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The numbers dropped today and they are impossible to ignore: Benue State has recorded over 1,000% growth in capital expenditure between 2020 and 2024, leaping from ₦8.4 billion to ₦98 billion, placing the state second only to one other in the entire country.
The official statement from Government House didn’t mince words: this is “The Alia Effect.”
In a country where many states still struggle to pay salaries, talk less of touching capital projects, a thousand-percent jump is the kind of statistic that makes accountants rub their eyes twice. Roads that were death traps two years ago now carry fresh asphalt. Streetlights that never worked are glowing again in Makurdi, Gboko, and Otukpo. Underpasses that used to flood at the first rain are being replaced with proper drainage. Rural health centres are getting solar power and drugs for the first time in years.
The graphic attached to the post shows a bar chart that looks almost comical; every other state is crawling along the baseline while Benue’s column shoots toward the ceiling like it’s trying to escape the page.
Of course, critics will quickly point out that starting from a very low base makes big percentage jumps easier, and that execution quality still varies from local government to local government. Fair. But even the harshest critics have to admit one thing: things are moving. Cranes are up. Bulldozers are growling. Payroll for contractors is clearing faster than it has in over a decade.
When Governor Alia took over in 2023, the state’s capital implementation rate was in single digits. Today the same administration is boasting numbers that put Benue in the top two nationally. That is not propaganda; that is Budget Office data.
For a state that has spent the better part of fifteen years burying its youths to herdsmen attacks and watching its best brains flee to Abuja and Lagos, seeing tar spreading on the road to Wannune or a new classroom block rising in Adikpo is more than development; it feels like evidence that someone finally remembered we exist.
The hashtags say it all: #BenueRising #AliaReforms #StateofStates2025.
Whether the momentum survives the 2027 campaigns is another conversation. For now, though, the excavators are roaring, the numbers are real, and for the first time in a long while Benue people have something concrete to point at when they say “at least something is happening.”
Keep the receipts, Your Excellency. The people are watching, and this time they’re actually seeing results.
