By Sunday Ani
Spokesperson to the Governor Kabir Abba Yusuf of Kano State, Mallam Sanusi Bature Dawakin-Tofa, has described his principal as a man who is hungry to develop the state and its people.
In this interview, he explained why his principal is after the masses’ interest, starting from his interest in the education of the people to the pensioners’ welfare among others.
Kano State Government doles out ₦50,000 every month to about 5200 women and widows across the 44 local government areas in the state irrespective of religion or party affiliation; what informed that gesture?
Kano Governor, Alhaji Abba Kabir Yusuf, is determined to reduce the magnitude of poverty and hunger in the state. As such, right from the campaign days, he has promised the good people of Karno State that he was going to resuscitate the empowerment programme. And this time, he has decided to do it every month, and he has kept that promise by providing N50,000 seed capital to at least 5,200 women every month. At the moment, over 41,600 women across the 44 local governments of the state have benefitted from the programme. The beneficiaries are scattered across the 44 local governments and they are selected by the community representatives across party lines and irrespective of any political or social difference. The beneficiaries are selected based on their economic status because he wants to impact the genuine and real women in the communities, so that they can be self-reliant. And it’s an agenda for poverty reduction under the Ministry of Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation. As I said earlier, the women are engaged in petty trading; most of them have enjoyed the empowerment programme as it has changed their lives.
The second aspect of entrepreneurship in Kano State is the reopening of the 26 schools acquisition centres across the state. You know, during former Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s second term, between 2011 and 2015, he established 26 training institutes that were used to train the youth, both male and female. But, Ganduje’s administration decided to close down all the schools for reasons best known to them. The governor promised to reopen all the institutes, and at the moment, he has already reopened about one third of them and is still ongoing. There’s horticulture, livestock, driving and informatic institutes. They have all been reopened, and the youths have been enrolled to get training on various trades and skills, so that they can be self-reliant. Those youths that are trained in these training institutes are going to also be provided with capital so that they can start the business they learned during the training session. The training is a short one for just three months. Some of them are graduates because you need to have a skill far from being a graduate and some of them are school dropouts, and because they were unable to complete their education and age is no longer on their side, they would need to get the skills and then continue to get a means of livelihood. So, these are some of the giant strides the governor is making on the entrepreneurship aspect of his administration.
In most states of the federation, pensioners are not finding it easy as they have many years of their pensions being held. What is the situation like in Kano? What is the governor’s relationship with pensioners in Kano?
They are very dear to the governor because he understood their plight. He knows that they were the ones that oiled the engine of government. There has been a complete social reform on the pension sub-sector. The governor inherited over N40 billion backlogs of pension and gratuity from the previous administration. It is a very pathetic situation because some of these pensioners are dying; they don’t have what to eat, they don’t have the means to marry off their daughters. Some of them don’t have shelter; some don’t even have clothes. A lot of social problems are associated with the pensioners in Kano because they have not been paid their monies. So, this time around, the governor has considered their plight and decided to alleviate the suffering of the pensioners as senior citizens of the state. Firstly, he approved and released N6 billion. The money was distributed to the pensioners in 2023, and in 2024, he also allocated additional N5 billion to pay for the pension, gratuity and death benefits of the pensioners who died on duty. In January 2025, he also allocated and released another N5 billion for the pensioners, making a total of N16 billion so far, which is almost like one third of the total backlog left by the Ganduje’s administration. Also, he’s now making it mandatory that every quarter, he will allocate a certain amount of money to offset the backlog of the pensioners’ gratuity. That is why the Nigeria Union of Pensioners awarded him or recognised him as the most pensioner-friendly governor of the year in 2024. The Nigeria Labour Congress also recognized him as the most labour-friendly governor of the year in January 2025 because he was the first governor that accepted and began to pay the minimum wage of N71,000 to Kano workers.
The governor appears to be everywhere in the state doing one reform or another, especially in the education sector; what is driving him?
Well, in Kano, there have been a lot of reforms going on. First of its kind is the declaration of a state of emergency on education because we inherited a very dilapidated and decayed sector. No classrooms, no toilets and water facilities, no quality teachers, nothing; no instructional materials. The governor has earmarked 29.5 percent of the 2024 annual budget to the education sector because there is a need for funding. And in this 2025, the governor has earmarked a total of 31 percent to the education sector, which is way above the UNESCO declaration; that is the UNESCO benchmark. And I think there is no governor who has given serious priority to education like Governor Yusuf.
So, about 5000 teachers have been recruited and more are coming up this year. Also, teachers are being retrained; instructional materials are provided; uniforms are provided free to the kids – close to a million kids have benefited in this January with two sets of free uniforms. There is also provision for school feeding, so a primary school pupil in Kano would get a free lunch in school every day.
