I TRAVELLED to Kano for joy. On Saturday, 20 September 2025, I joined the families I cherish to celebrate the marriage of my dear friend Alhaji Sayyu Dantata’s daughter to the son of another close friend, Bello Adoke, SAN. In keeping with a personal tradition, I informed His Excellency Abba KabirYusuf, the Governor of Kano State, that I would be in town.
What followed was not a perfunctory acknowledgement but a quiet masterclass in leadership. Without fanfare, the Governor’s gestures thoughtful, generous, assured spoke the language of a city that has, for centuries, made hospitality its civic creed.
Kano’s welcome is not a courtesy at the door; it is a way of life shaped by trade, scholarship, and community. It gathers strangers into fellowship and turns difference into strength. In Kano, hospitality is policy, an active force that knits people together and gives resilience a human face.
I arrived on Friday, 19 September. Three different families reached out ahead of time, offering to handle my logistics, a kindness that was hard to decline. Out of respect, I accepted the Governor’s gracious arrangement. A government delegation met me at the airport with the warmth of old friends. Before I settled into the hotel, I called at three homes.
In each, I found the same steady truth: the lines we are told divide us ethnicity, party, faith are thinner than we imagine. They are often drawn by elites who profit from separation. In living rooms over tea and laughter, the talk turned not to identity but to shared burdens food prices edging beyond reach, a fragile economy, and the hunger for leaders who answer to conscience as well as office. The common humanity in those conversations was unmistakable.
Around 6pm, I checked into the hotel, but the evening still had lessons to offer. I walked the streets and spoke with roadside traders—tailors, food vendors, a young man selling phone accessories under a flickering light. What they gave me was clarity. First, people are disarmingly honest in their own space; Kano’s famed courtesy is not a performance, but an instinct.
Second, there is a grounded respect for their Governor admiration not built on slogans, but on the steady impression of diligence and humility, the sense that something is shifting for the better. Third, the economy weighs on everyone: you can hear it in a mother’s arithmetic at the stall, see it in a shopkeeper’s careful inventory, feel it in the pause before a purchase. Hope is present, but it is working hard.
Saturday morning, 20 September, I visited Government House. The difference since my last trip was visible: refreshed spaces, a livelier spirit, and an administration that seems to be moving with purpose. The Governor received me without ceremony. We spoke frankly about the moral demands of leadership, the unrest in the Sahel, the intricacies of Kano politics, the persistence of Nigeria’s challenges, and the possibilities that still beckon.
His patriotism did not need slogans. It sat there in the details he knew, in the questions he asked, in the generosity of his vision. He spoke of a Nigeria that refuses smallness, a federation that earns the trust of its people, a politics that heals rather than hardens. I left that room feeling steadier in my faith that such a Nigeria is possible.
We rode together to the mosque, continuing a conversation about building a Nigeria that can stand as a point of pride for Black people everywhere. In the bus were three governors I consider brothers; Engineer Abdullahi Audu Sule of Nasarawa, Ademola Adeleke of Osun, and our host, Abba Kabir Yusuf alongside several senators, including my friend Senator Wadada.
As we moved from Government House to the Dantata Mosque, I saw something that rarely survives the dust and heat of politics: an unforced bond between leader and people. Citizens lined the streets, waving with that particular mix of affection and expectation reserved for leaders who have shown up for them. When traffic slowed, it felt perfectly natural for the Governor to step out and walk among them.
On the ride with the three governors, I shared a brief social and cognitive read of what we had witnessed, the people’s affection was not choreographed; it was earned. All the governors agreed. Good leadership still moves the Nigerian heart; when people see effort, results, and respect, they respond with loyalty. At the mosque, Alhaji Aliko Dangote,my brother, Sayyu Dangote, and Alh.Wafailu Bello Mohammed, were the most gracious of hosts.
This visit left me with a simple, timeless conviction: authentic leadership rooted in humility and service, dissolves the boundaries we are told to fear. Kano reminded me that unity is not a slogan but a daily practice of seeing one another clearly and choosing the common good. In that practice, leadership becomes a bridge, and across that bridge, a people can walk together.
I went to Kano for a wedding and found, as I often do in that city, a reminder of how nations hold. They hold through countless small acts of welcome, through leaders who understand that power is service, through citizens who choose solidarity over suspicion. The hospitality I received was more than kindness; it was an argument for a better country soft-spoken, persuasive, and true.
- Peterside, PhD, is a public sector turnaround expert, public policy analyst and leadership coach, and is the author of the forthcoming book, “Leading in a Storm”, a book on crisis leadership.