by Mohammed Bello Doka
9 July, 2026.
On Wednesday, July 8, 2026, the 19 Northern governors gathered in Kaduna with great fanfare to launch the Northern Nigeria Security Trust Fund. They pledged a monthly contribution of N1 billion from each state, totaling an ambitious N228 billion annually, to fight banditry, terrorism, and kidnapping that have turned the region into a killing field. They inaugurated a Board of Trustees, endorsed state police, and promised to tackle the root causes of insecurity. It all sounded decisive until you remember this is not their first security meeting, and it is certainly not the first time they have made grand promises while the North burns.
Since 2023, the Northern Governors Forum has held at least six major security meetings. Each produced solemn resolutions and bold declarations, and each was followed by more kidnappings, more killings, and more displacement. The data is damning. Between January and June 2026 alone, at least 3,612 people were kidnapped across Nigeria, with the North West region accounting for 55 percent of all victims. The Lake Chad Basin has seen violence surge by 80 percent in the past year, with nearly 1,800 security incidents recorded between September 2025 and May 2026. Just weeks before this meeting, 34 people were killed in a single week across the North, and bandits in Zamfara abducted 39 villagers who had come to negotiate peace, demanding a N125 million ransom. This is the reality the governors are confronting, and their response has been more meetings and more communiqués.
If the governors were truly serious about insecurity, they would have acted years ago, not months before an election. The timing of this initiative is its most revealing feature. With the presidential election now barely seven months away in February 2027, the Security Trust Fund looks less like a genuine security strategy and more like a campaign platform. The governors need to show voters they are doing something, anything, while insecurity continues to spiral. They are constructing a narrative of proactive governance to justify their re-election, but the narrative collapses under the weight of their own track record.
The structure of the Trust Fund raises legitimate questions about transparency and accountability. The Board of Trustees is composed of retired military officers, police chiefs, and civil servants, including former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Mahmoud Yayale Ahmed and former Chief of Defence Staff General Martin Luther Agwai. While these individuals bring considerable experience and institutional knowledge, their appointment by the governors themselves raises concerns about independent oversight. There is no civil society representation, no legislative scrutiny, and no public disclosure framework that would allow citizens to track how the funds are being utilized. The Northern Youth Council of Nigeria has expressed reservations about the composition of the board, questioning whether the same establishment figures who presided over the region during the rise of insecurity are best positioned to reverse it. These are valid concerns that deserve serious consideration. The governors have appointed themselves as the custodians of public funds with limited accountability to the people whose lives depend on security. For a fund of this magnitude, the absence of independent checks is a significant weakness that undermines public confidence.
This lack of transparency is deeply troubling given what we now know about how these same governors handle public money. In May 2026, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arrested the Director-General of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, Mustapha Abdullahi, over N701 billion linked to the Progressive Governors Forum. The investigation revealed that governors from the All Progressives Congress had made coordinated contributions from their states Federation Account Allocation Committee revenues to fund President Bola Tinubu's re-election campaign. The money was routed through platforms associated with the Renewed Hope Ambassadors and managed by the PGF chairman, Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State. When governors demanded an account of the funds, Uzodimma allegedly became evasive, stating the money had already been spent. This sparked a quiet but bitter tension within the APC governors forum, with some challenging Uzodimma's leadership before a vote of confidence from 18 governors restored public calm.
The parallel is impossible to ignore. The same 18 APC governors who backed Uzodimma during the PGF financial crisis are now launching a Security Trust Fund using the exact same financial mechanism, pooled monthly deductions from state FAAC allocations. If these governors could not manage campaign funds transparently, why should anyone trust them with security funds? The Uzodimma syndrome, where public funds are funneled into partisan structures with no accountability, is a clear and present danger to the Security Trust Fund. Without independent oversight, this fund risks becoming another slush pool for political mobilisation, disguised as a security intervention. The EFCC is still investigating the N701 billion scandal, and the governors have not been exonerated. Their credibility on financial management is already fractured.
The governors also promised to address the root causes of insecurity, including poverty, unemployment, and the staggering 20 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, 80 percent of whom are from the North. These are generational problems that cannot be solved in seven months. The governors have had three years to invest in education, agriculture, and youth empowerment, yet the numbers have only worsened. Insecurity has driven poverty across the North, reducing household expenditure by 4 to 11 percent in the North West alone. The root causes pledge is a recycled talking point from their April 2024 meeting, and there is no evidence of sustained progress. It is a convenient distraction from their failure to act.
The North is bleeding, and the governors are holding meetings. They have met, issued communiqués, and gone home, while bandits ride unchallenged across the region, farmers abandon their fields, children flee their classrooms, and millions become refugees in their own country. Over 100,000 Nigerians have died from terrorist violence since 2009, according to Vice President Kashim Shettima's own admission. The National Bureau of Statistics delivered a staggering statistic that should have provoked a national emergency: 2.2 million Nigerians were kidnapped between May 2023 and May 2024, the overwhelming majority in the North. Yet the governors treat this crisis like a public relations problem rather than a war.
The Northern governors are not serious about insecurity. They are serious about winning elections. The Security Trust Fund is a campaign plot, a well-packaged narrative to project action while state resources are mobilized for political purposes. The timing, the lack of transparency, the unaccountable structure, and the looming shadow of the Uzodimma scandal all point in one direction. The governors have had years to act and have produced nothing but meetings. Now, with seven months to the election, they expect us to believe they have suddenly found the will to fight insecurity. We are not that gullible. The North needs decisive action, not another photo op. It needs transparent accountability, not self-appointed trustees. It needs leaders who will confront the monster they helped create, not recycle the same failed establishment to manage a fund designed to buy votes. The governors must walk the talk, but the evidence suggests they are not even walking, they are running toward the polling booth.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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