As Kano State gradually moves towards the 2027 general elections, the familiar political calculations are already beginning to take shape. There will be meetings and realignments, defections and endorsements, consultations and counter-consultations. Politicians will claim ownership of wards, local governments and political blocs. Some will boast of the thousands of supporters they can supposedly move from one political camp to another. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf will undoubtedly receive countless pieces of advice about what he must do as the question of a second term increasingly enters the political conversation.
But amid all these permutations, there is something much more fundamental that should not be lost in the noise. Governor Abba does not need to begin his political calculations from zero. Since 2023, his administration has been cultivating what I choose to call a “voters’ farm” through substantial investments in people, livelihoods, public services and physical infrastructure.
The expression “voters’ farm” is, of course, metaphorical. No governor owns the political conscience of any citizen, and public service should never be treated as the purchase price of a vote. What Governor Abba possesses, however, is potentially more valuable than the exaggerated claims of political middlemen: a sizeable constituency of Kano citizens who have had direct, personal encounters with the policies, programmes and projects of his administration. These are people who do not need to be told that a programme exists because they have experienced it themselves. The important political question is whether the administration fully understands the magnitude of this constituency and how effectively it consolidates the achievements that created it.
Consider education. In July 2026, the administration presented appointment letters to 8,588 teachers and facilitators, comprising 4,900 newly recruited and trained teachers and 3,688 BESDA personnel. At the event, the Federal Minister of Education referred to approximately 16,000 teachers recruited by the administration within three years. But the political arithmetic should not end with 16,000 names on a government payroll. Behind almost every teacher is a household. There are parents who watched an unemployed graduate secure a livelihood, husbands and wives whose household income changed, children and dependants whose circumstances improved, and communities in which those salaries circulate. Beyond the employees themselves are thousands of pupils and parents who encounter those teachers in classrooms. One appointment letter may therefore have a social footprint far larger than the individual who received it.
Education should also be measured beyond recruitment. The administration has invested in the establishment of new primary and secondary schools, construction of additional educational facilities and the rehabilitation and renovation of numerous classroom blocks across the state. These interventions are particularly important because a school is not merely a physical structure. Every new classroom potentially serves generations of children; every rehabilitated school improves the learning environment of an entire community; and every expansion of access to education touches parents and families who want a better future for their children.
At the tertiary level, the establishment of the new Gaya Polytechnic represents another important expansion of educational opportunity. The institution creates a new platform for technical, vocational and professional education, particularly for Kano South and surrounding communities. Its impact should eventually extend beyond the students admitted into its programmes. A tertiary institution generates academic and non-academic employment, stimulates accommodation and transportation businesses, attracts commerce and creates an economic ecosystem around its host community.
Healthcare tells a similar story. In September 2026, the administration announced the recruitment of another 2,037 health workers, including doctors, nurses, midwives and other professionals. But the healthcare intervention extends far beyond recruitment. Across the local government areas, the administration has also pursued the construction of new health facilities and the rehabilitation, upgrading and expansion of existing Primary Health Care facilities.
Counting only the professionals recruited therefore understates the reach of the intervention. A newly employed doctor may attend to thousands of patients; a nurse may serve hundreds of families; a midwife may safely guide mothers and newborns through some of the most consequential moments of their lives. Similarly, a newly constructed or rehabilitated Primary Health Care facility may serve an entire community and neighbouring settlements. In this sense, human investment and capital investment reinforce each other: employ the personnel, improve the facilities and bring healthcare closer to the people.
Then there is the 1,001 Foreign Postgraduate Scholarship Programme, which represents a different dimension of human-capital development. Beginning in 2023, Kano indigenes were sponsored abroad for postgraduate studies, and cohorts have since completed their programmes and returned home. Among them were 150 returning scholars received in December 2024. Another 54 foreign-trained health professionals returned from India in March 2025 and were offered automatic employment, while another 110 scholars specialising in engineering, pharmacy, sciences, ICT and advanced technology completed their programmes by April 2026, with government announcing plans for their absorption into critical sectors.
The philosophy behind such an intervention should be straightforward: identify talent, educate it, bring it home, employ its expertise and deploy that knowledge in the service of Kano. When a foreign-trained doctor returns to serve in a Kano hospital, the beneficiary is no longer merely the scholar whose tuition was paid. Every patient who benefits from that expertise becomes part of the social return on the investment.
Security and community protection provide another important dimension of this argument. The establishment and deployment of the Kano State Neighbourhood Watch Corps created opportunities for young men and women selected and trained to support security at the grassroots, while strengthening community surveillance, patrols, intelligence gathering and crime-prevention support in collaboration with conventional security agencies.
Again, the impact extends beyond those directly engaged. Behind the personnel are households that benefit from employment and income, while entire communities potentially benefit from an additional layer of local security presence. Security is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of government because virtually every other form of development—education, commerce, agriculture, investment and social life—depends upon an environment in which citizens can live and conduct their activities with reasonable confidence.
At the grassroots, the women’s empowerment programme provides perhaps an even more immediate illustration of how government interventions penetrate households. Thousands of women across the 44 local governments have received ₦50,000 each as direct economic support during different cycles of the programme.
But here again, the politically meaningful figure is not simply the amount disbursed from the treasury. It is what happens after that ₦50,000 reaches a household. A woman may add it to her foodstuff business, tailoring enterprise, livestock activity or petty trade. The proceeds may feed children, pay school expenses, support elderly parents or sustain other dependants. Her increased purchasing power may benefit suppliers and other small businesses around her. Government records one beneficiary; society may experience a much wider ripple effect.
The same human perspective should be applied to pensioners. Governor Yusuf stated in October 2026 that his administration had paid ₦32 billion towards an inherited backlog of approximately ₦48 billion in gratuities and related liabilities. To government accountants, this is the settlement of an inherited financial obligation. To an elderly retired worker who has waited for years, however, receiving gratuity may mean access to medical treatment, repayment of debts, assistance to children or the capital required to establish a modest livelihood in retirement.
Government is not doing such a pensioner a favour; it is paying an entitlement legitimately earned through years of service. Yet the beneficiary and his family will inevitably remember their experience of the institutions responsible for either delaying or settling that obligation.
There are also thousands of former local-government councillors whose outstanding severance gratuities and allowances accumulated over different administrations. Approximately ₦15.6 billion was approved for the settlement of these liabilities. This group deserves particular attention when considering grassroots reach because councillors are not ordinarily isolated individuals. They come from wards, maintain extensive community relationships and have families, associates and political networks.
The significance is even greater where beneficiaries cut across political affiliations. Settling legitimate obligations irrespective of party background strengthens the principle that government is a continuous institution rather than the private possession of whichever political party happens to be in power.
Alongside these human investments stands the administration’s capital investment. The inherited five-kilometre road programme provides a particularly instructive example. The information available identifies 38 inherited road projects, with 18 completed, 17 ongoing and three contracts revoked following contractor default for proposed re-award. The completed projects include dualised roads with solar-powered streetlights.
These projects originated before the present administration, but that should not diminish the importance of completing them. Indeed, continuity is itself an important measure of responsible governance. A useful road should not be abandoned merely because another government conceived it. Once public resources have been committed, the ultimate question for citizens is whether the road is completed and whether it improves their lives.
The wider infrastructure programme also includes major interchange and flyover projects, new roads and the rehabilitation and expansion of the urban road network. Such investments should not be viewed merely in terms of kilometres of asphalt or the monetary value of contracts. Roads and bridges determine how quickly people move, how efficiently businesses operate, how farmers and traders reach markets, how easily workers reach their places of employment and how rapidly patients can reach hospitals.
A road therefore demonstrates why the true reach of government cannot always be calculated by counting direct beneficiaries. An appointment may have one person’s name on it; a road does not. A completed road serves the farmer carrying produce to market, the trader transporting goods, the student going to school, the worker travelling to the office, the pregnant woman going to hospital and the thousands of motorists and pedestrians who use it daily. Solar-powered streetlights similarly serve entire communities without asking which political party anybody supports.
Water supply must equally form part of this calculation. The administration has committed resources to the rehabilitation and upgrading of major water facilities, including interventions at Challawa and Tamburawa, alongside efforts to restore and improve water production and distribution. Water is one of those public services whose impact reaches directly into virtually every household. When production improves and water reaches communities more reliably, the beneficiaries are not counted in hundreds but potentially in hundreds of thousands.
This is why I believe Governor Abba and those around him should occasionally put aside the conventional political arithmetic of personalities and begin another calculation:
Do not count only projects; count people. Do not count only beneficiaries; understand the households and communities surrounding them.
Count the teachers, but then look beyond them to their households and pupils. Count the health workers, but remember their patients. Count the 1,001 postgraduate scholarship beneficiaries, but consider their families and the citizens who will benefit from their expertise. Count the empowered women, but consider the households and micro-economies around their businesses. Count the pensioners and their dependants. Count the former councillors and their grassroots networks. Count the young men and women engaged in neighbourhood security and consider the communities they help protect.
Then go beyond individual beneficiaries.
Count the communities receiving new or rehabilitated Primary Health Care facilities. Count the children entering newly established schools and renovated classrooms. Consider the economic ecosystem that will develop around Gaya Polytechnic. Count the communities connected by five-kilometre roads. Count those using rehabilitated urban roads, flyovers and interchanges. Count the households benefiting from improved water supply. Count the communities illuminated by solar-powered streetlights.
When all these human and capital investments are placed on one political map, the picture becomes considerably larger than any list of individual beneficiaries.
That, Governor Abba, is what I call your voters’ farm.
It is not a farm of guaranteed votes. It is something politically more credible: a field of lived experience. These are citizens who can assess the administration not merely from what they hear at campaign rallies but from something that happened in their own lives, families, professions or communities.
Some received employment. Some received scholarships. Some received long-delayed entitlements. Some received economic support. Some found opportunities in community security. Others use roads, schools, hospitals, Primary Health Care facilities, water infrastructure and other public facilities touched by government investment. Their individual political conclusions will differ, but collectively they constitute a constituency that no administration seeking another mandate should overlook.
Your Excellency, as we approach the 2027 general elections, you should not allow yourself to be intimidated by the political noise surrounding the contest. Your administration has, within the last three years, already undertaken programmes and projects in several of the very areas that will inevitably dominate political debate—foreign postgraduate scholarships, major flyovers and interchanges, five-kilometre roads, rehabilitation of urban road networks, educational infrastructure, healthcare facilities and water supply.
The important point is not to dismiss what political opponents may propose or promise. In a democracy, every contestant has the right to present a programme to the electorate. The responsibility of an incumbent administration is different: it has a record that can be examined. Therefore, the most effective answer to a promise is not another promise. It is a completed project, a functioning institution, an employed citizen, a rehabilitated road, a new school, a functioning Primary Health Care facility, a returning scholar putting newly acquired expertise to work, a pensioner receiving a long-delayed entitlement, or clean water flowing again in a community.
That distinction is politically important.
When an opponent says what he intends to do, an incumbent seeking another mandate should be able to point calmly to what has already been done, what is presently being executed and what remains scheduled for completion. The argument should be based on evidence rather than fear, and on performance rather than political anxiety.
The task now, therefore, is to consolidate this political capital through governance rather than assume it. Governor Abba should know precisely where the beneficiaries of these programmes are and, more importantly, whether the interventions actually produced the intended results.
The administration should be able to map its human and capital investments across all 44 local governments: how many teachers were recruited and where they were deployed; how many health workers are serving and in which facilities; where returning scholars are working; how many women received empowerment and how their businesses developed; how many pensioners have been paid and what remains outstanding; where neighbourhood security personnel are deployed; which schools and Primary Health Care facilities have been constructed or rehabilitated; which roads have been completed; which remain under construction; and what communities are experiencing improvements in water supply.
Then allow the evidence to speak.
Let the teacher explain what employment meant to his family and what has changed in his school. Let the returning scholar demonstrate what foreign training has enabled her to contribute. Let the empowered woman show what became of her ₦50,000. Let the pensioner describe what receiving his entitlement meant after years of waiting. Let patients assess whether additional health workers and rehabilitated facilities have improved services. Let parents and pupils speak about their schools. Let communities judge the roads, bridges, water facilities and streetlights with their own eyes.
The most persuasive account of an achievement is often the testimony of the person who experienced it.
This is also why complacency would be politically dangerous. No serious farmer plants a field and abandons it before harvest. If the administration has cultivated a voters’ farm through its actions since 2023, then that farm requires continued attention.
Complete the remaining roads and bridges. Complete the unfinished five-kilometre projects. Equip the teachers with the facilities and materials necessary to succeed. Continue rehabilitating classrooms and improving schools. Give doctors and nurses functional hospitals and Primary Health Care facilities, medicines and equipment. Continue settling legitimate pension and gratuity obligations. Sustain women’s empowerment transparently and equitably. Bring the remaining scholars home and ensure that their expertise is productively utilised. Strengthen water production and distribution. Improve community security. Expand opportunities for young people. Listen to communities that still feel underserved, acknowledge legitimate criticism and correct shortcomings before they become grievances.
The administration should also resist the temptation to allow its record to become buried beneath political noise. Every defection does not necessarily represent thousands of votes, just as every endorsement does not automatically determine what happens inside the polling booth. Political personalities undoubtedly matter, but governance itself creates constituencies.
A citizen whose life has materially changed because of a government decision possesses an experience that no billboard can manufacture.
So, Governor Abba, when politicians begin frightening you with stories about who has moved, who controls where, or who supposedly carries thousands of voters in his pocket, remember the field you have been cultivating since 2023.
Look at the teachers who received appointments. Look at the health professionals recruited into public service. Look at the new and rehabilitated Primary Health Care facilities serving communities. Look at the scholars who travelled abroad, returned with postgraduate qualifications and are being integrated into productive service. Look at the women whose small businesses received capital. Look at pensioners whose inherited liabilities are being settled. Look at former councillors whose accumulated entitlements are being addressed. Look at the young people participating in neighbourhood security. Look at the new and rehabilitated schools and classrooms. Look at Gaya Polytechnic. Look at the five-kilometre roads, urban road rehabilitation, flyovers and interchanges. Look at the communities benefiting from improved water infrastructure and solar streetlights.
There lies your voters’ farm.
Do not take it for granted. Do not assume the harvest.
Cultivate it. Consolidate it. Expand it.
Protect the credibility of what has been achieved. Accelerate what is ongoing. Complete what remains unfinished. Correct what is not working. And allow the beneficiaries and communities themselves to judge the results.
From 2023 to date, considerable public resources have been invested in people and infrastructure. The political opportunity before the administration is to transform that record into an accountable conversation with the citizens who experienced it—not through exaggerated propaganda, but through evidence, continuity and visible results.
The seeds have been planted through human and capital investment. The field has been cultivated through governance. The remaining responsibility is to keep delivering—and ultimately allow the people of Kano to decide the harvest.
Hon. Muhammad Sanusi Kiru, FCIA, is a former Commissioner of Education, Kano State
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