Feature/OPED
May 29 and Quest for A New Nigeria
By Jerome-Mario Chijioke Utomi
As the nation Nigeria stands at the exit door of President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government and gazes at the May 29 inauguration date of incoming administrations at both state and federal government levels, it is important to underline that the protracted leadership crisis witnessed at both state and federal levels occurred not because the democracy and federal systems we practice are on their own bad or unable to provide the needed solution to the nation’s array of political and economic needs, but because too many politicians and public office holders exercised power and responsibility not as a trust for the public good, rather, but as an opportunity for private gain.
This glaringly deformed leadership style has left the nation with three separate but similar harsh effects; first, it destroyed the social infrastructures relevant for a meaningful and acceptable level of the social existence of the people.
Secondly, making the nation’s economy go against the provisions of the constitutions as an attempt to disengage governance from public sector control of the economy has only played into waiting for the hands of the profiteers of goods and services to the detriment of the Nigerian people.
Thirdly and very key, conspired and visited the nation with myriads of sociopolitical contradictions stripped of social harmony, justice, equity and equality.
Adding context to the discourse, this is a kind of leadership crisis that happens when ‘lust for power prevails over granting people the love and care they deserve, when the interest and destiny of one individual become more important than those of the whole nation when the interests of some groups and cliques are served instead of those of all the people. In other words, this state of affairs happens when you put the people at the service of the government, in sharp contrast with the norm.
Aside from non-adherence to public opinion, which has no doubt thrown the economy into reserve and passed the burden onto the backs of Nigerians, this piece believes that the most ‘profound’ failure of the present administration (state and Federal) which the incoming administration must avoid if they are desirous of success, is their persistent inabilities to promptly respond to the socioeconomic need of Nigerians.
For example, the government’s shift of attention from job creation has undermined the feelings of Nigerians and shifted the distribution of income strongly in favour of those in government.
At the very moment, information released on April 11, 2023, by KPMG, a multidimensional consulting firm, disclosed that Nigeria’s unemployment rate would increase to 40.6 per cent in 2023 from 37.7 per cent in 2022. According to economic analysts, this was due to weak performance in the job-elastic sectors and low labour absorption of sectors that will drive growth.
In my view, the average Nigerian is worse off now, economically and materially, than he/she was in 2015. The people are living through the worst social and economic crisis since independence; poor leadership; poor strategy for development; lack of capable and effective state and bureaucracy; lack of focus on sectors that will improve the condition of living of citizens, such as education, health, agriculture and the building of infrastructure; corruption; undeveloped, irresponsible and parasitic private sector; weak civil society; emasculated labour and student movement and poor execution of policies and programmes’.
In the past 8years, the Nigerian workforce grew, but the number of manufacturing jobs has actually declined as a result of the relocation of these industries to neighbouring African countries. A development occasioned by the inability of the FG to guarantee security and electricity.
Jobs created by the federal government under the N-Power programme were part-time and not secured. Two third of those doing part-time jobs want full-time jobs and cannot find them. Unemployment is far and away from the top concern of Nigerians. Millions of workers have given up hope of finding employment.
This author is not alone in this line of belief.
At a recent lecture in Lagos delivered by the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina, titled: Nigeria – A Country of Many Nations: A Quest for National Integration, Dr Adesina lamented the high rate of joblessness among Nigerians, saying about 40 per cent of youths were unemployed. While noting that the youths were discouraged, angry and restless as they looked at a future that did not give them hope, he said all hope was not lost as youths have a vital role to play if the country should arrive at its destined destination.
Adesina spoke the mind of Nigerians. His words and argument were admirable, and most importantly, it remains the most dynamic and cohesive action expected of a leader of his class to earn a higher height of respect. The truth is that Nigerians have gotten used to such statistics while unemployment commentaries in the country have become a regular music hall act.
Take as an illustration, in the first quarter of 2021, a report published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on its website noted that Nigeria’s Unemployment Rate has risen from 27.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2020 to 33 per cent. Aside from making it the second highest on Global List, the NBS report, going by analysis, shows that ‘more than 60 per cent of Nigeria’s working-age population is younger than 34.
Unemployment for people aged 15 to 24 stood at 53.4 per cent in the fourth quarter and at 37.2 per cent for people aged 25 to 34. The jobless rate for women was 35.2 per cent compared with 31.8 per cent for men.
The recovery of the economy with 200 million people will be slow, with growth seen at 1.5 per cent this year, after last year’s 1.9 per cent contraction, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The output will only recover to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, the lender said. The number of people looking for jobs will keep rising as population growth continues to outpace output expansion.
Nigeria is expected to be the world’s third-most-populous country by 2050, with over 300 million people, according to the United Nations. Unquestionably, while this quadrupling over the last five years, which has attracted varying reactions from well-meaning Nigerians, remains a sad commentary by all ramifications as it is both worrying and scary, the present development demands two separate but similar actions. First is the urgent shift from lamentation and rhetoric to finding solutions by asking solution-oriented questions. The second has to do with the implementation of experts’ advice/solutions to unemployment in Nigeria. This is indeed time to commit to mind the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, former President of the United States of America, that “extraordinary conditions call for extraordinary remedies.”
Beginning with questions, it has become important for the incoming administration to ask what could be responsible for the ever-increasing unemployment rate in Nigeria. Is it leadership or the nation’s educational system? If it is faulty education sector-driven, what is the government (both state and federal) going to do to rework the policies since education is in the concurrent list of the nation’s 1999 constitution (as amended)? Are the leaders embodied with leadership virtues that the global community can respect? Or moral and ethical principles the people can applaud with enthusiasm?
Experts have pointed out that to arrest the drifting unemployment situation in the country, four sectors of ‘interest’ to watch are education, science and technology, agriculture and infrastructure.
On the educational system in the country, analysts are of the view that the education policies of the 6-3-3-4 system are excellent in the policy statement, but the inability of the financiers to provide the teaching tools for its success has truncated its intended goal and objectives. However, to arrest the unemployment challenge, they added, entrepreneurial programmes should be integrated into the educational system from primary schools to universities. Creativity, courage and endurance are skills that should be taught by psychologists to students in all classes of our educational system.
Nigeria, they explained, has to increase the number of her current Polytechnics, Colleges of Technology and Technical Colleges drastically in relation to the in-explicable very large number of Universities and related Academies in Nigeria’s economy in order to clearly address the training and development of professional and technical skills for Technologies and Industrial goods production in Nigeria’s Economy.
It is important, in my view, that any country like Nigeria, desirous of achieving sustainable development, must throw its weight behind agriculture by creating an enabling environment that will encourage youths to take to farming. First, separate from the worrying report that by 2050, global consumption of food and energy is expected to double as the world’s population and incomes grow, while climate change is expected to have an adverse effect on both crop yields and the number of arable acres, we are in dire need of solution to this problem because unemployment has diverse implications. Security-wise, a large unemployed youth population is a threat to the security of the few that are employed. Any transformation that does not have job creation as its main objective will not take us anywhere, and the agricultural sector has the capacity to absorb the teeming unemployed youths in the country.
The second reason is that globally, there are dramatic shifts from agriculture in preference for the white-collar jobs-a trend that urgently needs to be reversed. In the United States of America, there exists a shift in the locations and occupations of urban consumers. In 1900, about 40 per cent of the total population was employed on the farm, and 60 per cent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about one per cent and 20 per cent.
Over the past half-century, the number of farms has fallen by a factor of three. As a result, the ratio of urban eaters to rural farmers has markedly risen, giving the food consumer a more prominent role in shaping the food and farming system. The changing dynamic has also played a role in public calls to reform federal policy to focus more on the consumer implications of the food supply chain.
Separate from job creation, averting malnutrition which constitutes a serious setback to the socio-economic development of any nation, is another reason why Nigeria must embrace agriculture – a vehicle for food security and a sustainable socio-economic sector. Agriculture production should receive heightened attention. In Nigeria, an estimated 2.5 million children under five suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) annually, exposing nearly 420,000 children within that age bracket to early death from common childhood illnesses such as diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria. Government must provide the needed support through funding, providing technical know-how and other specialised training.
For Nigeria to be all that it can be, the youth of Nigeria must be all they can be.” The future of Nigeria depends on what it does today with its dynamic youth population. This demographic advantage must be turned into a first-rate and well-trained workforce, for Nigeria, for the region, and for the world. The incoming administration must prioritise investments in the youth: in upskilling them for the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past; by moving away from so-called youth empowerment to youth investment; to opening up the social and political space to the youth to air their views and become a positive force for national development; and for ensuring that we create youth-based wealth.”
On the imperatives of Infrastructural development such as roads, rail and electricity, the incoming government must recognize the fact that infrastructure enables development and provides the services that underpin the ability of people to be economically productive, for example, via transport. “The transport sector has a huge role in connecting populations to where the work is,” says Ms Marchal. Infrastructural investments help stem economic losses arising from problems such as power outages or traffic congestion. The World Bank estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa, closing the infrastructure quantity and quality gap relative to the world’s best performers could raise GDP growth per head by 2.6 per cent annually.
For us to achieve the target objective in the rail sector, the incoming government must start thinking of a rail system that will have a connection of major economic towns/cities as the focus.
Achieving this objective will help the poor village farmers in Benue/Kano and other remote areas earn more money, contributes to lower food prices in Lagos and other cities through the impact on the operation of the market, increase the welfare of household both in Kano, Benue, Lagos and others while it improves food security in the country, reduce stress/pressure daily mounted on Nigerian roads by articulated/haulage vehicles and drastically reduce road accidents on our major highways.
In the area of electricity/power generation and distribution, there is an urgent imperative for the incoming government to openly admit and adopt both structural and managerial changes that impose more leadership discipline than conventional and create government institutions that are capable of making successful decisions built on a higher quality of information which needs to be granted.
To give an example, in 2005 and 2010, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan-led the federal government, respectively, came up with the electric power sector reform, EPSR, ACT 2005 and the roadmap for power sector reform of 2010, which was targeted at sanitizing the power sector, ensure efficient and adequate power supply to the country. The project ended in the frames – reportedly gulping billions of dollars without contributing the targeted megawatt to the nation’s power needs.
The Buhari-led administration is presently in a similar partnership with the German government and Siemens. But in my observation, the only change that has taken place since this new development is thoughtless increments of bills/tariffs paid by Nigerians.
No nation can survive under this form of arrangement.
Finally, while this piece calls on the incoming government to provide Nigerians with a standard of living adequate for their health and well-being, Nigerians, on their part, must look up to God, their maker and talk to him through positive actions. They must join their faith with that of James Weldon Johnson to pray; ‘Oh God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou hast us far on the way; Thou who by the might lead us into the light. Keep us forever in part we pray lest our feet stray away from places, our God where we meet thee. Lest our heart is drunk with the wine of the world, and we forget thee; Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to our God, true to our native land’. To this, I say a very big amen.
Jerome-Mario is the programme coordinator (Media and Public Policy) for Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA). He can be reached via [email protected]/08032725374
By Diana Tenebe
Nigeria stands at the cusp of an agricultural revolution with the ambitious plan to significantly transform its food and agriculture sector through the launch of the $510 million Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ), financed by the African Development Bank and development partners. Fueled by the integration of cutting-edge technologies aimed at boosting food production and ensuring national food security.
However, as yields increase, a formidable hurdle remains: the efficient and scalable distribution of this bounty across the nation’s diverse landscapes, often hampered by infrastructural limitations and logistical complexities.
Dr. Bosun Tijani, the Minister of Communication, Innovation, and Digital Economy, recently called on Nigerian farmers to prepare for digital and technologically advanced farming methods, emphasising their crucial role in boosting food production and security.
Building upon this call for technological integration, and to truly unlock the full potential of Nigerian agriculture and ensure increased harvests translate to accessible and affordable food for all, the sector can draw invaluable lessons from the operational prowess of e-commerce giants like Amazon. Their success in navigating complex logistics and reaching vast customer bases offers a compelling blueprint for transforming Nigeria’s food distribution network.
Amazon’s dominance in the e-commerce realm is underpinned by a meticulously crafted logistics and supply chain system. Their significant investments in sprawling fulfillment networks, coupled with the strategic deployment of technology for route optimisation and real-time inventory tracking, have created an unparalleled engine for moving goods swiftly and efficiently.
Furthermore, their optimisation of last-mile delivery, integration of automation within warehouses, and a hybrid approach blending in-house capabilities with shrewd partnerships underscore their commitment to scalability. This intricate ecosystem is designed to handle massive volumes and adapt to fluctuating demands – a crucial capability that Nigeria’s agricultural sector desperately needs.
Translating these principles to the Nigerian context requires a fundamental shift towards building a resilient delivery infrastructure specifically tailored for agricultural produce. This necessitates moving beyond traditional, often inefficient methods and embracing hybrid transportation models that account for varying road conditions and geographical challenges.
Imagine a network that leverages a combination of refrigerated trucks for long-haul transport, smaller vehicles for navigating local terrains, and even innovative solutions like riverine transport where feasible. Integrating technologies like GPS tracking for real-time visibility of produce movement and strategically establishing a network of collection and distribution hubs across key agricultural zones can significantly streamline the flow of goods.
Implementing robust systems for real-time tracking of harvests and produce, mirroring Amazon’s inventory management, will be crucial in minimising spoilage and maximizing freshness as food travels from farm to consumer. Moreover, forging strategic alliances with existing local logistics providers, leveraging their on-the-ground knowledge and infrastructure, can provide a vital springboard for building a comprehensive network without starting entirely from scratch.
Beyond the physical movement of goods, the power of data, a cornerstone of Amazon’s success, holds immense potential for revolutionising Nigerian food distribution. Leveraging data analytics can provide invaluable insights into regional demand patterns, allowing for more accurate forecasting of optimal harvest and distribution times.
This data-driven approach can help match agricultural supply with consumer needs with greater precision, reducing waste and ensuring that the right produce reaches the right markets at the right time – much like Amazon utilizes data for personalized recommendations and understanding customer purchase behavior. Imagine farmers making informed decisions about planting based on predicted market demands or logistics providers optimizing routes based on real-time demand fluctuations.
Furthermore, adopting Amazon’s unwavering focus on customer convenience and trust is paramount, especially when dealing with perishable goods. Establishing reliable delivery schedules, ensuring the quality and freshness of produce upon arrival, and implementing transparent processes throughout the supply chain are crucial for building confidence among both farmers and consumers. This might involve implementing quality control measures at various stages, providing clear communication about delivery timelines, and potentially even exploring traceability systems that allow consumers to understand the journey of their food.
Finally, navigating the complexities and dynamism of the Nigerian market demands a long-term vision and a high degree of adaptability, mirroring Amazon’s sustained focus and agility in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.
The Nigerian agricultural sector must be prepared to iterate, learn from its experiences, and continuously refine its distribution strategies in response to local challenges and opportunities. This requires a collaborative approach involving government agencies, agricultural organisations, technology providers, and logistics companies working together to build a sustainable and efficient food distribution ecosystem.
By strategically adapting these e-commerce-inspired lessons in logistics, technology adoption, data-driven decision-making, and customer focus to the unique context of Nigerian agriculture, the nation can forge a distribution system capable of efficiently handling increased production. This transformative approach is not merely about moving food; it’s about ensuring that the fruits of Nigeria’s agricultural advancements reach every corner of the country, contributing significantly to food security, mitigating the rising cost of food, and ultimately cultivating a thriving and efficient agricultural future for all Nigerians.
Diana Tenebe is the Chief Operating Officer of Foodstuff Store
By Michael Owhoko, PhD
The astronomical rise in banks’ profits as reflected in the 2024 full year financial report has exposed the banking industry as a lucrative enterprise powered by arbitrary charges imposed on unwilling customers. In some cases, these inexplicable fees and other unholy electronic deductions, leave customers to reel on the throes of pains, with impact on their blood.
That the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has been penalizing the banks for flouting stipulated guidelines as contained in its Guide to Charges by Banks, Other Financial, and Non-bank Financial Institutions is a confirmation that these banks deliberately use arbitrary and excessive charges to fleece customers, obviously to boost profitability.
Since these painful charges constitute part of the big profits made by banks at the expense of customers, they are likened to blood profits. Like blood money, which is obtained at the expense of another’s man’s life, blood profits are earnings gained by banks at the cost of customers’ blood.
In context, blood here refers to the sweat, sacrifice, pains, frustration and helplessness customers go through when deductions veiled in hidden and arbitrary charges are made on their accounts.In other words, bank earnings are tantamount to blood profits when viewed against the backdrop of resultant pains suffered by helpless customers who bear the brunt of arbitrary charges.
These charges are embedded in crazy debits alerts sent through SMS notifications and emails, and sometimes,they are delivered incoherently, in arrears or at odd hours, perhaps,to shield or distract customers from scrutinizing the alerts. Besides causing general body imbalance, the charges also trigger mood swings and countenance upset among customers, once received.
Some of these crazy charges include, but not limited to commission on turnover, withdrawal fees, transfer charges, electronic money transfer, processing fees, VAT charges, ATM fees, debit or credit cards issuance, replacement or renewal fees, account maintenance fees, NIP transfer charges, SMS alert charges, stamp duty fees, interest charges, SMS VAT charges, hardware token charges, cybersecurity levy, bills payment fees, and other random levies.
Besides, the CBN’s recent introduction of on-site and off-site charges during cash withdrawals at ATM machines,is also unhelpful and inimical to current plight of bank customers, who are now compelled to pay withdrawal fees for use of ATM machines owned by banks other than theirs. But where such transactions are carried out in customers’ own banks, such transactions attract no charges. This introduction is coming on the heels of a fresh increase of SMS alerts charges from N4 to N6 per transaction, further compounding the woes of customers.
Implicitly, these charges constitute huge burden on the average bank customer who contends daily with depletion in his or her account balances. Corporate customers or businesses are also not spared from these questionable charges that have become a drain on the balance-sheet of companies.
With about 312 million active accounts bank-wide as at December 2024, these irrational charges have contributed immensely to the bottom line, occupying a larger space in the profit basket of banks, dislodging loans and foreign exchange sources of profits, which have diminished overtime by high-interest rate regime and prevailing foreign exchange dynamics.
For example, from the 2024 financial year report of just five of the tier 1 banks, the profit growth rose enormously with pre-tax profit hitting N4.56 trillion, approximately 69.5 percent increase compared to N2.69 trillion declared in 2023, while their net profit after tax rose by 66.2 percent in 2024, amounting to N3.78 trillion, as against N2.27 trillion recorded in 2023.
These five tier 1 banks, whose total combined assets in 2024 reached N108.21 trillion, from just N72.80 trillion recorded in 2023, include First Holdco Plc, GTCO Plc, Zenith Bank Plc, UBA Plc,and Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc.
Specifically, First Holdco grew its profit before tax to N862.39 billion in 2024 from N356.15 recorded in 2023, just as its profit after tax rose to N736.7 billion in 2024 from N308.4 billion it earned in 2023. GTCO on the other hand, grew its pre-tax profit from N609.3 billion in 2023 to N1.27 trillion in 2024, with its net profit rising to N1.02 trillion in 2024 from N529.66 billion made in 2023.
Also, Zenith Bank grew its profit before tax to N1.33 trillion in 2024 from N795.96 billion recorded in 2023, just as its profit after tax rose from N676.9 billion in 2023 to N1.03 trillion in 2024. Similarly, UBA grew its pre-tax profit to N803.72 billion in 2024 from N757.68 billion it recorded in 2023, with its net profit increased from N607.7 billion in 2023 to N766.6 billion in 2024.
In the same vein, Stanbic IBTC Holdings reported a profit before tax of N303.8 billion in 2024 from N172.91 billion it made in 2023. Its profit after tax rose to N225.3 billion in 2024, compared to N140.62 it recorded in 2023.
With charges as sources of cheap revenue, banks are no longer motivated to embark on constructive and creative efforts in their quest for profit generation. Profits gained from matching of deposit funds against credit lendingin consonant with traditional banking, are now waning. Perhaps, this explains the drop in number of banks’ female employees deployed to chase depositors for cheap funds.
Though, lacking ingenuity and industry,use of charges as sources ofcheap profits, can make the ordinary businessman to be envious of bank owners. Even Aliko Dangote, as the richest man in Africa, perhaps, may be regretting for allowing his bank, Liberty Merchant Bank, to go under, just like previous bank owners whose banks have closed shop. Their banks might have been sources of value addition to their wealth.
Regrettably, rather than portray the banks in positive light, these colossal profits shunned out by Nigerian banks, are stirring negative public perception about their operational methods, believed generally to be unhelpful to individual and business ventures, particularly, small and medium business enterprises.
The Federal Government and CBN are complicit in this unjustifiable charges and levies. Reason: the Federal Government recently received approximately N84.05 billion from Electronic Money Transfer Levy alone in the first quarter of this year, 2025. This is unhealthy, and a nightmare for the average Nigerian bank customer, who sees it as sheer extortion.
Since the government is a direct beneficiary of these charges, CBN may have been reluctant to exercise strict and regular oversight over the banks on compliance with its guidelines. And this may have unwittingly,encouraged the banks to thrive in unbridled manner, particularly, in “under the table transactions.” These boom and windfall profits would have been near impossible under a sane financial environment typified by global best banking practices.
So, while the banks jubilate for a job well done for full year 2024 financial reports, the real sector and individual customers for which the banks were established to support, groan and suffocate in pains due to business decline and losses suffered, including, in some cases, complete closure of operations and insolvency.
Put differently, the banking system has become a pain in the neck of customers. While customers are experiencing frustrations from incessant debit alerts attributable to subjective and jumbled charges, corporate customers, in addition,also suffer from inability to access simple credits to run businesses,including foreign exchange to settle Letters of Credit.
It is therefore imperative to compel the banks to function appropriately without putting the customers through pains. Gaps created by CBN’s unimpressive efforts at enforcing compliance with rules guiding bank charges, should be filled by various consumer protection agencies for the good of customers.
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) established to protect the interest of consumers should rise to the challenge of banks’growing quest for abnormal profit through use of arbitrary charges,devoid of empathy for emotional state of customers.
Some of the policies that necessitated the bank charges should be reviewed,so as not to discourage Nigerians from optimizing the services of the banking industry. Failure to do this, could undermine government’s cashless policy, with implication on banks’ total clientele base. Moreso, as the country is still underbanked.
The banks must therefore, wake up,smell the coffee,feel the impulse of customers, and shore up the dwindling integrity and reputation of the banking industry.
Dr. Mike Owhoko, Lagos-based public policy analyst, author, and journalist, can be reached at www.mikeowhoko.com, and followed on X {formerly Twitter} @michaelowhoko.
By Abba Dukawa
Despite political scepticism from opposition politicians, Governor Mai Mala Buni has proven his commitment to serving Yobe State’s people, prioritizing their needs over personal interests since taking office. His political vision aligns with the masses’, focusing on their welfare and well-being.
Notwithstanding the challenges, Governor Mai Mala Buni remains committed to Yobe State’s, focusing on state and citizens’ needs despite obstacles
Since taking office, Governor Mai Mala Buni’s administration has made significant strides in various sectors, including infrastructure development, healthcare, education, road construction, agriculture, and women and youth empowerment. Notably, the administration has offered local and foreign scholarships, boosting citizens’ confidence in the state.”
Despite insurgency and insecurity challenges in the state, Governor Mai Mala Buni has made concerted efforts to combat insecurity. Notably, he has engaged with Service Chiefs and Heads of Security Agencies to find lasting solutions, ensuring peace and security across the state. Over the past six years, the Yobe State government has provided over 400 vehicles to support the Nigerian Army, Air Force, Police, and other security agencies, enhancing their operational capabilities.
Under Governor Mai Mala Buni’s leadership, Yobe State has made significant strides in transforming education. To address the pressing issue of out-of-school children, he convened the state’s inaugural education summit, seeking solutions. With approximately 4.4 million out-of-school children residing in Yobe (about a third of Nigeria’s 13.2 million), the summit marked a crucial milestone in the administration’s efforts to revamp the education sector.
To expand access to education, the administration established model primary and junior secondary schools in each of the state’s three senatorial districts, with plans for further expansion to all 17 local government areas. This initiative has yielded significant results, including increased school enrollment and the rehabilitation of structures damaged by Boko Haram insurgents.
Furthermore, Governor Buni’s administration has established six new Model Schools, seven Mega Schools, nine Government Girls’ Day Senior Secondary Schools, eight co-educational Government Day Senior Secondary Schools, one additional boys’ school, and an IDP School in Buni-Yadi.” These initiatives were complemented by the construction of new classrooms, laboratories, ICT centers, hostels, and other essential facilities, as well as the provision of teaching and learning materials to primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions, fostering a conducive learning environment for students and pupils. These new schools are strategically located in affected areas, aligning with the administration’s State of Emergency Declaration on Education initiative.” The administration has also awarded scholarships to hundreds of high-achieving students, both male and female, to pursue various fields, including Petro-Engineering, Medicine, Anesthesia, and Pharmacy, locally and internationally.
Yobe State’s health sector has seen significant achievements, the state government has constructed, refurbished, and equipped over 138 Primary Health Care centers, increasing access to essential services. Free Dialysis Program*: hundreds patients receive free dialysis treatment every month at the Yobe State University Teaching Hospital.
Yobe State was recognized as a leader in primary healthcare, winning $500,000 in the North-East sub-region leadership challenge.The state allocated 15% of its 2025 budget to the health sector, to promote healthcare delivery services. The state has upgraded four general hospitals to specialist facilities and eight Primary Health Care centers to general hospitals, enhancing healthcare infrastructure.
The Buni Expanded Free Healthcare Scheme provides free basic healthcare to vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, children under five, and people living with disabilities. More than hundred thousands residents have been enrolled in the scheme, with 222 primary healthcare providers and 24 secondary healthcare facilities supported through capitation and fee-for-service arrangements. Yobe State University Teaching Hospital has secured full accreditation to train 25 resident doctors, a monumental achievement for the state’s healthcare sector.
Since 2019, the state has witnessed unprecedented infrastructural development under the current administration. Yobe State’s infrastructure development under Governor Mai Mala Buni’s administration has seen significant progress in various sectors. Construction and rehabilitation of over 500 kilometers of roads, connecting communities and fostering economic growth complete road projects. Township roads and drainages in five local government areas. Damaturu flyover construction.
Commissioning of new electricity infrastructure for the Nguru Mass Housing Estate, Expansion of the National Grid to more communities. Installation of solar streetlights in 11 local government areas. Mass Housing Policy delivering 2,350 housing units with basic amenities at a 50% discount on an owner-occupier basis. Improved water supply with new solar-powered boreholes and reticulations in Damaturu, Buni-Yadi, Nguru, Geidam, and Potiskum. Construction of modern markets in Potiskum, Geidam, Yunusari, and Ngalda, Damaturu Mega Shopping Mall construction and Potiskum Truck Transit Park development. These infrastructure developments aim to drive economic growth, enhance the quality of life for residents, and support the state’s overall progress
Despite financial constraints, Governor Buni’s administration has successfully implemented developmental projects that enhance human capital development. To achieve its socioeconomic objectives, the administration is proactively seeking local and international investments to leverage the state’s natural mineral resources. Notably, Governor Buni has engaged with Qatari investors to explore opportunities for establishing a cement company and meat processing factory in Yobe State.
The administration has revitalized and upgraded government-owned industries, including the Gujba Fertiliser Blending Plant, Polythene, Woven Sacks Factory, Yobe Flour and Feed Mills, and Sahel Aluminium Companies, to enhance production capacity. This initiative seeks to boost internal revenue generation and create jobs.
To realize its vision for Yobe State, the administration has introduced transformative policies and programs designed to unlock the state’s vast potential and propel it towards greatness. Building on the substantial progress achieved over the past six years, Governor Mai Mala Buni has consistently prioritized the welfare of the people, eschewing political expediency and personal interests for the greater good.
As Chairman of the APC’s Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee, Governor Mai Mala Buni spearheaded the party’s transformation, bridging internal rifts and rebranding it to appeal to a wider demographic. Under his leadership, the APC has attracted notable defections, including governors from Zamfara, Ebonyi, and Cross River states, as well as prominent figures such as Gbenga Daniel, Lt. Gen. Ihejirika, Yakubu Dogara, Dimeji Bankole, and Barnabas Gemade. Governor Buni’s people-centric approach has earned him recognition as a diligent and empathetic leader. His administration’s commitment to enhancing citizens’ lives reflects his sense of duty and selflessness.
Dukawa writes in from Kano and can be reached at [email protected]
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