During campaigns for elective political office, only a few people see beyond the fanfare and the razzmatazz. The dream is always about how to capture the office. Usually, the picture seen from the outside of the grandiose of power is not usually the case when one gets into the office. Like in business, when a new investor takes over a company, he inherits the assets and liabilities. By the same token, Babagana Zulum, governor of Borno State may have inherited the troubles of former governor Kashim Shettima in the Boko Haram ravaged state.
On many occasions, Shettima was 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 Muhammadu Buhari and to the highest echelon of security authorities in Abuja, seeking intervention in the low-grade war that has seen thousands of Nigerians dead since 2009. 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) visit to Aso Rock, he met with President Buhari, 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).
Ordinarily, Shettima’s troubles should have discouraged any other politician from vying for the office of governor in the volatile state, but as it is said, the grass is always greener on the other side and the taste of the pudding is in the eating.
Less than four months after he was sworn in as Shettima’s successor, it appears that Zulum has begun 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.
Today, Zulum may have discovered that he is wearing a crown of thorns.
Last Friday, 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 on Nigeria, is also borders to the country’s neighbors, including Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Zulum lamented the renewed attacks in Borno communities of Gubio and Magumeri, burning government establishments and religious worship centres.
The governor had rushed to Abuja to see the President on the possible ways to end the nightmare in his domain. He disclosed that the state had begun a process of dialogue with local communities with a view to integrating repentant Boko Haram militants and called on the Federal Government to speed up the process of granting pardon to militants who are ready to lay down arms.
“We have already commenced the process of dialoguing with our traditional rulers, religious leaders and youths with the view to identifying militants who wants to repent.
“We also want to appeal to the President to help speed up the process of granting pardons for repentant militants,” he said.
Tony Ailemen, Abuja and Iniobong Iwok, Lagos
