2023: Will there be aspirants for guber race in Borno?

With the ceaseless tears of the incumbent Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, a professor, over the worsening security situation in the state, it is expected that the governor’s seat would be vacant as there would be no aspirant to fill it.

Even the governor himself may not be interested in returning to his office in line with the aphorism, “Once bitten twice shy.”

In the first instance, if not for the allure of power, the likes Zulum would not have dreamt of contesting for governorship, having witnessed the menace of Boko Haram insurgents in Borno State before 2019.

Zulum was part and parcel of the Kashim Shettima administration and witnessed the numberless tear drops of his principal.

When on May 29, 2019 Zulum was inaugurated as governor of Borno State to succeed Shettima, he inherited the state’s assets and liabilities, as it were.

Perhaps, he may have thought he had the magic wands to turn things around, somehow. But today, the professor-governor is a sad man, having known no peace since he became the governor in 2019.

Zulum has wept more than his predecessor. On a number of occasions he has escaped death by a whisker.

He has also paid unscheduled visits to the chief occupant of the Aso Rock Villa to cry on the President’s shoulders. But it seems that the more he cries the more his troubles grow.

With his experience, Zulum appears to be going through the same stress his predecessor passed through that constantly gave him goose pimples.

Before he exited office, Shettima was on many occasions pictured shedding tears over the menace of the Islamist sect and the wastage of lives that greeted their bloody campaign. On many occasions, he cried to President Buhari and to the highest echelon of security authorities in Abuja, seeking intervention in the low-grade war that has been raging in the region.

As governor, Shettima escaped death a number of times as the insurgents laid ambush to his convoy. During some of his Save-Our-Souls (SOS) visits to Aso Rock, he met with President Buhari, with three senators from the state, members of the House of Representatives, the Chief of Defence Staff, National Security Adviser, Director General of the Department of State Service (DSS) and the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

Less than four months after Zulum was sworn in as Shettima’s successor, he began to see the good, the bad and the ugly sides of power. He daily hears the cries of agony of his subjects and the intimidating and taunting voices of the insurgents who launch deadly attacks from their fortress in the dreaded Sambisa forest.

Like Shettima, Zulum has reportedly made a tearful and passionate appeal to the President over the wicked activities of Boko Haram, a sect that has held some Chibok School girls abducted in 2014 up till now, and has also refused to let go a Christian girl, Leah Sharibu, violently taken away along others from their school in a sleepy community in Yobe State.

Sometime in August 2019, following renewed attacks on communities in Borno State by Boko Haram insurgents, Governor Zulum ran to the seat of power in Abuja where he appealed to President for urgent plans to effectively police the Nigerian borders along the embattled state.

Borno, located on the North Eastern part of Nigeria, borders the country’s neighbours, including Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

Zulum lamented the renewed attacks in Borno communities of Gubio and Magumeri, burning government establishments and religious worship centres.

Boko Haram insurgency is said to have started in Borno in 2009. The Islamist sect has continued to wreak havoc ever since, spreading its tentacles to other states in the North East geopolitical zone.

The bloody campaign of the group has since been worsened by the activities of other terrorist organisations, who are working hand-in-glove to make life a living hell for innocent citizens.

Although the Nigerian military has continued to wage a relentless war with the insurgents, in the estimation of Zulum, the effort could be tantamount to scratching the surface. He is now opting for mercenaries.

The governor dropped the hint in Abuja Thursday during the weekly ministerial briefing of the Presidential Communication Team at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

With teary eyes, Zulum told the security apparatchiks and the President that the Islamic States of West Africa Province (ISWAP) was a threat to Nigeria.

He begged the military and urged Abuja to retool the security agencies to halt the terror group from growing into a greater monster.

He was not under any illusion that a well-equipped and better funded ISWAP, if allowed to gain an inroad into Nigeria.

Read also: Why the Nigerian army cannot defeat Boko Haram or ISWAP

Zulum urged President Buhari to consider engaging mercenaries for support.

According to him, “Notwithstanding all the contributions of the Federal Government, we still have some challenges.

“One, I said it before, a growing number of ISWAP in some parts of the state, in the shores of the Lake Chad and Southern Borno, is a matter of great concern…”

In August 2020, Zulum insisted that President Buhari must know the truth about the security situation in the North East and the serious sabotage going on.

He insisted that there was sabotage in the system that would not allow terrorists to stop operating in the region.

The governor spoke during a meeting with his counterparts from Kebbi and Jigawa States, Atiku Bagudu and Badaru Abubakar, respectively who paid him a solidarity visit over the attack in Baga.

Zulum said some elements were trying to frustrate the effort of the government in ending terrorism, adding that Buhari needed to know the truth.

“Let me also re-echo my previous position with respect to the level of insurgency in Borno State, I earlier said that the gravity of the insurgency cannot be compared with what has happened between 2011 to 2015, and 2015 to date. Yes, it’s true. The President has done well.

“But there’s sabotage in the system that will not allow insurgency to end; the President has to know this very important point.

“When he came to Maiduguri two months ago, I said so because between 2011 and 2015, at a time, almost about 22 LGAs were under the insurgents,” the governor said.

He lamented that out of the four roads that lead to the State capital, Maiduguri, only one was functional.

Zulum had at that time urged Buhari to critically examine the security situation in the North East, to ensure the effort of the current administration was not in vain.

The insurgency in the state got to a point that Baga, a fishing village as well as surrounding ones such as Dalori, Konduga, Dala Shuwa, Dala Karamsu, Mammanti, Zabarmari were taken over by the insurgents.

For years now, Nigerian soldiers have been engaged in a fierce battle with Boko Haram fighters in Gudumbali town, the headquarters of Guzamala Local Government Area where Metele, the village where soldiers were recently massacred, is located.

Recall also that reports had it that heavily armed jihadists, riding in trucks stormed and looted weapons and vehicles from a military base in Garunda village in the state, the epicentre of the Islamist insurgency. Residents of Molai, a village four kilometres off Maiduguri, were recently on the run following a heavy gunfire between soldiers and Boko Haram fighters.

This is a battle the government’s spokesperson, Lai Muhammed had some years ago claimed has been ‘technically defeated’.

While Zulum is having a hard time in Borno despite his efforts at containing the insurgency, his counterpart in Katsina, the President’s home state, Governor Aminu Masari is having sleepless nights over the bloody campaign of bandits, whose activities have claimed hundreds of lives in the last one year.

The governors of Niger State; Zamfara State and Kaduna are also losing sleep over the sustained bloody campaign of bandits and other assorted arms-bearing criminals.

Concerned at the increasing menace of insurgents’ activities in Borno, at that time, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) had appealed to the President to take a drastic step.

They were particularly irked by the attack on Governor Zulum, in which two of his security aides were injured.

The governor had accused some of the troops on the Baga-Monguno road where the attack took place of sabotage. But the military denied it, saying its investigation did not reveal any form of sabotage.

The governors condemned the “worsening security situation” in the country as epitome of “our collective vulnerability and the fragility of the country’s security architecture.”

They expressed their readiness to meet with the President and service chiefs to discuss “this worrisome and rapidly degenerating situation.”

Perhaps, they are yet to have the discussion as there have been no changes ever since.

It is also left to be seen if Governor Zulum would indicate interest to return to his post in 2023, with all that his eyes have seen. Or if any other politician in the state will declare interest to contest the governorship having watched the incumbent run helter-skelter for over three years.