The Kaduna State Government has announced a landmark policy shift in its 2026 draft budget, proposing to allocate ₦100 million to each of the state’s 255 political wards for direct community-led projects. The provision, described as the state’s most direct grassroots funding intervention in decades, is designed to reverse historical developmental neglect in rural areas.
Governor Uba Sani unveiled the proposal during the public presentation of the draft budget, which totals ₦985.9 billion for the 2026 fiscal year. The move signals a formal abandonment of the traditional “top-to-bottom” approach, driven by community feedback that exposed severe infrastructure gaps—including the fact that 12 of the state’s 23 Local Government Areas (LGAs) had not benefited from even a single kilometre of new road construction in the past 12 years.
This ward-by-ward development model is a core pillar of Governor Sani’s governance philosophy, often referred to as the “Kaduna Peace Model.” This model emphasizes socio-economic inclusion and trust-building as essential tools for development and security stability across the state. By empowering communities, the administration aims to tackle multidimensional poverty from the bottom up.
Under the new system, communities in each ward will be responsible for identifying, prioritizing, and implementing their most pressing projects. These could range from essential feeder roads and water schemes to primary healthcare facilities and local security infrastructure.
Crucially, the Governor stressed that decisions on how the ₦100 million is spent “will no longer be taken by people on the high table,” ensuring the funds are directed strictly by communal priorities through structured citizen engagement. This decentralization of financial decision-making aligns with the administration’s commitment to fairness and equity, ensuring that development reaches every community regardless of political, ethnic, or religious affiliation.
The ward funding allocation is expected to complement ongoing state-level infrastructure efforts, such as the comprehensive upgrade of all 255 Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs), establishing a strong foundation for localized service delivery that the new ward allocations can build upon.
