By Peter Awunah, PhD
Yesterday, I came across a shocking report in Daily Trust newspaper which read that 21 states of the federation are seeking loans amounting to N1.65 trillion to fund their 2024 budget deficits despite the increase in the allocations they have received from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) in the last one year!
Among the 21 states was Benue, currently led by Governor Hyacinth Alia. Benue State is seeking a loan of N34.69 billion! Should the Alia government get the loan, the volume of loans taken by his administration in just one year will stand at N167.69 billion! How do you explain and justify that!
Let me refresh your memory a little bit. Before May 29, 2023 when President Bola Tinubu announced the removal of fuel subsidy, my findings at the Benue State Ministry of Finance showed that the state was receiving an average of N3.5 billion or at most N4.5 billion as federal allocations with a monthly wage bill of about N3.2 billion including overhead payments and pensions. Today, with the subsidy payments gone, Benue’s monthly share of federal allocations has risen to N11 billion and sometimes N12 billion.
The 23 local governments of the state which before subsidy removal were getting N3.5 billion monthly now receive a minimum of N9 billion.
Between May 2023 and August 2024, Benue State has received well over N200 billion from the federation’s account for state and local governments. This is an addition to several interventions by the Federal Government in the form of palliatives and other monetary support initiatives of the Tinubu administration.
That puts the total figure that the Alia administration has received (including the loans) in the region of N380 billion within just a year and three months.
But what is shocking is that there is nothing commensurate on ground to justify the significantly improved financial fortunes of the state. Instead, Governor Alia and his cabinet are putting a heavier financial burden on the state with more loans.
Civil servants have been demanding that the Alia administration should fulfill its promise to clear the arrears of their salaries, but the man has refused to give any response to their demands.
I wonder what he has done with such a high volume of money. Not even a culvert has been constructed in any of the 23 local government areas of the state. In Makurdi, he is constructing 15 very short streets at a whopping cost of N9 billion with none of the streets measuring up to a kilometer.
Governor Alia recently announced that his government was taking a loan of N93 billion for what the governor claimed to be “digitalization of governance”. This amount was the second in just two months that the Alia administration had taken a multi billion loan.
The state government had earlier announced that it had secured a €25 million (N40.4 billion) loan from the European Investment Bank, for “road construction”. The latest loan of N34.69 billion brings the total loans to N167.69 billion! And the governor is surely not done yet! He will take more loans!
Curiously, Governor Alia does not give any breakdown of how much he is receiving and what he is doing with the funds. Critics of his administration have challenged him several times to come clean on the issue of appropriation of state resources, but he is yet to take up the challenge.
Governor Alia and his team are yet to tell Benue people the repayment plan for the debts he is plunging the state into.
Dr Awunah writes from Durumi, Abuja.
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