Only one prominent member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) appears to hold the view that Nigeria is in trouble, in the realm of security. Professor Babagana Umara Zulum. From his lofty but obviously distressed executive office in Maiduguri, Zulum sees what virtually all other leaders of the ruling party seem to have chosen not to see. He sees escalating insecurity. He also sees the underbelly of the Nigerian security system, which weakness accounts for the failure of the government to decisively tackle the scourge of terrorism. The professor of soil engineering has surely seen more, and have come to know a lot more, about how Nigeria works and why Nigeria is not working.
At every turn in the arduous task of governing Borno State, made so by circumstances of contending with insurgents, the governor has publicly alerted the relevant institutions of the state, of treacherous situations on the ground in north eastern state. He not only alerts, he often proffers his recommendation on what he believes needs to be done. There is increasingly little that governors can do these days, without recourse to the centre.
At some point, the governor has pleaded for prompt military intervention. At some other point, he has resorted to screaming, obviously pressed by frustration. This is often the case when he watches as the storm of insurgency assumes consuming bellicosity around the Chad Basin and the vast area of the state he governs. Yet, at some other junctures, Zulum has lashed out at Federal Government and the Military, expressing the view that things could to be done better. The governor’s anxieties and complaints about governance tardiness resonate across the land.
Babagana Zulum’s voice from Maiduguri has, by and large, become the legendary lone voice crying in the wilderness. Sadly, voices like his, almost always receive scorn, until reality degenerates to emergency. Those who live, or believe they live in relative safety and comfort, removed, in their own reckoning, from the immediate location from which such cries emanate, hardly harken to voices of reason. It is not totally strange therefore, that majority of the APC big fishes, will elect to ignore Zulum for singing a song they do not want to hear at the moment.
To many of these, the Borno State governor may, indeed, have become a nuisance of sorts. How dare he introduce a different narrative of the Nigerian landscape, one that reports of parts of the country falling to terrorists, when the main song in the land at the moment ought to be that of triumph and rain of endorsement of President Bola Tinubu by politicians? How can he be talking of failure of government at a point governors of opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are falling over themselves to join APC?
When the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris, accused Governor Zulum of being an alarmist, over his alert that parts of Borno State were steadily falling into the hands of terrorists, the minister was simply living up to his billing as a top APC faithful. The Minister may have returned later to enter the common plea that he was misquoted, but that surely was an afterthought.
Zulum may not have come to the point yet of asking the APC to repent, but he is almost there. He has cried out repeatedly for his party and the government to wake up to the challenges of governance. It is understandable that the governor’s primary concern in governance is insecurity. That has to be so, with Borno state being the epicentre of Boko Haram insurgency in the country. The debilitating impact of religious fundamentalism which has borne fruits of destruction and full-blown terrorism has left Borno state and Nigeria with a scourge over the last twelve years, or thereabout.
Zulum’s main distress in recent times seems to arise from watching terrorists re-group and incrementally encircle Borno State, while the Federal Government and the military carry on as if they are oblivious of the situation, or as if they have some plan in the offing. Unfortunately, that has been the attitude of the government to various critical challenges in governance. It smacks of a disposition to wait out problems to go away. But problems hardly go away on their own. Insurgency and terrorism for one, do not wither away. They metastasize and rebound with more venom. That is the reality now, not just in the north eastern region, but over all of Nigeria’s northern hemisphere. And beyond. This is Zulum’s nightmare.
The governor switched over to a plea recently, praying the Federal Government not to allow Marte to fall Local Government to fall under the control of Boko Haram. His passionate plea was anchored on some strategic considerations. He had informed that most of the 300 towns in Marte had been taken over by insurgents. As he reasoned, thoughtfully, if all of the LGA was allowed to fall, it will give the insurgents both territorial and psychological boost to march on. In the governor’s word, losing the entire Marte will be “very obnoxious”
For those in, or around the government and the APC, who have the luxury of being far from the theatre of war, Zulum may be an irritant and an alarmist. He who feels it knows it. The governor does not have much room for diplomatese in discussing the challenge before him, which in more ways than one, is the challenge before Nigeria. Afterall, where is safe in the country at the moment?
Babagana Zulum tells the government and the country the truth they need to know, but which they do not want to hear, to the detriment of all. Why, for instance has the fight against Boko Haram and all insurgency lingered to the point of undoing the country? The governor did not play politics with the fact. He pointedly made it clear that information has it there are “collaborators within the Nigerian armed forces, within the politicians and within the communities”, working with Boko Haram”. The truth is self-evident. It takes a Zulum to say it.
Move away, and down from the north to the south and ask why is the fight against oil theft and sundry criminality lingering and withstanding all government-declared policies?. The answer is the same; collaborators in the military, the politicians and relevant communities are all involved. So then, who is deceiving who?
What one man can do in the face of a problem, Zulum has done. In fact, he has done more. He even became a prayer warrior of sorts. He declared prayer and fasting across Borno State over the weekend of May 17/18, 2025. Anything it will take to secure Borno State from the scourge of insurgency.
God sure answers prayers, but He does expect that man and governments must do what they ought to do. Governor Babagana Zulum himself summed it up succinctly when he said that, if the government is serious and what he called “contractocracy” is removed (that is, governance and procurement of necessary military equipment by contractors), the war against insurgency in Nigerian can be won within six months.