Agriculture remains one of the mainstay of Kano’s economy right from time immemorial, aside its hard earned name in commerce and industry, there are governors who talk about agriculture, and there are governors who rebuild it from the soil up. Three years into his tenure, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has made unmistakably clear which kind of leader he intends to be. When he declared that agriculture is the engine of Kano’s economy and the backbone of its people, it was not a line reached for at a podium and forgotten by morning as with many political and administrative speeches elsewhere but it was the opening statement of a governing philosophy that has since reshaped how food is grown, moved/transported, and sold across the entire subnational Kano and the Nigerian nation at large.

Consider what has risen from the ground in just three years. The Dansoshiya irrigation dam now stands as a two-kilometre monument to foresight, holding some three billion cubic metres of water and served by a fourteen-kilometre road that finally lets farmers and their produce move freely where once there was only isolation. Around it, and across twelve major river basins, the Governor has driven irrigation outward, from roughly two thousand hectares to nearly three thousand, freeing farming families from dependence on a single, unpredictable rainy season. More than 2,500 solar-powered irrigation machines now hum across Kano’s farmland, quietly cutting fuel costs for the people who could least afford them, a small mercy delivered at enormous scale.

This is a governor who understands that a farm is judged not only by its crop but by everything that surrounds it. More than 3,500 farming families have been empowered with cattle, veterinary services strengthened in every local government area, and over 4,000 tonnes of fertiliser; free and subsidised, placed directly into the hands of those who feed the state. More than a thousand pieces of farm machinery are now at work in Kano’s fields, anchored by mechanisation centres established in each of the state’s three senatorial zones. Where farmers once broke their backs behind a hoe, they now work faster, farm more land, and keep more of what they earn building stable micro economy and creating many direct and indirect jobs.

And crucially, Governor Yusuf has understood what many administrations before him overlooked or have their best not enough: a harvest means nothing if it cannot reach a buyer. And hence, Seventy-two kilometres of new feeder roads now connect farms directly to storage yards and marketplaces. Markets and abattoirs long left to decay have been rebuilt. Storage facilities and cold-room milk collection centres now stand between farmers and the post-harvest losses that used to quietly erase months of hard labour. Agro-processing hubs are rising on this same foundation, a clear signal that under this administration, Kano intends to keep the value of what it grows rather than watch it walk out the door to be processed elsewhere.

Perhaps most tellingly, this transformation has been built on people, NOT just infrastructure. Over a thousand new staff have joined Kano’s agricultural institutions. Farmers and ministry personnel alike have received real training. More than 250,000 young people have been drawn into agriculture under Governor Yusuf’s watch, at a time when far too many of Nigeria’s youth have written off farming as a dead end rather than embraced it as a future. Climate-smart practices and early planting initiatives have been woven into every layer of this work, proof that the Governor is planning not just for this season, but for the seasons still to come.

What emerges from three years of this administration is not a scattering of projects but a coherent vision, executed with discipline: secure the water, strengthen the herd, mechanise the labour, connect the market, and invest in the people who make it all possible. Kano is fast becoming what other states will look to as a template, proof that agricultural transformation is not a slogan but a discipline, and that under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, Kano State is finally farming toward its full potential. The work is not finished, and the Governor himself would likely say so. But three years in, the direction is unmistakable, and it is one worth celebrating. Kano is indeed firs even in agriculture.

Bello Adamu writes from Kano