Inside Gombe’s Security Blueprint: Building A Layered Public Safety System Through Governance Reform

By Dr Kabir Adamu

Gombe State sits at the heart of Nigeria’s most sustained theatre of insurgency, the North-East.

Bordered by Borno, Yobe and Adamawa — the three states that have borne the brunt of an ideological insurgency since 2009 — Gombe shares the region’s terrain, porous rural corridors and, for a period, the insurgent pressure that has displaced millions across the North-East.

In February 2015, at the height of the insurgency’s territorial ambitions, fighters belonging to Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS) overran a checkpoint on the outskirts of Gombe city. They briefly exchanged fire with troops and set a police station ablaze before the military repelled the attack. It was a rare instance of the group attempting to project force into the state capital rather than confining its operations to rural areas.

That episode has not been repeated. In the years since, even as neighbouring states have continued to record mass-casualty attacks, abductions and prolonged military operations, Gombe has remained comparatively insulated. Farmers have continued to access their fields, markets have remained open and major highways have operated without the sustained disruption witnessed elsewhere in the sub-region.

That divergence did not happen by accident. It reflects a continuity of security efforts across successive administrations. Earlier governments in Gombe worked with federal military and police formations to reinforce the state’s exposed boundaries and restrict the logistics routes and safe havens exploited by insurgents elsewhere in the North-East. These efforts established a foundation of vigilance that subsequent administrations inherited rather than having to build from scratch.

It is on this foundation that Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya’s administration has built, seeking to turn an inherited state of relative calm into a more deliberate, layered security system. The approach does not treat Gombe’s insulation from the wider North-East crisis as either accidental or permanent. Instead, it seeks to consolidate that position through governance, institutions, funding, logistics and coordinated responses.

The distinction between a state that has been spared the worst of an insurgency and one that has taken deliberate steps to reduce its exposure to such threats is important. Gombe’s experience, therefore, offers a useful case study in security governance, particularly where security is approached as a governance challenge rather than solely as a policing responsibility.

Over two terms, the administration has pursued a security architecture built less around individual interventions and more around layering — combining personnel, institutions, funding, logistics and oversight mechanisms so that no single point of failure determines whether a threat is detected, deterred or addressed.

In broad terms, the approach seeks to establish a state-level capacity to detect, deny, delay and respond to threats, supported by mechanisms for regular review and adjustment. The starting point of Gombe’s approach was not hardware but process. The administration convened a broad-based security consultation involving the heads of security agencies, chairpersons of the state’s 11 local government areas, traditional rulers, religious leaders, traders’ unions, transport operators, livestock stakeholders, retired military officers and civil society groups.

The logic was straightforward: intelligence and early warning do not originate solely from security agencies. Markets, farms, transport corridors, mosques, churches and traditional institutions can all generate useful information, provided such information is properly verified and channelled through lawful security structures.

This represents the detection layer of a modern security system. Gombe’s approach has been to give community and institutional actors a more structured role in providing information, rather than leaving threat detection entirely to security agencies operating in isolation.

The consultation also informed the establishment of a security sub-committee involving the 11 local government chairpersons. The committee was tasked with developing recommendations on the welfare and operational capacity of security personnel, with further input from retired security officers and other professionals.

In other words, governance and consultation came before expenditure. Structurally, the administration established a dedicated Ministry of Internal Security and Ethical Orientation during its first term, which was later reconstituted as the Ministry of Internal Security and Home Affairs in its second term. The development is significant because it represents an attempt to move security coordination beyond ad hoc arrangements and place it within a standing government structure capable of providing continuity. For security sector reform to be sustainable, institutional arrangements need to survive individual interventions and administrations. A dedicated ministry provides a framework through which coordination, planning and oversight can be maintained.

Beneath the institutional structure is a programme of welfare and logistical support for frontline security formations.

Available information indicates that the state provides recurring monthly support to divisional police stations, area commanders, deputy commissioners of police, and other formations, including the Police Mobile Force, mobile squadrons, the Counter-Terrorism Unit, and special protection officers. Similar support is reportedly extended to military and other security agencies, while the state’s 11 local government areas provide additional support at the grassroots level.  Such support is important because the effectiveness of security personnel depends not only on the workforce but also on mobility, communications, equipment and the ability to respond quickly when threats emerge.

.Dr Kabir Adamu is the Managing Director of Beacon Security and Innovations Limited.