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Amid the blood and sorrow that have dominated Benue headlines this week, something quietly hopeful happened yesterday at the Conference Hall of Economic Planning in Makurdi: the management of the newly created University of Agriculture, Science and Technology Ihugh (UAST) presented its 2026 budget proposal, and Governor Hyacinth Alia received the kind of loud, sustained applause that rarely comes from civil servants and academics.
Leading the praise was the governor’s own Chief of Staff, Barr. Moses Atagher, who did not mince words. He hailed Fr. Alia’s “passion and determination” for pushing the kind of aggressive infrastructural development that has turned what was once a mere campaign promise into a fully functional take-off site in record time.
Atagher reminded everyone present that establishing a full-fledged university dedicated to agriculture and technology was one of the loudest items on Alia’s manifesto, especially for a state whose young people have borne the brunt of insecurity and unemployment. Less than three years in, the institution already has a management team, a proposed budget, and visible work going on at the permanent site in Ihugh.
The former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice didn’t stop there. He described the 2026 budget as “realistic and growth-oriented,” called on Benue people everywhere to invest in the university, and urged sustained support for the Alia administration “till 2031 and beyond.”
For a government that has spent the week burying farmers and denying defection rumours, this was a badly needed moment in the sun. The applause inside that hall was not the rented kind; it came from lecturers, administrators, and stakeholders who can already see lecture halls rising from the ground.
In a state where too many projects die at the foundation-laying stage, the speed with which UAST Ihugh is moving has become one of the clearest evidences that some of the promises made in 2023 are actually being kept.
Yesterday wasn’t about politics. It was about a governor being told, in public and on record, that at least one big thing is working. And for once, nobody in the room disagreed.
