Helicopters for Governors, Coffins for Champions: The Shame of Kano 22

By Stephanie Shakaa

They died on the road they were forced to take because the sky was too expensive for those who serve this country in sweat. Not one governor, not one commissioner, not even one “VIP” among them. Just young athletes, youths with calloused feet, dreams bigger than stadiums, and names we now read in obituaries instead of on podiums.

Kano 22.

A number that should have been on a jersey.

A tally of medals.

A roll call of excellence.

But instead, it’s a funeral procession. A tragedy that should never have happened. A burning indictment of the values of a nation that continues to glorify the comfort of its politicians while neglecting the safety of its future.

On Saturday, May 31, 2025, tragedy struck when a bus carrying athletes, coaches, and officials from Kano State plunged off the Chiromawa Bridge on the Kano-Zaria expressway. They were returning from the National Sports Festival in Ogun State. Twenty-two lives were lost,young athletes full of promise, silenced by fatigue, neglect, and a rickety road. The Federal Road Safety Corps later cited driver fatigue and speeding as key causes. In response, the Kano State government declared June 2 a public holiday to mourn the dead. But no amount of mourning can rewrite the cruelty of a system that sends champions home in caskets.

“My younger brother was on that bus,” a young man said, his voice breaking through the static of a local radio interview. He was so excited to wear the state colours. He left with dreams, and came back in a box
How do we explain a country where state governors charter helicopters for birthday parties and campaign stopovers, yet cannot spare a fraction of the same luxury to airlift their state’s athletes to national competitions? These are young people who wear the state’s name on their chests, who train in dilapidated fields with worn-out shoes, who push their bodies past exhaustion for a chance to bring home glory. Yet when it comes to their safety, they are tossed into overused, under-maintained buses, rolling along the same killer highways that everyone knows are death traps.

Nigeria has become a place where the powerful fly over the problems they helped create, and the powerless die navigating them.

Fly the politician. Bury the youth.

Where is the justice in that?

The hypocrisy is suffocating. At every state sports festival or national competition, governors deliver flowery speeches about youth empowerment, harnessing talent, and investing in the future. They pose for photos with the same athletes they will later abandon on treacherous roads. They bask in reflected glory while refusing to fund even the basic logistics of getting their teams there alive. Glory, it seems, is worth celebrating, but not worth safeguarding.

In 2019, one of the affected governors declared, Sports is the heartbeat of our youth policy. Today, that policy is written in the blood of those same youths.

In the same fiscal year one northern governor spent ¦ 1.2 billion on aerial logistics, the state allocated just ¦ 18 million for athlete development including transport, feeding, and kits. Excellence is expected on a budget that can’t fuel a single chopper ride.

“I was asleep when it happened,” one surviving athlete whispered from his hospital bed. “I woke up surrounded by blood and silence. My best friend died beside me.”

And when the inevitable happens when the wheels give way, when the brakes fail, when the highway claims another life we get statements. Hollow, obligatory statements. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families. We will investigate. We are committed to improving transportation. Empty words, echoing over the graves of the gifted.

But no one is ever held responsible. No budgets are revised. No policies changed. Instead, the cycle continues.

Ask yourself, if it were their children on that bus, would they still be so comfortable flying solo in state-chartered helicopters? If it were their own son just 19, a sprinter who ran barefoot at state qualifiers would they put him on that bus?

There is no dignity in a medal that cost a life. No pride in a state that celebrates victory but shrugs at death. Kano 22 should haunt every government official who has ever approved a helicopter for themselves but not for those who represent their people on the field.

Decades ago, Nigeria flew its athletes to national events. Even at the height of economic instability, sports teams were treated like ambassadors. How did we regress to this point where a national delegation travels like cattle, not champions?

And this is not just about sports. It’s about what we prioritize. About how we measure value. In this country, comfort is reserved for those in power, and risk is the inheritance of the young, the gifted, the voiceless.

This must change.

Let Kano 22 be more than a tragedy. Let it be a reckoning. A turning point. If our leaders can’t find the moral clarity to prioritize safety over spectacle, then maybe they shouldn’t lead at all.
Because a country that won’t protect its champions has already lost.