PRIORITISING INVESTMENT IN KATSINA

 Katsina is experiencing a wave of change as a result of human capital investments, reckons  ABDULLAHI SIDIQ

On Sunday, February 16, Katsina State Independent Electoral Commission (KTSIEC) declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the 34 local government chairmanship and 361 councillorship seats in Katsina, following an election that was contested by four other political parties.

The Governor of Katsina State, Dr. Dikko Umaru Radda, who is also the leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, described the sweeping victory of the party in the local council election as a reflection of public confidence in the state’s governance and underscored the noticeable investment his administration has made in the people of Katsina State since he assumed office in May 2023.

The easy reaction to Dikko Radda, as he is more informally called, is to be inherently contrarian and to dismiss it as another political speak, but a careful review would make any observer conclude that he was not indulging in vain glorification or showmanship but expressing the reality, even as the people of Katsina see it today. And like John Maynard Keynes has been famously attributed, when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

Before Dikko Radda assumed office in May 2023, social and economic indices from Katsina appeared bleak, from multidimensional poverty, deprivation, infrastructure gap, out-of-school children, youth unemployment, banditry, and kidnapping—the state could easily pass as the symbol of underdevelopment. Today, in a turn of fate, the state is on course to reverse those years of neglect and unlock investments that have plummeted.

One of the areas Dikko Radda has prioritised over the last 21 months is investment in Katsina people through visible intervention in education, skills development, youth and women empowerment. Development economists have argued for many years that productivity is a precondition for economic growth; however, to improve productivity, governments at all levels must invest in the productive capacities of their people by taking their education, skills, and well-being seriously.

This consensus is also underscored by data from the demography tracker Statista, which puts Nigeria’s median age at 18.4 years, making it one of the youngest populations globally. Comparatively, this is a marked difference from that of Europe at 44, North America at 38, and Japan and Singapore at 48.4 and 44.8, respectively. Investment in education—primary, secondary, and tertiary education; girl-child education; vocational and technical skills; and expanding access to economic opportunities, as demonstrated by the Katsina state government—is the most important priority of a youthful population.

At the outset, one of the things Dikko Radda sought to do was to close the infrastructure gap in education as a result of years of neglect, chronic underinvestment and insecurity. Through the Transforming Education System at State Level (TESS-Project), the government has constructed and rehabilitated 150 primary schools across the state. In addition, special model secondary schools are also being constructed in Radda, Dumurkul, and Jikamshi, while rehabilitation work is also progressing simultaneously at Government Day Secondary Schools Funtua, Jikamshi, Ingawa, Zango, and GGSS Kabomo, to mention a few.

The government understands that to improve education outcomes, it must complement physical infrastructure with enhanced delivery in classrooms by upskilling the teachers and other academic officials. Through the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), the government has trained more than 274,816 officials, including primary school teachers, integrated Qur’anic school teachers, officials from Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA), and private school teachers.

To incentivise students and improve school enrollment, the government has sustained the timely payment of scholarship and bursary allowance to 136,175 students from the 2020/2021 to 2023/2024 academic session, clearing a backlog it met in office. It has also introduced immediate employment for first-class degree graduates from universities in the state, ensuring that it can attract the brightest and the best to the Katsina State civil service and shape future outcomes. This is also in addition to the academic excellence award that was introduced for current students, who are high-fliers, where more than 210 students have been recognised and provided with cash incentives.

“If you educate a man, you educate an individual; if you educate a woman, you educate a nation” is perhaps one of the oft-repeated expressions for describing the transformative power of girl-child education, and in a state like Katsina, with a significant number of out-of-school children and a conservative approach to girl- child education, it is even more telling. This is why it is quite rewarding to see that the government is taking girl- child education seriously, under the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE). Through the initiative, it has provided support to more than 100,000 girls, across 255 secondary schools, under the Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Programme.

To expand access to technical and vocational skills, Dikko Radda established the Katsina State Enterprise Development Agency (KASEDA) government. In March 2024, the government announced its partnership with the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) of Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, to train 10,000 young women aged 18-35 from the 34 local governments over a period of 12 months, for free in different technical and vocational skills.

The government has also collaborated with the Nigeria Automobile Technicians Association (NATA) to train 3000 youths across the state as mechanical apprentices under the Mechatronics Apprentice Support Program (MASP) programme. Katsina Youth Craft Village (KYCV), the state’s technical and vocational hub, has also received a major boost with facility upgrades and equipment. In addition, about 634 graduates of the vocational school were empowered with starter packs to become self-reliant and employers of labour.

All of these human capital investments suggest that slowly but surely, Katsina is experiencing a wave of change, from a story of underdevelopment to a more prosperous and peaceful state that can provide opportunities for its people to thrive and flourish.

 Sidiq writes from Katsina

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