A CRITICAL LOOK AT GOVERNOR HYACINTH ALIA’S 2026 BUDGET
……Between fiscal reality, structural weaknesses, and looming failure points
Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, Monday, 22 December 2025, presented a ₦605 billion 2026 budget to the State House of Assembly. Beneath the overtly confident tone and high percentages, however, lie serious weaknesses in assumptions, revenue projections, execution capacity, and fiscal discipline; the very fault lines that threaten the budget’s credibility and deliverability.
Over-Optimistic Macroeconomic Assumptions
The budget is built on fragile macroeconomic projections: 14.45% inflation and an exchange rate of ₦1,400/$. In a country battling stubborn inflation, volatile food prices, and exchange-rate instability, these assumptions are more hopeful than realistic.
Any upward deviation will inflate recurrent costs, erode capital allocations, and worsen poverty outcomes, particularly in a budget heavily skewed toward rural development, where construction inputs and logistics are highly inflation-sensitive.
The 100% IGR Assumption: A Credibility Gap
The proposal assumes a 100% increase in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) within one fiscal year. This is one of the weakest pillars of the entire budget. Benue remains a largely agrarian, low-income state with limited industrial activity.
While transparency reforms may have improved reporting, the structural drivers of revenue remain unchanged. Alia’s budget has failed to explain where new tax bases will emerge or how largely informal rural livelihoods will suddenly yield taxable surpluses.
If this assumption collapses, as is likely, the deficit will widen, capital projects will stall, and borrowing pressures will intensify. Governor Alia again was silent on the monthly accruals from the federation account (FAAC) which should have formed the bedrock of the budget financing.
Recurrent Spending vs. Development
Despite claims of fiscal restraint, recurrent expenditure will consume 46.4% of the budget, rising by 21.69% year-on-year. This comes amid three months of salary arrears and several months of pensions, which Governor Alia is yet to clear. The assumption that personnel costs will stabilize has ignored salary increments, union pressures, and inflation-driven wage demands. Without a clear, time-bound arrears clearance plan, any revenue growth will be absorbed by survival spending, leaving little room for development.
Capital Ambition Without Execution Capacity
A ₦342.4 billion capital budget appears bold, but the administration’s execution history raises serious concerns. Capital commitments have expanded without evidence of faster procurement, better project sequencing, or improved contractor financing. The pledge to complete 75% of ongoing projects before initiating new ones remains a political assurance unsupported by a concrete implementation framework.
Rural Development: Spending Without Systems
While over 30% of capital expenditure is allocated to rural roads, water, power, and agriculture, the budget offers little clarity on delivery mechanisms. Large allocations without institutional capacity, monitoring systems, or implementation timelines risk becoming another cycle of abandoned or poorly executed projects.
Livelihood Programs: Scale Over Substance
The plan to reach 1,000 beneficiaries in each of Benue’s 276 wards raises serious administrative red flags. The Alia government has yet to demonstrate the capacity to manage, monitor, and audit support at this scale. Past interventions point to political capture, inflated beneficiary lists, and leakages disguised as empowerment.
Agriculture Without Market Security
The budget emphasizes input subsidies but neglects storage infrastructure, price stabilization, and off-taker arrangements. Without guaranteed markets, increased production may simply depress prices, leaving farmers poorer. This will be a contradiction of the budget’s stated poverty-reduction goals.
Digital Spending as Symbolism
Only 2.11% of capital votes is allocated to digital infrastructure. This is insufficient to drive rural e-commerce or meaningfully support e-health and e-education. Digital transformation requires sustained, multi-year investment, not token allocations.
Speculative Mining and Oil Revenues
Projected revenues from mining amounting to N3.5 billion annually with 3% of IGR by 2026, and possible oil exploration gains are highly speculative. Anchoring fiscal projections on undeveloped extractive activities introduces significant downside risk. Since coming on board, the Alia administration has not demonstrated capacity to explore opportunities in the mining sector. Projecting a N3.5 billion annual revenue from the sector is therefore not only diversionary but also unrealistic.
Debt Reality Behind the Rhetoric
The 2026 Benue budget is openly deficit-financed, seeking borrowing approval without a clear, project-linked loan framework. With the recent borrowing of N100 billion, further loans without strict conditionalities will risk funding consumption rather than productivity, deepening Benue’s debt burden.
In sum, Governor Alia’s 2026 budget is merely ambitious in numbers but fragile in structure. It leans heavily on unrealistic assumptions, speculative revenues, and borrowing, while underestimating execution constraints and recurrent pressures.
Without a radical shift towards realism, discipline, and institutional capacity, the budget risks becoming another packaged document that will fail at delivery, deepen the state debt burden, delay development, and widen the gap between promise and performance.
Written by The Analyst
