Malami’s Entry Into Kebbi Guber Race: A Wolf in Sheep’s Wool
The reported entry of Abubakar Malami into the Kebbi State governorship race, as carried in the media yesterday, ought not, in ordinary circumstances, to provoke any reaction from the Kebbi State Government. To start with, it is his inalienable right to contest for office and, for the record, we even welcome his ambition—if only for its nuisance value.
What cannot go unchallenged, however, is the litany of falsehoods he bandied about as justification for throwing his hat into the ring.
In outlining the ills he claimed to be seeking to address while picking up the African Democratic Congress (ADC) gubernatorial nomination form yesterday, the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice conveniently forgot – or chose to deliberately ignore—that people like him, who held sway in Abuja until three years ago, bear direct responsibility for many of the problems afflicting not just Kebbi State, but Nigeria at large.
The administration of Dr. Nasir Idris in Kebbi State emerged on the crest of a popular demand for a genuine rescue mission, to salvage a situation that had badly deteriorated across virtually all sectors of public life.
The “insecurity, poverty, educational collapse and economic hardship” which Malami gleefully cited as his reasons for joining the race became deeply entrenched and widespread largely as a result of mismanagement and misguided priorities by individuals like him, who were far more interested in what they could extract from the system than in what they could contribute to improve it.
During the eight years Malami and his associates held power, they ruthlessly exploited the trust reposed in them by former President Muhammadu Buhari, now late, and transformed themselves from near penury into overnight multibillionaires. People who previously lived in want suddenly emerged as billionaires, without any credible record of enterprise or source of wealth commensurate with their pre-appointment circumstances.
By the time Malami and his compromised ilk left office, Kebbi State and Nigeria as a whole were grappling with some of their worst humanitarian and governance crises—fuelled by squandered opportunities, policy summersaults, large-scale looting, and the self-serving conduct of those who cornered power and deployed it primarily for personal gain while the rest of the country slid deeper into distress.
The figures Malami brandished on out-of-school children aged 6 to 15, low school attendance, multidimensional poverty among children, malnutrition, poor health indicators, maternal mortality and insecurity are precisely the indicators that had reached alarming levels by the time power changed hands in 2023. The failure of Malami and his cohort to act decisively when they held office did not merely allow these challenges to persist – it helped to entrench and worsen them, thereby increasing the burden of remediation for successor governments.
When the Buhari administration took office in 2015, Nigerians invested enormous hope in his ability—based on his reputation—to steer the country out of its economic, security and political quagmire. And the late former President did indeed had the antecedents to wriggle the country out of its malaise.
Tragically, his undoing was picking the wrong people to lead the way to reforms. Many of those Buhari entrusted with that mandate entered office with a cynical agenda: to pillage and privatise resources meant for all Nigerians.
The national and subnational mess bequeathed by the likes of Malami in 2023 is what governments at every level have been struggling to clean up ever since.
Against this backdrop, Malami’s vow to declare a state of emergency on “misgovernance” in Kebbi State is nothing short of farcical. How can one of the principal architects of our current misfortune credibly present himself as the man to fix it?
Under Dr. Nasir Idris, the Kebbi State Government has responded robustly to the legacy of infrastructural decay across key sectors, particularly education, healthcare, roads, agriculture, youth development and empowerment, security and social welfare.
In education, thousands of classrooms have been constructed across the state to address the acute shortage of learning spaces and expand access for pupils. New schools have been built, while existing ones have received furniture, books, laboratories and other essential teaching and learning materials. In addition, 2,000 new teachers were recruited in a single exercise, and thousands more have been sponsored for various capacity-building programmes to upgrade their skills and improve teaching quality.
In the health sector, Kebbi has recorded unprecedented gains. All 31 general hospitals in the state are slated for comprehensive rehabilitation, with facilities in Birnin Kebbi, Argungu, Yauri, Zuru and Bunza either completed or nearing completion. Twenty-one primary healthcare centres are currently being refurbished to enhance functionality and accessibility. Modern medical equipment and advanced facilities have been procured and are being distributed to hospitals statewide, with the clear objective of ensuring that quality healthcare is within reach of every resident of Kebbi.
For those unwilling to tour the breadth of the state to confirm these changes, a brief visit to Sir Yahaya Memorial Hospital in Birnin Kebbi will suffice. The massive overhaul of its infrastructure and equipment provides a vivid snapshot of the scale of transformation under way across Kebbi.
One of the major crises triggered by the reckless fiscal conduct of Malami and his associates was the yawning gap in remuneration between doctors employed by the federal government and those working for state governments. This disparity fuelled an exodus of medical personnel from state to federal institutions. The deplorable state of healthcare delivery which Malami now decries has its roots in this skewed system, itself enabled by those who hoarded the nation’s commonwealth when they were expected to act with patriotism and self-restraint. In Kebbi today, that disparity has since been reversed with the bridging of that gap by the state government. Most of those who have left have returned with more medical personnel now willing to serve in the state.
Insecurity, too, escalated dramatically during his tenure. Throughout his time as the nation’s Chief Law Officer, Malami was rarely, if ever, heard forcefully speaking out against the insecurity ravaging his own state of origin or other parts of Nigeria. Under his watch as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, criminality flourished, banditry and terrorism metastasised, and Nigeria’s security situation sank to infamous depths. His incompetence, alongside allegations of serious malfeasance, helped script the chaos that successor administrations are now struggling to contain.
Thus, in Kebbi State, Dr. Nasir Idris inherited a system battered by the anti-people conduct of those who claimed to be serving Buhari’s vision, but who, in reality, served only themselves at the expense of the public.
A system cannot function effectively and is always vulnerable when resources intended for all are brazenly stolen, diverted, and laundered into private estates, hotels, universities, rice mills and other personal ventures. The very individuals who steered Nigeria onto this ruinous path cannot plausibly claim to be the ones to now lead the way back.
People like Malami should, in saner climes be in jail for their wanton self-centeredness which had imperiled lives, created social chaos and disorder and dragged the nation into the mess the likes of Dr Nasir Idris are currently working hard to remedy.
Signed
Yahaya Sarki, Special Adviser (SA) Media and Publicity to Kebbi state Governor
10/5/ 2026
