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Showing posts from January, 2026

WHEN HEALTHCARE BETRAYS A PEOPLE: A LATE WAKE-UP CALL, BUT A NECESSARY ONE

 WHEN HEALTHCARE BETRAYS A PEOPLE: A LATE WAKE-UP CALL, BUT A NECESSARY ONE By Tijjani Sarki  I write this with deep pain and patriotic anger, not as an outsider, but as a citizen who has walked through many public health facilities across Kano State. Each visit left me heavier than the last. The story is ugly, repetitive, and humiliating. One facility after another tells the same tale of neglect, forcing me to ask,are we truly serious about the lives of our people? What I saw disturbed me deeply. Broken or nonexistent equipment, careless handling of patients, poor documentation, weak infection prevention, and an alarming absence of compassion. In many places, ethics have collapsed, professionalism has faded, humanity is missing, and patriotism appears to have died within hospital walls. As such there are no innocent parties. I indict health workers who have reduced care to routine indifference, forgetting that behind every case file is a human life. I indict patients too not ...

THE GHOST OF JANUARY 15: WHY NORTHERN NIGERIA’S LEADERSHIP VACUUM REMAINS UNFILLE

 THE GHOST OF JANUARY 15: WHY NORTHERN NIGERIA’S LEADERSHIP VACUUM REMAINS UNFILLED By Tijjani Sarki  Good Governance Advocate and Public Publicy Analyst  Sixty years after the assassination of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the condition of Northern Nigeria provokes not pride, but pain. A region once guided by discipline, vision, and moral clarity now staggers under the weight of poverty, insecurity, and lost direction. What should have been six decades of consolidation and progress have instead become years of drift and decline.  The tragedy of January 15, 1966, did not end with the gunshots in Kaduna and Lagos, it lives on in the daily realities of a people still searching for leadership equal to their history. On that day, the cold barrels of mutinous rifles did more than end two remarkable lives they punctured the soul of Northern Nigeria. Today, with nearly 70% of the region’s population living in poverty and an educat...

KANO’S HUMANITARIAN TRUST FUND MUST SERVE OUR ELDERLY

 KANO’S HUMANITARIAN TRUST FUND MUST SERVE OUR ELDERLY By Tijjani Sarki I strongly support the proposed Kano State Humanitarian Intervention Trust Fund. The bill is a critical step toward institutionalizing compassion and ensuring that humanitarian response in Kano State is structured, timely, and sustainable rather than ad hoc or dependent on goodwill. The priority now should be to shape this initiative around our shared moral responsibility, by placing senior citizens, particularly pensioners facing health and social challenges, at the center of its mandate. Across Kano State, many elderly citizens live with persistent hardship. After years of service to society, they now struggle with inadequate pensions, rising medical costs, and age-related illnesses. Their vulnerability is long-standing and often overlooked, yet it remains one of the most urgent humanitarian concerns in our communities. Any intervention framework that fails to address this reality leaves a critical gap in soc...

NO DRUMS FOR THE NEW YEAR: A GENERATION BETRAYED BY POWER AND FALSE EMPOWERMENT

 NO DRUMS FOR THE NEW YEAR: A GENERATION BETRAYED BY POWER AND FALSE EMPOWERMENT By Tijjani Sarki  Good Governance Advocate and Public Policy analyst  Though I see no reason why Nigerians, especially the youth, should celebrate the New Year, I pause only to thank God for the gift of life. Beyond that, celebration feels dishonest. Our survival is mistaken for progress, yet our lives are gambled with daily by a system that neither protects nor prepares us for the future. Nothing in Nigeria is moving smoothly nothing.  Institutions are shaky, opportunities are scarce, and hope is rationed. What disturbs me most, and what fuels this anger, is the issue of empowerment a word that should have been a weapon against poverty but has been turned into a tool of political deceit. If sincerely designed and rigorously executed, empowerment alone could resolve over 75 percent of Nigeria’s socio-economic crises, especially youth unemployment, unemployability, and the criminal waste...

FROM PAID CHANTERS TO PURPOSEFUL LEADERSHIP: EIGHT YEARS OF CONSISTENT PROGRESS,THE ZASA STORY

 FROM PAID CHANTERS TO PURPOSEFUL LEADERSHIP: EIGHT YEARS OF CONSISTENT PROGRESS,THE ZASA STORY By Tijjani Sarki 3rd January,2026 For years, the narrative around many Students’ Associations has been both predictable and painful. Bodies established to protect student welfare and advance collective development have, in many places, deteriorated into political guard units and propaganda machines for elected officials. Leaders mobilize students not around ideas or reforms, but around personalities. Funds meant for progress dissolve into private pockets, leaving behind disillusioned youths and hollow institutions. It is against this troubling backdrop that the recent Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Zawaciki Students Association (ZASA) demands serious attention. What unfolded was not an isolated moment of brilliance, but the continuation of a progressive tradition ZASA has sustained for about eight years a rare consistency in an era of transactional student politics. ZASA is an umbre...