Despite receiving over ₦1.2 trillion in federal allocations and an additional ₦188.7 billion in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) over the last two years, the North-East remains crippled by endemic poverty, decaying infrastructure, and worsening insecurity. Critics and observers say the North-East Governors’ Forum (NEGF) has failed to translate repeated resolutions into real development, with the region’s socio-economic challenges deepening under their watch.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) 2025 report paints a grim picture: over 90% of children in the North-East and North-West live in multidimensional poverty, with limited access to basic needs such as education, healthcare, and sanitation.
While the NEGF has held 11 meetings in six years, many of their grand declarations—on education, power generation, security, and agriculture—remain unimplemented. Critics say a lack of commitment and genuine inter-state collaboration has rendered the forum ineffective.
Among the most prominent abandoned plans is the regional 300MW power project (50MW per state), which two years on, has seen no budgetary commitment from any state. Equally, a harmonised educational framework to tackle the North-East’s staggering 5.06 million out-of-school children, as reported by UNICEF in 2024, is yet to be actioned beyond shallow promises and symbolic gestures.
During their May 1, 2025, meeting in Damaturu, the governors revisited the education crisis but offered little more than plans to support the Nigerian Law School in Yola and provide office space for the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education (NCAOOSCE).
Security, another critical pillar of the forum’s agenda, has seen little coordinated action. A proposed joint security outfit—modeled after the South-West’s Amotekun and South-East’s Ebubeagu—has remained on paper. Instead, each state is pursuing isolated efforts, with Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed reviving a local vigilante agency to recruit 20,000 youth, yet with no regional synergy.
Agriculture, long touted as the economic backbone of the North-East, is in distress. Farmers across Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, and Adamawa report devastating crop losses from erratic rains and drought. In September 2024, the collapse of Alau Dam in Borno caused severe floods, displacing residents and destroying farmlands—highlighting the fragility of the region’s irrigation systems and the lack of proactive intervention from state governments.
Despite lofty commitments during the 10th NEGF meeting in Bauchi to invest in irrigation and drought-resistant crops, these plans remain unrealized.
The Mambila Hydro-power project, Upper River Basin infrastructure, and Gashaka Gumti National Park continue to suffer neglect, with states doing little to pressure federal agencies or invest in rehabilitating these vital assets.
Five of the six North-East governors—Zulum (Borno), Mohammed (Bauchi), Yahaya (Gombe), Fintiri (Adamawa), and Buni (Yobe)—are heading into the final years of their second terms, while Taraba’s Kefas Agbu seeks re-election. Analysts say many governors have shifted focus from governance to succession planning and political appointments, with Taraba appointing 1,761 aides, and Bauchi and Gombe adding dozens more, even as employment and youth empowerment initiatives stagnate.
Policy expert Dr. Murtala Mohammed Adogi described the situation as one of “destructive governance and lack of direction,” urging the formation of an Integrated North-East Security Strategy to tackle region-wide threats and prevent displacement spillovers across state borders.
He also called for better coordination of donor interventions—particularly through the Lake Chad Intervention Fund—to address youth and women’s poverty, a root cause of rising insecurity.
Adogi criticised the failure of the North-East Education Council, which had appointed ex-Bauchi Commissioner Dr. Aliyu Tilde to lead regional education reforms, only for the initiative to stall.
Similarly, public affairs analyst Dr. Grema Kyari described NEGF as a “tea conference” where resolutions are rarely executed. He stressed the need for Community Response Networks (CRN) across LGAs to foster early warning mechanisms, citing youth-led resistance in Maiduguri that once helped drive insurgents out of the city.
Kyari criticised the governors for neglecting worsening insecurity, noting that they often only acknowledge their failures toward the end of their tenures. He lamented that after more than six years of meetings, citizens in the North-East still face deepening poverty and premature death from insurgency, with no meaningful economic progress in sight.
