Benue: Between Deficit Treasury And Politics Of Borrowing

                                                           In this report, SOLOMON AYADO dissects the evolution of Benue State,
from a once promising food basket of the nation to a state of empty treasury where the politics of borrowing spree is the game.

The situation in the Benue State is pathetic; the already poverty stricken state in the North Central zone called the food basket of the nation is now living in its past glory. There seem to be no hope that the Benue will soon be out from the financial mud it had been enmeshed in.

Indigenes of the state have lamented bitterly that, with the current financial crisis in the state, it would be difficult time for any government, particularly the present ‘change’ administration to record remarkable achievements. They worry about not seeing any hope for the younger generation and the ones yet unborn.

The thinking is that the sustainability of democracy depends on the earnest expending of resources, and for a state to foster any politically recognized progress, the polity must not suffer the kind of lack Benue suffers currently in terms of funds. At the moment, the cost of even running the state government has stretched its borrowing spree to the limit.

But a cursory look at the politics of the state and how it got to this sorry state of operating not just an empty but also a deficit treasury would reveal that it is the result of bad governance and wasteful spending of past administrations. Some analysts have blamed the past administrations of former governors George Akume and Gbariel Suswam for the current economic recession in the state. They said these two successive past regimes dug a deep and buried the state financially.

According to them, since the return of democracy in 1999 the administrations of Akume and Suswam got engaged in high level financial recklessness, outright corruption and sordid misappropriation of funds, without properly devising measures of raising the revenue generation bar.Over time, political leaders in the state seemingly became too consumed by their self seeking attitude of personal aggrandizement which made them become less responsive to the plight of the people. They involved themselves in shoddy.

The state house of assembly lacked the rectitude and impulse to checkmate the excesses and corrupt practices in the executive arm of government. This, pundits say, is one of the many reasons why Benue State is currently running its government on borrowed resources, without an envisaged measure of internal revenue generation to cover these financial gaps.

Retrospectively, since the inception of the Akume administration, several allegations of fund diversion, sale of government property and general financial recklessness were adduced. Pundits have argued that there was no way issues of financial crisis in the state would be raised without mentioning the Akume tenure. According to them, he held sway as governor at the time democratic rule returned, after several years of military misrule. As such, they said he cannot, be exonerated from the state’s treasury debacle.

Yet, there is another school of thought that hold strongly that although the past administration of Akume enhanced development, it also laid a faulty foundation in terms of handling the finances of the state. Pundits in this category believe strongly that the immediate past administration of Suswam aggravated the logjam and further threw the state into a total financial mess.

When Governor Samuel Ortom of the All Progressives Congress (APC) took over the mantle of leadership of the richly endowed agricultural state, he declared that he was “not just inheriting an empty treasury, but that he was presiding over not just an empty but A deficit treasury.” According to him, the financial profile of the state showed that it accrued a huge left over of debts and unpaid salaries and contractual arrears, as well as pension allowances and gratuities.

It became imperative for the governor to quickly constitute two judicial commissions of inquiry to probe the administration of former governor Suswam. Before then, the governor had set up a financial and asset verification committee headed by former head of service, Mike Iordye and the committee after thorough investigations revealed the debt profile of the state. The state was owing to the tune of over N150 billion.

This, according to analysts, is a very outrageous debt profile. The blamed it on the alleged financial recklessness of the immediate past administration of Suswam on one hand, and an alleged bad precedence of former governor Akume administration on the other.

But just before the judicial commissions of inquiry as constituted by Ortom was completing its assigned duties of digging into facts about the financial status of the state between 2007 and 2015, Suswam quickly approached the court, praying it to stop them from probing him. He claimed that, while the probe panel was maliciously composed of only APC members, there was no way he could secure justice in such a sensitive panel. He however, insisted he only left a debt profile of N9.3 billion.

Suswam argued that his taking to borrowing was to offset salaries and build infrastructure for the state. “There is no way that I would have borrowed N130 billion or N150 billion as being bandied because at different times, the figures of debt profile have been bandied but throughout my eight years, I borrowed N13 billion through a bond and the second one was N4.5 billion and all together making N 17.5 and the records are there. It is not something that was done under the carpet”, he said.

Again, when Governor Ortom assumed office, he towed the same line by quickly proceeding on a borrowing spree. According to him, the state’s treasury was left empty and in deficit, and there was no way he could start government without any financial augmentation. For a start, he borrowed N10 billion from the capital market to ensure his government takes immediately after that, he secured another loan of N5b and later entered into the bailout agreement with the federal government to secure a loan of N28b. At the moment, the governor has approached the state house of assembly to take another loan of N10 billion to start up practical projects and the loan is being processed.

The implication is that if a government would kick-start by borrowing to run its affairs and to execute practical projects, it means that such a state would grapple to meet the yearnings of the people without resources in the treasury. It would at same time proceed with payment of the loans which were granted by the financial market with varied interest rates. Somehow, it would translate that the government cannot run smoothly, if at all it could afford to execute any tangible projects that would be of benefit to the generality of the people.

Along the line, there came a dwindling of federal allocation accruing to the state. The state government is seriously faced with a serious challenge of paying its workers salaries, among other financial obligations. But the despondency of the political system tends to be adding salt to injury. It doesn’t really seem to be fashioning out ways to ameliorate the situation. It is even worsened by the fact that there is no request for valid contributions from relevant stakeholders on how the state would go out of the financial mess.

The opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the state has accused the governing APC of indulging in a borrowing spree of over N43b in barely six months into the administration. The party said this is more than the amount the its government borrowed when it was on the saddle for eight years.

But the APC has faulted the claim, saying PDP’s outburst is shameless, if not hysteric because Ortom only borrowed to address the total collapse and alleged failure of the PDP government led by Suswam. APC said the callous monstrosity and thievery of public funds had become the obscene feature of PDP enterprise in criminalizing governance in Benue state.

At the moment, Governor Ortom is confronted with an empty and deficit treasury. But it is expected that he should run responsive government of adressing the challenges of the people. He must source for resources be it in the capital market and or from individual money bags. In doing this, it is most suitable that political stakeholders should unite, shun politics of party sentiment. Rather than distractions, they should support the Ortom administration to succeed.

Only in one accord can good governance be delivered to the less privileged.