Insecurity: Governor Zulum’s Limitations

Insecurity: Governor Zulum’s Limitations

By Lawan Bukar Maigana

Maiduguri, the Borno state capital was again attacked by armed men suspected to be members of Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) at about 6 am Saturday, December 4th, 2021. The attack affected houses at the 1000 housing estate but no loss of lives was recorded.

The state’s capital has experienced relative peace for years without attacks until this latest one that made people remember the different terrible sounds which used to be regular music before the dreaded extremists were chased out of Maiduguri in 2015.

Ordinary defenseless citizens got fed up with the activities of their killers, enemies of peace and declared war on them. People of Maiduguri who had suffered a lot of injustice, massive extrajudicial killings and terrorism made history by arresting armed men. Unarmed men going after armed men. We did it in Maiduguri.

On November 25th, 2021, The Yerwa Express News published that the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, has accused a military officer, Cyril Ofurumzi (yellow) who was deployed to the North East to fight Boko Haram, of several human rights crimes and violations. The publication revealed that the ICIR accused Yellow of both arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.
The state governor, Babagana Umara Zulum, had visited the scene of the attack and sympathized with residents whose houses were affected by explosions, and promised to set up a committee to measure the damages recorded.

I saw many people who were mostly residents of the affected area calling on Gov Zulum to look into the situation and address it, describing him as a man of honor and integrity. One of them was upset when I commented on his post telling him that “the governor can’t do anything militarily about insecurity. All he can do is to express his concern as usual. It’s beyond his jurisdiction.” But the Presidency and the Federal Government can.

The federal government is in charge of the security of the country through its military. Therefore, they sent messages to the wrong addresses. The state government is relevant in the quest for peace and stability in the state, but anything that has to do with security is FG’s responsibility and this is in line with the utterances of Audu Bulama Bukarti, a senior analyst in the Extremism Policy Unit of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, at the Shinkafi Security Submit, in a Whatsapp group conversation.

He said that “no state governor has any constitutional power to employ a group of energetic men or youths who are militarily untrained to fight repugnant criminals and terrorists even if he gives them local or modern weapons.” It is completely illegal. So, you could see that even the formation of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) by the immediate former governor of Borno state, Kashim Shetima, is unconstitutional. Therefore, stop counting on Babagana Umara Zulum to do something about the state’s security challenges.

Yes, his advice is useful. You should always expect the federal government to rise to its responsibility and end these killings once and for all.

People in Maiduguri used to commend the impact of CJTF but some of them are now irresponsibly infringing upon human rights and venturing into affairs they have no business in. Some people have started discussing their fate post insurgency.

Lawan Bukar Maigana, a graduate of Mass Communication, writes from Abuja.