Babagana Umara Zulum, governor of Borno State, has been ranked among Nigeria’s top-performing governors in the 2025 Governance Accountability and Transparency Index (GATI), a report that evaluates how transparently and responsibly state governments manage public resources and public affairs.
The report, unveiled in Abuja on March 13, 2026, recognised Zulum and nine other governors for demonstrating strong commitments to accountability, transparency and people-centred governance.
The annual index is produced by Guild of Online Media Editors and Publishers (GOMEP) Nigeria, an umbrella body of more than 75 online media editors and publishers across the country. It is designed to strengthen democratic governance by assessing the performance of Nigeria’s 36 state governments while reinforcing the media’s role as a watchdog on issues of governance, social justice and public interest.
Presenting the report, the national president of the organisation, Dozie Nwankodu, said the evaluation adopted five internationally recognised methodologies to measure governance performance across states.
According to him, Borno State improved on its 2024 ranking in the “Exceptional Performance” category, raising its Average Index Point from 86.3 to 89.7 in the 2025 report—an increase of 3.4 points representing a 3.94 per cent improvement.
Analysts attributed the state’s improved ranking to several governance reforms introduced under Zulum’s administration, including the early implementation of local government financial autonomy.
Over the past seven years, the administration has reportedly executed more than 1,500 capital-intensive projects across the state’s 27 local government areas. It has also overseen the voluntary return of over one million internally displaced persons to their ancestral communities through what has become widely referred to as the “Borno Model” of post-conflict resettlement.
Education remains a central pillar of Zulum’s governance agenda. The administration has funded billions of naira in local and foreign scholarships, constructed more than 100 mega schools, and rehabilitated numerous classrooms across the state. These efforts earned the governor the Education-Friendly Governor Award from the Nigeria Union of Teachers in 2024.
In the health sector, the government has embarked on several large-scale projects while expanding primary healthcare services to remote communities.
The administration has also recorded interventions across transportation, infrastructure development, economic revitalisation, energy, security, water resources and agriculture, with projects targeted at improving livelihoods and stabilising communities affected by insurgency.
Beyond Nigeria, Zulum’s leadership style has attracted international recognition. In 2024, he received the African Leadership Award from Forbes, alongside other honours including the African Governor of the Year Award (2023) and the African Public Service Excellence Award (2026).
Zulum is also a recipient of Nigeria’s national honour of Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON), as well as the Republic of Niger’s Second Order of National Honour, “Grand Officer Dans l’Ordre,” a distinction considered equivalent to Nigeria’s Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON).
