Gaps in Governor Alia’s first Budget Speech, By Nathaniel Ikyur

Reverend Fr. Hyacinth Alia rode from the pulpit to political leadership as the 6th democratically elected Governor of Benue State with this populism that he symbolises a divine mandate. The campaign was that he has powers to deliver the state from ‘bad governance.’ Of course he was famed to have ‘delivered’ many who were said to have been oppressed by the devil during his healing masses. For that reason, his promoters made a huge political capital out of this. Whether those claims for healing and deliverance were true or not, it sure made the people believe and they qeued behind him. The problem, unlike the Prophets of old, and even now however was, and still remains that, no one has come out to testify if he/she was healed or delivered from the possesive powers of the devil where he once held sway as Parish Priest. But that is a debate for another day.

I have observed that Governor Alia is finding it difficult to detach from the past that he so much criticised and stay focused so as to give the people of Benue State what he promised. It is sad that the governor has bee busy singing Ortom this and Ortom that. This is what took a greater percentage of the Governor’s 58-paragraph 2024 budget.

For instance, the Governor’s perception on the performance of the Budget 2023 which was prepared by the Ortom administration and handed over to him was sufficiently faulty.

For the avoidance of doubt, in-year budget revisions are a normal routine, typically warranted by changes in the underlying assumptions behind the initial budgetary estimates. For the new administration of Governor Alia, the most important of the changes were an unprecedented revenue windfall following the removal of petroleum subsidies even as he arbitrarily sacked thousands of legitimately employed civil servants and teachers. These developments left the current APC administration in the State with a fortune to spend. They have gone ahead to spend it without any safeguards as provided in public financial management regulations.

In case many are not aware, the budget revision carried out by the current government was largely intended to retroactively cover these irregular and wild expenditures, not to correct any so-called anomalies in the budget and budget performance of the Ortom administration.

Meanwhile, let the current administration of Governor Alia tell us, in what world does a 2023 budget performance of 21.7% as at first quarter of 2023 look strange or poor when that performance suggests the Ortom administration was on track for a 86.8% budget performance over the course of the year? Let it be known to everyone that we will all be here to rejoice with the Alia administration if his N225b proposed budget exceeds that performance.

Secondly and most tragically are Governor Alia’s economic assumptions in the 2024 budget as outlined by his economic team. Let’s take a look at some of these strange assumptions in the 2024 budget, including many macroeconomic assumptions that are at variance with the projections of the Federal Government of Nigeria which is responsible for macroeconomic parameters.

For instance, Governor Alia benchmarks oil price at $65 per barrel and oil production at 1.6m barrels per day when the Federal Government projects $78 per barrel and 1.78m barrels a day. Again, Governor Alia also assumes inflation at 20% and GDP growth at 3.2 per cent where the FGN projects inflation at 21.4 percent and growth at 3.76 percent. The question one is forced to ask is this: Is Governor Alia running a parallel economy? Or are his budget assumptions willfully designed to mislead? Or perhaps, will it right to say that these assumptions reflect his naive misunderstanding of the relationship between the macroeconomic realities anticipated by the Federal Government which manages the national economy? Or is it that his economic team is not thinking enough? In any case what faith can we have in a budget premised on such dodgy assumptions?

Let us also look at the Revenue vs Capital Expenditure Ratios as exhibited by the Ortom administration. Truth be told, without sacking thousands of legitimately employed staff, former Governor Ortom’s administration constructed more kilometers of roads across Benue than any other administration, including the longest urban roads ever in the state capital. These are evidently available.

Furthermore, the Ortom administration delivered thousands of school infrastructure projects and dozens of health infrastructure and equipment projects, including a first-of-its-kind Infectious Diseases Centre and a first-of-its-kind UNICEF-approved cold room for the vaccine cold chain. Similarly, dozens of rural electrification projects were executed. This also includes the over 1000 rural water projects, a first-of-its-kind N6.5billion Benue Geospatial Information System (BENGIS) land digitisation project that has been fully completed, furnished and equipped with high-tech state of the art facilities. Other components of BENGIS includes aerial survey and mapping of the entire state with high resolution orthophotos, conversion of analog map plans and files to digital system. These among many others.

Alia was quick to paint the Ortom administration in bad light for non performance in his lengthy budget presentation but has forgotten that it is the Ortom government that built magnificent palaces for the Tor Tiv and Och’Idoma in Gboko and Otukpo respectively. Ortom also established a new television station, renovated dilapitated public buildings, procured and distributed tractors and other agricultural inputs. It is the Ortom administration that paid and supervised infrastructural support at the military airport in Makurdi for resumption of air flights in and out of Makurdi, and many more.

In all of these, the Ortom administration never had even close to half of N225 billion to spend in any year. The little that was available could barely cover recurrent expenditure, yet the Administration never sacked thousands of staff just to claim it could pay salaries.

Indeed, based on what he did on the ground in terms of capital projects with the little resources available, Gov Ortom would have never needed to sack thousands of civil servants and teachers before making audio promises about reducing the recurrent expenditure percentage of the budget in favour of capital expenditure. In any case, budgets are not judged on promises made in budget speeches, they are judged on deliverance on the ground.

Governor Alia has not faced any of the unprecedented challenges faced by former Governor Ortom. The immediate past Governor had to deal with the debilitating socio-economic challenges influenced by worse economic recessions. This included the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and heavy security costs of a prolonged siege by terrorist herdsmen which Governor Alia mocked in his speech. The resultant herdsmen fallout brought an IDP crisis that dislocated millions of people from their ancestral homes with a hostile Federal Government administration that withheld monies due to the State simply because Ortom refused to dance to the whims of the oligarchy. I can go on and on.

We pray that Governor Alia and his administration does not face any such challenges which the Ortom regime faced but was able to surmount. Because if he does, we are not sure if and how he can rise to meet them, as his budget speech is rather too long on denouncing Ortom’s administration and sadly very short on anticipating and mitigating any such risks.

It is also important for Governor Alia to remember Lot’s wife. He cannot claim to be taking us into the future he promised us while still lookng back like Lot’s wife. The Bible says in Luke 9:62 that “whosoever puts his hand in the plough and looking back is not fit for the kingdom.” Mr Governor, please move us forward, that’s why you were voted for. Allow Samuel Ortom rest after his eight turbulent years of service to the state.

Ikyur was the Chief Press Secretary to former Gov Samuel Ortom