The Chief of Staff to the former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammad Garba, yesterday, criticised the Kano State Government over what he described as an embarrassingly poor and unacceptable budget performance in the first three quarters of 2025.
Garba, a former President of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), said he was worried that the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP)-led administration had performed woefully in water resources, health and education.
In a statement signed yesterday, Garba, who served as Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs under Dr Abdullah Umar Ganduje, said a recent budget review published by an online platform rated the government poorly in key sectoral performances, placing capital budget implementation between January and September 2025 at below 40 per cent.
He said that findings exposed a gap between the administration’s public rhetoric and its actual delivery, adding that the figures confirmed “the failure of a government that has invested more in propaganda than in governance.”
Garba said the document showed that the Ministry of Water Resources, one of the most essential ministries, given Kano’s longstanding water challenges, achieved below 13 per cent capital performance after spending just N2.7 billion out of its N21.1 billion allocation.
He added that the Kano State Water Board, which received N5.6 billion for capital projects, “did not spend a single naira” within the same period.
He described the situation as “a shocking dereliction of duty, especially in a state where residents continue to suffer acute water scarcity across many local council areas.
He said: “It is tragic that a government which declared a state of emergency on water supply has failed to invest even one per cent of the Water Board’s allocation.
Instead of building on the previous administration’s completed projects that include the Tiga Hydropower Project, designed to power water pumping and street lighting, the government abandoned sustainable solutions.”
Garba said that after abandoning the more efficient IPP model, the government continued to pay millions of naira every month to KEDCO for electricity.
He also faulted the administration’s performance in the education sector, noting that despite declaring a state of emergency and allocating the highest share of the budget to education, the results had been “a monumental disappointment.”
According to him, the Ministry of Education achieved just 32.2 per cent capital performance, while the Ministry of Higher Education recorded 7.7 per cent. He said the administration’s emphasis on sponsoring selected students abroad “appears more like political patronage than a genuine attempt to strengthen the entire education system.”
