By Abdulrauf Aliyu
In every era, there are provinces that endure calamity but rise through reform. There are also those that, though cloaked in the symbols of leadership, crumble under the weight of their own illusions. The North-East of Nigeria, as laid bare by the 2025 Phillips Consulting State Performance Index (pSPI), sits uncomfortably across both terrains.
The pSPI, combining verifiable state data with the lived perceptions of nearly ten thousand citizens, is a mirror that reflects not political aspiration but governance reality. And what it reveals in the North-East is an unflinching truth. This region, long scarred by insurgency and displacement, still carries within it examples of both authentic state-building and spectacular administrative collapse.
Start with Adamawa, ranked 4th nationally. This is a state that, like post-war Florence after the Medicis’ retreat, chose rebuilding over self-pity. In a region synonymous with humanitarian crises, Adamawa has begun to institutionalise recovery. Salaries are paid. Schools function. Hospitals, while not luxurious, are open and usable. The governor has shown restraint where others resort to spectacle. Like Cincinnatus, who returned to his plough after rescuing Rome, Adamawa’s leadership has focused on restoring public institutions, not glorifying personal power.
Then there is Gombe, ranked 7th, a state that is slowly becoming the North East’s version of Athenian Athens in the Age of Solon. It does not dominate headlines, but it quietly recalibrates the foundations of governance. Fiscal responsibility has improved. Water projects are running. Roads, while few, are better maintained. Gombe is constructing not just infrastructure but confidence. Its citizens, much like the Athenian demos after early democratic reforms, are beginning to trust that government is something that can work.
Bauchi, at 12th, occupies an interesting middle ground. It is not yet a model, but its trajectory suggests awakening. The state recalls the later years of Augustus in Rome, where consolidation replaced expansion. Bauchi has begun to understand the limits of ambition unanchored in planning. Rebuilding its healthcare and education sectors has taken priority over the hollow grandeur of political theatre. However, the machinery remains fragile. Without continued discipline, it could relapse into the indolence of the Roman provinces under Nero, where governance was replaced by spectacle and neglect.
Yobe, ranked 19th, shows modest gains. But its condition is like that of post-Carthaginian Tunisia under Roman control: stable but subdued. The people are weary. Public institutions function, but only just. Like the border regions of ancient empires, Yobe is surviving more through federal relief and security operations than from endogenous administrative strength. Its leadership must now pivot from survival to strategy, from military dependency to governance innovation.
Taraba, at 24th, is one of the most resource-endowed states in the region, yet it remains a chronic underachiever. One might compare it to the Persian satrapies during the later Achaemenid Empire: rich in land and treasure but poorly governed. Internal divisions, elite capture, and absent political direction have reduced Taraba to a state of perpetual hesitation. Where it should be exporting power and produce, it is exporting youth and disillusionment. The failure is not in its natural landscape but in its administrative one.
But it is Borno, ranked 36th and last, that demands the most piercing scrutiny. Borno is a paradox: governed by the most publicly celebrated governor in Nigeria, Babagana Zulum, yet recording the poorest performance in both objective data and citizen perception. What explains this contradiction?
This is where the concepts of premature loadbearing and isomorphic mimicry become essential analytical tools. Zulum, whose tireless presence in the field has become legendary, embodies the image of leadership. Yet Borno’s institutions, hollowed by decades of conflict and institutional erosion, cannot carry the weight of the state-building project he personifies. It is like expecting the city of Thebes, devastated by the Peloponnesian War, to govern as if its administrative spine were unbroken. The result is collapse under the weight of expectation.
Borno also falls victim to isomorphic mimicry, the development trap where governments adopt the outer forms of reform—policy documents, donor engagements, media appearances—without the underlying functions. Ministries exist, but they do not perform. Schools are reopened, but not resourced. Health centres are painted, not staffed. Just as the late Roman Empire retained the titles and uniforms of an imperial administration long after real power had vanished, Borno clings to the aesthetics of reform while its foundations remain undone.
This failure is not about Zulum the man, but about a system that has mistaken visibility for viability. A single governor, however committed, cannot substitute for institutional performance. Like Charlemagne’s heirs who inherited his throne without his discipline, Borno’s administrative class has not translated energy into execution. The result is a region still suspended in crisis, but no longer entitled to blame that crisis for its abysmal performance.
The pSPI report makes it clear that citizens are not fooled by performance art. Perception scores, especially in Borno, confirm a steep decline in trust. And once trust is lost, governance itself becomes a hollow rite. Zulum may continue to act with urgency, but unless that urgency is matched by institutional depth, Borno will remain locked in what political theorist James C. Scott called “state optics”—a theatre of control without control itself.
Across the North East, the best-performing states share certain virtues: modesty, structure, and a focus on basics. Adamawa and Gombe are not rich. They are not free from conflict. But they govern with a sense of proportion. They have understood what classical theorists from Aristotle to Montesquieu have always insisted: that good governance begins not with grandeur but with order. Law before largesse. Competence before charisma.
The lower performers, by contrast, share the opposite pattern: inflated expectations, weak institutional memory, and a reliance on form over function. They resemble the Hellenistic kingdoms that followed Alexander the Great—boasting elaborate courts, gilded institutions, and sprawling ambition, but ultimately fragile because their legitimacy was not embedded in the routines of governance.
As Nigeria’s development commissions, donors, and national policy architects digest the findings of the 2025 pSPI, they must resist the temptation to reward noise. The report is not just a ranking. It is a warning. And in the North East, it warns especially against the cult of personality, the impatience of crisis governance, and the drift toward symbolic leadership.
The region must now do the hard work of building systems that outlast governors, even those as visible as Zulum. For if reform does not sink into the bureaucracy, into procurement laws, into hiring practices, into budgeting routines, then it remains a shadow on the wall. Like Plato’s cave dwellers, the people will see movement but not meaning.
The North East deserves better than that. Its suffering has earned it not pity, but precision. Its people have shown resilience. Now its leaders must show restraint, strategy, and the humility to govern not with spectacle, but with structure.
