Governor Zulum entered office in May 2019 as a professor of agricultural engineering with first-hand experience in reconstruction, having served as Borno's Commissioner for Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement under his predecessor. His two-term record is anchored on three measurable commitments: resettling the internally displaced, rebuilding educational infrastructure, and keeping security on the national agenda. On the first, the administration claims resettlement of approximately one million IDPs into over 20,000 newly constructed homes, with successive rounds of camp closures in 2022, 2024, and 2025; this programme has attracted international recognition, including a UN SDGs Global Champion award in April 2025, but has also drawn sustained criticism from Human Rights Watch (November 2022) for returning people to areas without adequate security or livelihood support. On education, the administration built 104 new schools, restored 2,931 classrooms, and claims a reduction in out-of-school children from approximately 2.2 million to 700,000; the state invested N53.6 billion in education in 2025 and the federal education minister publicly commissioned completed mega schools. On governance, Zulum presented an N340.6 billion 2024 budget and a N615.8 billion 2025 budget, with capital expenditure exceeding recurrent in both cycles. The 2025 budget projected IGR of N30.09 billion against a confirmed 2024 outturn of N27.8 billion per NBS data, reflecting structural IGR weakness in a conflict-affected state highly dependent on FAAC transfers. The security situation sharply deteriorated from early 2025, with Zulum publicly warning in May 2025 that only one of over 300 towns in Marte LGA remained under government control, and in October 2025 calling for emergency troop deployments after Boko Haram attacks on border communities. These frank and documented public warnings, combined with his active lobbying of the federal government for joint operations, represent constructive accountability but also expose limits on what a state governor can achieve against a federal-tier insurgency. On integrity, the auditor-general's 2020 report found N414 million in undocumented expenditures across five ministries; Zulum queried the officials and set up a Public Procurement Board, which mitigates but does not fully resolve the audit findings. A February 2025 arrest of an opposition politician over a billboard was criticised by human rights lawyers as an abuse of the security apparatus. No EFCC or ICPC cases have been filed against Zulum personally. The overall record is above average for a conflict-state governor: visible project delivery, honest public communication about security failures, and an absence of personal financial scandal, weighed against the unresolved security deterioration and legitimate concerns about IDP welfare.