Sunusi Dawakin-Tofa is the Director-General, Media and Publicity, Kano Government House.
In this interview, he speaks on why Governor Abba Yusuf prioritises the interest women and youths, among other developmental projects, ANAYO EZUGWU writes
The Kano State government doles out N50,000 every month to about 5,200 women and widows across the 44 local government areas irrespective of religion, party or affiliation. Why is the governor focusing on women and widows?
Governor Yusuf is determined to reduce the magnitude of poverty and hunger in Kano State.
As such, right from the campaign days, he promised the people of Kano State that he was going to resuscitate the empowerment programme.
And this time, he decided to do it every month, and he kept his 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 government area of the state have benefited.
Those women are scattered across the 44 local governments and the beneficiaries 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 genuine 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, these women are engaged in petty trading and most of them have enjoyed the empowerment programme and it has changed their lives.
The second aspect of entrepreneurship in Kano State is the reopening of the 26 skill acquisition centres across the state.
You know that Rabiu Kwankwaso, during his second coming between 2011 and 2015, established 26 training institutes that were used to train youths, both male and female.
But the Abdullahi Ganduje administration decided to close down all the schools for reasons best known to it.
However, Governor Yusuf promised to reopen all the institutes. At the moment, he has reopened about one-third of them and this is still ongoing.
There’s a horticulture institute; there’s a livestock institute; there’s a driving institute; there’s the informatics institute.
They are all reopened, and youths have been enrolled to get training on various trades and skills, so that they can be self-reliant.
These youths are going to be provided with capital, so that they can start the business they learned during the training session. The training is a short time one, just three months.
Some of them are graduates because you need to have a skill beside being a graduate, while others dropped out from school and age is no longer on their side. So, they need to get the skill and then continue to get a means of livelihood.
The pensioners seem to be very dear to the governor and he is regularly attending to their needs now and then. Why is it so?
They are very dear to the governor because he understands their plight.
He knows that they were the ones that oil the engine of government.
There has been a complete social reform on the pension subsector because the governor inherited over N40 billion backlog of pension and gratuity from the Ganduje administration.
It is a very pathetic situation because some of these pensioners are dying because they don’t have what to eat, they don’t have the means to marry off their daughters. Some of them they don’t even have shelter and clothes.
A lot of social problems are associated with the pensioners in Kano State because they were not been paid during the eight years of Ganduje’s administration.
No governor has given serious priority to education like Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf
But this time around, Governor Yusuf has considered their plight and decided to alleviate the sufferance of pensioners being senior citizens of the state.
Firstly, he approved and released the sum of N6 billion naira and he approved at the first launch N6 billion, which was distributed to the pensioners in 2023.
In 2024, he also allocated an additional N5 billion for the pensioners to pay for the pension gratuity and death benefits of the pensioners.
He also allocated and released another N5 billion for the pensioners, a total of N16 billion naira, which is almost one-third of the total amount that has been a backlog by the Ganduje’s administration.
Also, he’s making it now mandatory that every quarter, he will allocate a certain billion naira that will be allocated to the backlog of the pensioners’ gratuity.
That is why the Nigeria Union of Pensioners awarded him or recognized him as the most pensionerfriendly governor of the year in 2024.
Also, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) recognized him as the most labour-friendly governor of the year in January 2025 because he was the first governor who 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…
Well, in Kano, you know, many reforms have been going on.
The first of its kind is the declaration of a state of emergency on education because we inherited a dilapidated and decayed sector.
No classrooms, no toilet and water facilities, no quality teachers, nothing, no instructional materials. The governor has earmarked 29.5 of the 2024 budget for the education sector because there is a need for a budget for funding.
In 2025, he earmarked a total of 31 per cent to the education sector, which is far beyond the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declaration, the UNESCO benchmark.
And I think no governor has given serious priority to education like Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State.
So, with the education reform, teachers have been recruited, about 5,000 of them and more are coming up this year.
Also, there is retraining of teachers and provision of instructional materials and free uniforms to Kano kids.
Close to a million kids have benefited in this January with two sets of uniforms and also there is a provision for school feeding, which ensures that primary school pupils in Kano gets lunch, while in school every day.
