By Saminu Umar Rijiyar Zaki
surijyarzaki@gmail.com
On the twenty-ninth of May 2023, a civil engineer walked into Government House, Kano, carrying a blueprint, a mandate, and the weight of the expectations of over twenty million people who had chosen him, through one of the most fiercely contested electoral battles in the state’s history, to lead Nigeria’s most populous state into a new era of purposeful governance.
Three years later, on the twenty-ninth of May 2026, that same man stands before his people not with the apologetic demeanour of a leader who fell short of what he promised, but with the measured confidence of one who has delivered, sector by sector, community by community, and Naira by Naira, the most consequential governance record that Kano State has produced in a generation.
This is not a claim advanced by political partisans or government spokesmen alone. It is a verdict being delivered simultaneously by the classrooms that have been rebuilt, the roads that have been constructed, the boreholes that are drawing clean water in communities that knew none, the students whose examination fees have been paid, the women whose businesses have been capitalised, the young men who have been empowered and employed, the hospitals that have been renovated, and the national and continental institutions that have placed Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf’s name on award after award in recognition of a governance performance that has registered far beyond the boundaries of Kano State.
When Governor Yusuf assumed office in May 2023, he inherited a state whose governance challenges were as vast as its population and as complex as its politics. The education sector was in a state of visible decay, with hundreds of dilapidated classrooms, thousands of out-of-school children, chronic teacher shortages, and a public examination performance that ranked Kano far below where Nigeria’s most populous northern state had any business being.
The healthcare system was struggling under the accumulated weight of years of underinvestment, with primary health Centres lacking basic equipment, hospitals without adequate drugs, and communities without emergency response capacity.
The infrastructure deficit was enormous, encompassing roads, water supply, electricity, and urban renewal across 44 local government areas. The pension backlog stood at N32 billion, representing a moral debt to thousands of retired public servants who had given their careers to the state. And the overall domestic debt burden had reached N127.8 billion, a fiscal inheritance that would have paralyzed a less determined administration.
Governor Yusuf did not approach these challenges with the incremental caution that characterises leaders who are primarily interested in political survival. He approached them with the urgency, the ambition, and the fiscal boldness of an engineer who had spent decades understanding that the gap between a problem and its solution is filled not by words but by investment, by planning, and by the consistent application of public resources to the specific points of failure that produce the largest human cost.
His first and most symbolically significant act was the declaration of a state of emergency in education, a declaration backed not merely by political language but by a historic allocation of 30 percent of the state’s annual budget to the sector, the highest education budget share of any state in Nigeria.
That commitment produced results that made the entire country take notice. Kano ranked first in Nigeria’s 2025 NECO results, a milestone so historically significant that it became the defining image of what focused, evidence-based, and adequately funded governance can achieve in the most challenging of educational environments.
Mass classroom renovations, free basic education, the payment of NECO, NABTEB, and AIED examination fees for students across the state, the recruitment of 400 Mathematics teachers, the establishment of Kano State Polytechnic in Gaya, the expansion of scholarship programmes, and the distribution of 50,000 crate bags to primary and secondary school students collectively represent an educational transformation whose depth and breadth have no recent precedent in Kano’s governance history.
In healthcare, the administration invested N149.7 billion in the 2025 budget alone, approving N318.1 million for the renovation and equipment of Lamba Primary Healthcare Centre in Bichi Local Government Area, N406.2 million for the renovation of Wudil General Hospital, N423.9 million for equipment procurement at Sheikh Jidda and Muhammad Abdullahi Wase Hospitals, and launching the Abba Care Scheme to expand health insurance coverage across the state.
Free scanning services, free drug distribution to hospitals, the provision of emergency response vehicles for communities previously without 24-hour medical access, and the sponsorship of patients receiving treatment both within and outside the state have collectively produced a healthcare environment whose improvement is felt not in government statistics alone but in the daily experience of the ordinary Kano resident who can now access a service that was previously beyond their reach.
The infrastructure record is perhaps the most visually dramatic dimension of the administration’s three-year performance. Governor Yusuf converted all major streetlights in Kano to solar electricity, brightening the ancient city’s nights and reducing the energy poverty that had suppressed economic activity in its commercial corridors.
Road construction and rehabilitation projects spanning all 44 local government areas have restored connectivity to communities previously isolated from economic and social networks. The Urban Renewal Project, described by the governor himself as a centrepiece of the administration’s infrastructure agenda, is reshaping Kano’s urban landscape with a comprehensiveness and an ambition that reflects the governor’s vision of a Kano that is not merely functional but genuinely world-class.
Over N21 billion was approved in a single executive council session for the rehabilitation of major water infrastructure, while Phase II of the Abba Kabir Yusuf Reach-Out Water Supply Projects has extended clean water access to underserved communities that had long been invisible to the state’s development agenda.
On fiscal management, the administration’s record is equally compelling. Governor Yusuf repaid N3.5 billion of external debts and N60 billion of domestic debts, reducing the state’s overall outstanding debt burden to N127.8 billion within the first two quarters of 2024, a performance that speaks to a fiscal discipline as rare as it is consequential in the context of Nigerian state governance.
He cleared the N32 billion pension backlog that previous administrations had left unaddressed for years, restoring the dignity and the financial security of thousands of retired public servants who had waited far too long for what was rightfully theirs.
The 2026 budget of N1.477 trillion, the largest in Kano’s history with 68 percent allocated to capital projects, represents not an act of political extravagance but the natural culmination of a three-year fiscal strategy built on the conviction that the primary obligation of government is to invest in the people who pay for it.
The human empowerment record adds a deeply personal dimension to the statistical performance. Over N334 million disbursed to 6,680 women entrepreneurs across all 44 local government areas, each receiving N50,000 monthly to grow their businesses and support their families.
More than N800 million invested in youth empowerment programmes benefiting over 5,300 young people.
The designation of 2026 as the Year of Youth Employment and Peace, backed by the procurement of 300 Boxer motorcycles for the newly established Neighbourhood Watch Corps, 199,000 bags of fertiliser for farmers, and the approval of 11 mini-dams for year-round agricultural production, collectively represent an administration that has never lost sight of the human beings behind the governance statistics.
The national and continental recognition that has accumulated around Governor Yusuf’s name across three years of governance provides an independent and authoritative verdict on the quality of his record.
Vanguard Newspaper’s Governor of the Year 2024 for Good Governance. Leadership Newspaper’s Governor of the Year 2024 for Education. The Nigerian Medical Association’s Best Governor of the Year. The Africa Housing Awards’ Housing and Infrastructure-Friendly Governor of the Year.
The CREED Magazine Governor of the Year 2025 on Infrastructure and Good Governance. The African Leadership Magazine’s African Governor of the Year for Good Governance at the 14th Persons of the Year ceremony in Casablanca, Morocco, where he was honoured alongside Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the WTO. Each of these recognitions, granted independently and on the basis of verifiable performance criteria, tells the same story: that Kano State under Abba Kabir Yusuf is being governed with a quality, a consistency, and a human focus that distinguishes it from the governance average not just within Nigeria but across the African continent.
As Kano marks its third anniversary on May 29, 2026, the most honest and the most important assessment of Governor Yusuf’s record is not the one offered by his supporters or by his critics, but the one offered by the twenty million people who live inside it every day.
It is the assessment offered by the student who sat for NECO in 2025 without paying a fee, by the woman in Gwale whose monthly empowerment stipend has kept her business alive, by the farmer in Dambatta whose access to fertiliser has improved his harvest, by the resident of a previously dark neighbourhood who now walks home under solar streetlights, and by the pensioner in Tarauni who finally received the retirement benefits they had spent years waiting for.
Three years. One vision. An unambiguous record of delivery. And a governor who has earned the right to stand before his people on this anniversary not to ask for patience, but to ask them to look at what has been built and believe, with justified confidence, that the best of Kano’s story is still ahead.
