Gov Ahmed Aliyu: States well funded under Tinubu administration
By Lawal Jet Kaugama
There is a particular kind of leadership that does not announce itself through political hype, but through the steady, almost unspectacular rhythm of governance that touches ordinary lives.
In Sokoto State, Governor Ahmed Aliyu
is fast becoming a study in this new brand of leadership. It’s a leadership measured not in slogans but in sacks of subsidized grain reaching rural markets, salaries paid without fail, and armoured vehicles rolling out to frontline security formations.
This was the picture that emerged recently in Bodinga Local Government Area, where the Governor flagged off the sale of food items at subsidized rates, a scheme designed specifically for rural dwellers and junior civil servants who feel the pinch of economic headwinds most acutely.
According to a statement by the Director General, Media and Publicity, Government House, Sokoto, Abubakar Bawa, on Wednesday, the initiative forms part of a broader palliative architecture the administration has built to cushion citizens against hardship, a claim borne out by the Governor’s own remarks on the ground.
What stands out in Governor Aliyu’s address is not merely the announcement of another welfare scheme, but the candour with which he situated Sokoto’s progress within a larger national fiscal regime. He was unambiguous: the developmental projects reshaping the state, the palliatives reaching its poorest households, and the discipline of paying salaries on the 18th of every month are all downstream of what he describes as more adequate funding now flowing from the Federal Government under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This is a governor willing to give credit where he believes it is due, even when it might be politically simpler to claim all the glory locally.
There is something instructive in this. Nigerian federalism has long been bedevilled by finger-pointing between tiers of government, with state administrations quick to blame Abuja for underperformance but slow to acknowledge federal support when it materializes.
Governor Aliyu’s approach breaks that mould. By publicly attributing Sokoto’s fiscal room for manoeuvre to improved federal allocations, he is modelling a form of political honesty that Nigerians rarely hear from their leaders, an honesty that, whatever one’s view of the Tinubu administration’s broader economic reforms, deserves recognition as a departure from the usual theatre of blame game.
That said, gratitude to Abuja for security has not translated into complacency in Sokoto. The Governor’s disclosure that his administration has deployed 62 armoured vehicles, alongside more than 200 patrol vehicles and 2,000 motorcycles earlier donated to security agencies, signals a state government taking the fight against banditry seriously with its own resources and initiative.
Insecurity remains one of the most corrosive threats to livelihoods in the Northwest, and hardware alone will not defeat it. Governor Aliyu appears to understand this too, which is why his call for communities to share intelligence with security agencies, and his pointed warning against informants who feed information to bandits, matters as much as the vehicles themselves. Security, as he rightly frames it, is a collective responsibility that cannot be outsourced entirely to men in uniform while communities look away.
His appeal to residents to pray for an end to insecurity may strike some as a modest gesture in the face of a grave and persistent threat, but it should not be dismissed. In a state where trust between government and citizens can be fragile, moments of shared spiritual and civic solidarity often do the quiet work that policy announcements alone cannot.
On the political dimension of his remarks, his call on Sokoto residents to look past what he termed campaigns of calumny against President Tinubu, and his pledge of support for the President’s 2027 re-election bid, reasonable Nigerians will naturally hold a range of views.
Politics, after all, thrives on contestation, and Tinubu’s economic reforms, from subsidy removal to exchange rate unification, have drawn both praise for long-term ambition and criticism for short-term pain.
What is less contestable, however, is the tangible evidence Governor Aliyu presented: food reaching rural markets, salaries paid on schedule, and hardware delivered to security agencies. These are not abstractions; they are data-driven outcomes citizens can see and feel.
Governance in Sokoto, under Governor Aliyu, appears to be settling into a pattern worth watching, one that pairs fiscal candour with security assertiveness and welfare delivery.
Whether this translates into the broader political outcomes the Governor is now openly campaigning for remains, as ever, a matter for the electorate to decide. But as a case study in matching words to deeds, Sokoto’s recent example is one other states might do well to study.
Lawal Jet Kaugama, a commentator on national issues, writes from Kano