Every year, the federal government of Nigeria publishes a list of some citizens it has found worthy to honour with national awards of different categories. A hint on those that may receive the highest awards this year which was last week given by president Bola Ahmed Tinubu has elicited some controversies that government quickly resolved.

As we await the full list to be made public soonest, it is probably premature to begin to comment on the few names we have heard or indeed to initiate a critical analysis of what to expect. Today is not the best time for such a critical analysis. In any case, it is not only the national awards that should be a source of worry to Nigerians.

It is indeed time to worry about a new trend in our country in which many people are given undeserved awards. The most prominent of such awards which are organized by the nation’s major newspapers clearly depict an effective marketing design for revenue generation. Other groups and associations are also part of the sale of honours to many Nigerians.

Nigerian universities that have turned their convocation ceremonies into awards of honorary degrees to the highest bidders have become part of the game. Amidst this disturbing trend, there are a few awards that have stood the test of time. One of such awards was the one given to the former governor of Kano state, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso by the Nigerian Union of Journalists NUJ in December 2013. Incidentally, I attended the event.

It all began some two weeks before the ceremony when the NUJ delegation paid me a courtesy visit to request that I serve as Guest Speaker at the event. After a full session of the rationale for the award, I told the delegation to await my response a week later. I then proceeded to undertake extensive research on the activities of the man Kwankwaso whom I had never physically met before then. From the speech I gave at the occasion on December 15, 2023, my findings were overwhelming.

First, I was pleased with the NUJ’s decision because of its specificity. Unlike many generalized unverifiable awards, Kwankwaso was picked as the best Nigerian Governor in the area of Fiscal Responsibility- a concept which refers to openness, discipline and accountability in governance.

Besides, the award was bestowed on only one nominee unlike today’s award where as many as 8 governors are honoured for no specific achievements making it obvious that they were essentially purchased. I agreed with the NUJ because I found concrete evidence that within a few months in office, Kwankwaso had converted Kano into a viable entity by raising its internally generated revenue from N400million naira to N2billion monthly. He then blocked all leakages so that funds in the treasury are always available to be prudently managed to attain fiscal responsibility. Many of today’s governors and other top office-holders have more than such funds but they deliberately create leakages which are then diverted to personal use or at best shared with party chieftains to attract their continued support.

Kwankwaso at the time did not only block leakages but went ahead to abolish frivolous expenditures hitherto incurred in the office of the governor and in the entire state bureaucracy from which he made a saving of N500million every month.He also patronized aggressive revenue drive, must insisted that such must be handled with a human face to avoid the practice of- subjecting citizens to multiple taxes for little or no service. Beyond revenue generation, he prioritized accountability in which all state officials including the governor were required to give an account of whatever they did on behalf of the people who elected them into office. Consequently, everything including any expense on security was accounted for in Kano because Kwankwaso saw security vote as “an avenue for stealing.”

Another reason why the choice of Kwankwaso was apt for the award was his concept of transparency in governance that was premised on open government. Kano at the time had a model in which anyone who cared to know about any government project did not have to labour to get the details as the government published such details in the media every week. Under the circumstance, there was no need for any state agency to avoid requests on the Freedom of Information Act. Those who did not know what was happening in government in the state were restricted to persons who had no interest in the subject. This was the direct opposite of happenings in some states whose governors manipulated the execution of public projects. In such states, no one got to know when bids for government projects were purportedly publicised; contractors who won the bids as well as how and why they won were also not known

One of the attributes of fiscal responsibility is wise spending. This cannot happen in states whose recurrent estimates are higher than capital allocation. In such states, government merely meets personnel emolument while development projects on substantive issues like education, health and agriculture are virtually ignored. In the case of Kano, the budget for 2013 – the year of the NUJ award, merely allocated 25 percent to recurrent expenditure while it wisely reserved 75 percent for development projects. Accordingly, Kwankwaso reportedly established 3 new cities – Kwankwasiyya, Amana and Bandirawo. In addition, the jobs were completed without variations in their costs there- by reflecting strong faith in fiscal responsibility and accountability.

Several government publications which I found at the time of my enquiries confirmed Kwankwaso to be financially responsible because he insisted on keeping to the provisions of an approved budget. There was no room for bogus spending or the practice of succumbing to local pressures and the emotions of the moment to make donations that were not captured in the budget. He was also against engaging in governance by publicity which leads to spending more funds publicizing a project than the cost of executing the project. Rather, the focus was on the real needs of his people and not on frivolities. Hence, education-the key to human capital development received the lion share of the annual budget of the state throughout his tenure.

I ended my speech with a commendation to the then governor for 3 observations- about his approach to governance. The first was the seamless effort he put to establish beyond reasonable doubt that there was no need for bogus unaccountable security votes because the states with huge amounts for security measures turned out to be the ones with the highest security challenges. The second was his departure from the practice in many states where the focus of governors was on the state capital at the expense of rural areas. Kwankwaso discouraged urban migration by turning the 44 local government areas in his state to project sites. The third observation I made with satisfaction was that Kwankwaso was not among the governors who embarked on building new government houses when there was nothing wrong with the old mansions where their predecessors lived.

Exactly one week after the award, the governor sent me a handwritten letter of appreciation in which he invited me to visit Kano even without his knowledge to see for myself two areas my speech did not touch. “First, 300 computer schools as well as primary schools with boarding facilities, free food for students 5times a week, provision of uniforms, desks and multifarious instructional materials, training of 100 Pilots, monthly allowance for medical students and soft loan scheme for teachers. Second, 5kms of roads recently dualized and electrified in each of the 44 local government areas in the state in addition to one Technical School, one School of Islamic Studies, one Garment Industry and one Micro Finance Bank in every local government area.”

I have no doubt that many other analysts especially political opponents could have found certain things wrong with the administration of Kano state between 2011 and 2015. The purpose of this article therefore is not to suggest that the state had a saint for 4 years. Instead, the point to be made is that the tenure of a governor or any political officeholder ought to have specific and verifiable facts which would make the awards given to such leaders to be persuasive. It is therefore expected that the current governor Abba Kabir Yusuf who is an apostle of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has no excuse not to out-perform his mentor.