SINCE he returned to power for a second time, the Governor of Kano State, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has embarked on the development of the state in a manner that has tickled even his critics.Drawing a line between some policies of the present government in Kano with what prevailed with the previous administration, the state commissioner for information and sports, Dr Umar Farouk Jibrin said in an interview that, 'when we say human development, we are not talking about giving out free money. We are talking about giving people skills so that they can also employ others. This to us is human capacity development.'He said that this approach is what has marked out 'the human development agenda of Kwankwaso and that of his predecessor, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau.'According to him, human development, which revolves around human empowerment was a cardinal goal of Shekarau of the All Nigerian People's Party (ANPP) as governor from 2003 ' 2011. Under Kwankwaso, who returned to power in May 29, 2011, the mantra is still a common refrain among operatives of the state government who are of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).'Jibrin, a former lecturer of the Bayero University, Kano (BUK) maintained that the era of dishing out free money from the coffers of the state government under the pretext of implementing human development were over. He explained that, Kwankwaso's idea of human of development when compared to that of Shekarau, revolves around empowering the citizenry with qualitative education and requisite skills required to position Kano as a socio-economic power in the federation.According to him: 'As we empower our youths with skills in all fields of human endeavours, at the same time we improve the entire infrastructure in the state. That is what we are doing. And that is why there is more enrolment in schools from the primary school level. We have created more secondary schools that were not even there to absorb the existing primary school leavers. We have extended the existing ones so that the capacity of those that are coming out from primary schools should also improve.'This is why we are saying human capacity development is our main target. Of course, maybe the previous administration had a very good plan on paper but they could not translate them into practical realities. Ours is a practical government and that is why we are different.'Our target as a government is to make Kano an exemplary state worthy of emulation. We want to be second to none in terms of real development. A lot of people try to compare what is happening in Lagos State and Kano. Many think that Kano should emulate Lagos. We appreciate the infrastructural development in Lagos but we as a state will want to stand out and excel in whatever goal we set for ourselves.'We have our own programme and vision of what we want Kano to be by the time we leave office. We are keen on bringing back the glory of the state as a leading commercial centre in this country and at the same time use that to develop the human resources that abound in Kano. This is the centrepiece of our development policy.'When we talk about developing our human capacity, we mean we want every citizen of Kano to benefit from the resources of Kano, whatever that resources may be. And we can do it by creating opportunities for everybody. That is why we invest heavily on education. Now we are going to have five universities in Kano.'They are the Bayero University, the State University of Technology, the North 'West University and the A &M University.'We are going to have these universities on the ground. We are not talking about somebody coming from America to do this or that. We came in with a policy to improve the quality of primary school education and we did it. The kwankwasiyya projects are there for all to see in every ward. We have brought back our feeding programme.'We want to improve the enrolment of students and we have provided instructional materials to every school. We are teaching the staffs now and training the trainers. Of recent, we have trained 6,000 teachers and this time we are going to train another 6,000 primary school teachers who need to be trained. This government is employing 1,001 employees in the health sector.'Already, the interview has been conducted and we have employed 2,002 employees. We came out with several programmes under these 18 training institutes. Five of them have already started. The farm mechanisation institute has already started and has graduated almost 1,000 students. We have given out bulls and ploughs to each of them. The Lafiya Jari programme has trained the second batch of 200 students and each of the 400 trainees was given N150,000 to use and start business. The next batch will start soon.'The Informatics Institute is a reality. We have trained 200 students and another 200 students have been screened and have taken aptitude test. Another school that is about to start is the Hospitality and Tourism Institute and we are going to admit about 150 students and they will start training at the tourist camp. And we have more.
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