Claims that Kano State has emerged the highest-ranked sub-national government in West Africa for education spending is unverified.
The widely circulated and unsigned story shared by the Spokesperson to the Kano State Governor, Sunusi Bature and published by several media outlets especially within the state, attributed the ranking to a “2026 Sub-National Education Spending Index (S-WAESI)” allegedly developed by the University of Paris.
It claimed that Kano ranked first among 209 sub-national governments across the 15 ECOWAS member states with a score of 87.21.
However, checks by Blazon News Nigeria found that none of the reports linked to the alleged study provided access to the original document. In addition, no verifiable report from the purported publisher, the University of Paris, could be independently located.
Extensive search also failed to locate the report on any official University of Paris platform or in publicly accessible academic repositories, affecting the authenticity and provenance of the ranking.
“University of Paris” doesn’t exist.
The original University of Paris founded in 1150 no longer exists as a single entity since 1970 after it’s division into several independent institutions.
While Kano State’s commitment to education is well documented, including allocating nearly 30 per cent of its annual budget to the sector in recent years, there is currently no independently verifiable evidence that the University of Paris produced or published the cited ECOWAS-wide education spending index.
The absence of the original report also makes it impossible to verify the methodology, participating researchers, data sources, peer review process or even whether such an index exists.
Although the published stories describe the methodology and scoring criteria in detail, they all carry virtually identical wording which further confirmed they originated from the same press statement shared by the spokesperson to the Governor, Sunusi Bature, DG Media and Publicity, Kano State Government House, rather than independent verification.
The Verdict: – The claim that Kano state ranked first among 209 sub-national governments across the 15 ECOWAS member states with a score of 87.21 is unverified due to no direct link to any document to support the claim.