Comrade Muhammad Garba, a former commissioner under ex-governor Abdullahi Ganduje, has lambasted the Kano state government for its dismal budget execution in the first nine months of 2025. He highlighted failures in water, health, and education sectors, where capital spending fell well below targets. Garba described the performance as a gap between rhetoric and reality.
Comrade Muhammad Garba, Chief of Staff to the former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress and ex-Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs under Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, issued a statement on Wednesday criticizing the New Nigerian Peoples Party-led administration in Kano. A budget review from an online platform showed capital budget performance below 40 percent from January to September 2025, with poor ratings in key sectors.
In water resources, the Ministry spent N2.7 billion out of N21.1 billion, achieving less than 13 percent performance. The Kano State Water Board received N5.6 billion but expended nothing, which Garba called 'a shocking dereliction of duty' amid ongoing water scarcity. Despite a declared state of emergency on water supply, the government has not invested even one percent of the board's allocation and abandoned projects like the Tiga Hydropower Project, opting instead to pay millions monthly to the Kano Electricity Distribution Company.
Education fared no better, with the Ministry of Education at 32.2 percent capital performance and Higher Education at 7.7 percent. Garba noted that sponsoring select students abroad seems like political patronage, while local schools are underfunded and projects such as the Mega Secondary School along Court Road lie idle.
The health sector utilized only N7.9 billion of N65.7 billion, or 12 percent. Garba warned that this underfunding exacerbates cholera outbreaks and high infant and maternal mortality, stating, 'Failure to fund primary healthcare and water infrastructure is costing lives.' He also faulted road projects as haphazard, causing traffic chaos.
Garba questioned the administration's capacity for its proposed N1 trillion 2025 budget, urging transparency and better execution to bridge the divide between promises and delivery.