Since my appointment as Board Chairman of Katsina State Radio and Television Services, many people assume I automatically speak for the Katsina State Government. It’s an easy assumption to make—after all, when you sit at the helm of two state-owned broadcasters, it looks as though you’re the chief defender of government policies.
But that’s not my role. As Board Chairman, my job is institutional, not political. Together with other board members, I provide oversight and direction, ensure accountability, strengthen professionalism, and safeguard the credibility of the organization. In simple terms, my duty is to make sure the two stations serve the people of Katsina fairly and responsibly, not just the government of the day.
Government communicators, on the other hand, have a very different assignment. Commissioners for Information, Chief Press Secretaries, Directors General of Media, Public Relations Officers, and Special Assistants speak directly for the government. They defend policies, explain decisions, and project the administration’s agenda. Their work is political by design. Mine is not.
Yet, I also wear a second hat. As Chairman of Namowa MediaHub, publisher of my blog Ahmad’s Thoughts, I sometimes step into the role of commentator. That is where I speak in my personal voice. Here, I write not as the chairman of a state broadcast board, but as a journalist, blogger, and media entrepreneur with a duty to be fair.
The tragedy at Unguwar Mantau was one of those moments when the two hats pressed heavily on my head. In After Unguwar Mantau: How Katsina and the Federal Government Are Responding to Insecurity, I wrote in a structured, balanced tone—documenting the government’s response, from condolence visits and emergency security meetings to the deployment of armored carriers and precision air strikes that rescued dozens of kidnapped victims. That was the “institutional” side of me: making sure the public saw that leaders were not idle in the face of grief.
But in Radda’s Return: Leadership in the Mud of Mantau, the blogger in me came to the fore. I wrote about Governor Radda cutting short his medical leave to trudge through mud, console victims, and pledge rebuilding. Yet I also asked the uncomfortable question: what does it mean to call a governor the “chief security officer” when he cannot command a single police unit or mobilize troops despite prior intelligence of the attack? That was not the careful tone of a chairman—it was the probing voice of a writer who cannot ignore the flaws of our centralized security system.
The same dual instinct appeared again when my brother, Abdu Labaran Malumfashi, wrote his widely circulated piece, Holidaying Governor, Come Back! His passionate lament over the killings in Malumfashi was understandable, but to me, unfair. That was when I penned The Governor on Leave, But Governance Continues. In that essay, I laid out what I felt was a fuller picture: that Governor Radda had followed constitutional process by handing power to his deputy; that medical leave is not abandonment; that insecurity is a decade-old national scourge, not the making of one man; and that spreading unverified figures or propaganda videos of bandit kingpins only worsens despair. Some readers saw it as me “defending government,” but really, I was defending balance, context, and fact.
This is the delicate balance of wearing two hats. When I write as a blogger, I don’t claim to speak for government; I speak for myself. Sometimes that means clarifying government actions when critics are unfair. Other times it means asking tough questions when government falls short. But in both roles, the principle that guides me is the same: fairness.
So yes, I am the Board Chairman of Katsina State Radio and Television Services, and I am also the publisher of Ahmad’s Thoughts. One hat belongs to the institution I serve. The other belongs to the platform I created. Together, they allow me to do what I have always tried to do throughout my career—write with balance, courage, and humanity.