every visitor with a sense of comfort, reminding them that they are walking on land blessed by the presence of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him).

At the heart of Madinah stands the magnificent Prophet’s Mosque (Al-Masjid An-Nabawi), one of the holiest sites in Islam. Within its sacred boundaries lies the house of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), where he spent much of his life and where he is buried alongside his beloved companions, Abu Bakr As-Siddiq (RA) and Umar ibn Al-Khattab (RA).

The first time I entered Madinah and subsequently stepped into the Prophet’s Mosque to observe the Maghrib and Isha prayers, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Words failed me. My eyes filled with tears of joy and gratitude. For years, I had dreamed of visiting this sacred place, and suddenly I found myself standing within its walls.

As I joined thousands of worshippers in prayer, an indescribable feeling settled over me. My mind became calm, my heart found rest, and my entire body felt a comfort unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was as though every burden and worry had been lifted away. The peaceful atmosphere of the mosque, combined with the spiritual presence of the place, created a feeling that remains unforgettable.

Although we arrived in Madinah late at night from Jeddah, I could hardly wait for dawn. Immediately after the Fajr prayer the following morning, I hurried back to the Prophet’s Mosque to visit the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his noble companions.

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Standing before the sacred chamber was one of the most emotional moments of my life. Tears flowed freely as I thanked Allah Almighty for granting me the opportunity to fulfill a dream I had cherished for many years. I offered my greetings and salutations to the Prophet (peace be upon him), Abu Bakr (RA), and Umar (RA), praying that Allah would count me among those who sincerely love and follow their noble example.

Another unforgettable experience was praying in Al-Rawdah, the blessed area between the Prophet’s pulpit and his house. The Prophet (peace be upon him) described it as a garden from the gardens of Paradise. Every Muslim who enters Al-Rawdah feels a special connection to history, faith, and spirituality. Being in that sacred space filled me with gratitude and humility. I spent those precious moments in prayer, reflection, and remembrance of Allah, thanking Him for His countless blessings.

What makes Madinah even more remarkable is not only its sacred sites but also the character of its people. The residents of Madinah are widely known for their kindness, hospitality, and respect for visitors. Whether in the streets, markets, hotels, or around the mosque, one encounters smiles, warm greetings, and genuine willingness to help.

The hospitality of the people reflects the legacy of the Ansar—the noble residents of Madinah who welcomed the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his companions during the Hijrah. That spirit of generosity and care continues to live on in the city today. Visitors from every race, language, and nationality are treated with respect and dignity, making them feel at home despite being far from their own countries.

Walking through the streets of Madinah is itself a memorable experience. The city is remarkably clean, organized, and peaceful. Around the Prophet’s Mosque, worshippers from every corner of the world gather in unity, demonstrating the universal brotherhood of Islam. Despite the diversity of cultures and languages, everyone is united by the same faith and love for Allah and His Messenger.

My stay in Madinah lasted only two days before I departed for Makkah to commence the rites of pilgrimage. Yet those two days remain among the most cherished moments of my life. The joy, comfort, spiritual fulfillment, and inner peace I experienced are memories that can never be erased.

Even now, whenever I reflect on those blessed days, my heart longs to return. Madinah is not simply a city one visits; it is a city that captures the soul. Its beauty lies not only in its buildings or landmarks but in the tranquility it offers, the history it preserves, and the spiritual connection it nurtures.

As I conclude this reflection, I pray that Allah, the Most Merciful, grants me another opportunity to visit Madinah and the Prophet’s Mosque. I also pray that every Muslim who desires to visit the blessed city will one day be granted that privilege.

May Allah continue to shower His peace and blessings upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), his family, his companions, and all those who follow his guidance until the Day of Judgment.

Ameen.

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