NDC Host Professor Babagana Zulum

The Executive Governor of Borno State, His Excellency, Professor Babagana Umar Zulum was a guest at the National Defence College recently when he spoke as a Guest Lecturer at the College during the Module 6 programme of the College tagged Policy Strategy, Statecraft and National Security for participants of Course 28.

Professor Zulum spoke on Strategic Leadership: The Challenges of Insurgency in Borno State.  Delivering the lecture, Prof. Zulum cited other literature on strategic leadership and exhaustively discussed on them. He stated that “A strategic leader must be a strategic listener and reader. A strategic thinker must also be a strategic learner. A strategic leader must be willing to hear the truth and to learn. However, telling the truth and accepting the truth has been our major problems in Nigeria. Some people will never tell you the truth when you are in power and honestly, many of us in power also do not want to hear the truth. We prefer to be told what we like to hear and that is a serious deficit in strategic leadership”. He further added that the unwillingness of persons in the corridors of power to tell leaders the truth about issues and the unwillingness of leaders themselves to hear the truth are some of the major problems confronting leadership in Nigeria. 

The Governor informed the participants about issues relating to the Boko Haram challenges and listed destructions caused by the insurgents including the emergence of 59,311 orphans whose fathers were killed and 59,213 widows that lost husbands to the insurgency in different parts of Borno.

However, Prof. Zulum used the platform to acquaint the College community about his immediate, short-and long-term strategic plan, in confronting the challenges of insurgency in the State. According to him, these include investing heavily in security, enrolling out of school children into existing and new mega schools, placing a ban on political thuggery with jobs being created as an alternative.

The Commandant National Defence College, Rear Admiral Mackson Makanju Kadiri, while appreciating the Governor for the lecture thank him for honouring the invitation by the College and extol his exemplary leadership style which has earned him so much respect and admiration within the few months he has served as the Governor of Borno State.