An Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management scholar, Dr. Pillars Msugh Pila, has challenged the Benue State Government to rethink its approach to revenue generation, arguing that the pathway to sustainable taxation lies in growing businesses and creating wealth rather than placing heavier burdens on people struggling to survive. He stated this on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
Pila said Benue could not build a prosperous economy by continually looking to micro-businesses, petty traders, farmers and other vulnerable economic actors as convenient sources of revenue. He argued that the state possesses enormous economic potential but has yet to fully translate its abundant resources into local wealth creation. According to him, Benue’s fertile agricultural land, large agricultural output, solid minerals and other raw materials provide the foundation for a productive economy capable of generating jobs, investment and sustainable government revenue. However, he said the state continues to lose significant economic value because much of what it produces is transported elsewhere in raw form, where processing, manufacturing, packaging and marketing take place. “The real question is, what are we doing with what we produce?” he asked.
Pila maintained that Benue should move beyond the production of raw materials and deliberately develop industries and businesses capable of processing those resources within the state. He said such a shift would enable farmers, entrepreneurs and investors to capture more value while creating employment and expanding the state’s tax base organically. He questioned the wisdom of placing additional revenue demands on a young entrepreneur whose business was barely surviving, a farmer selling unprocessed produce or an elderly trader operating on a small scale. “The entrepreneurial question should be different: how do we make these people more productive, help their businesses grow and create more taxable economic activity?” he said.
Pila explained that economic growth itself creates opportunities for increased government revenue. According to him, an entrepreneur whose annual turnover rises from N500,000 to N3 million represents an expansion of economic activity. Likewise, farmers who move from selling raw crops to processing, packaging and branding their products create additional value and potentially broaden the tax base. “If Benue’s agricultural and mineral resources begin feeding factories within the state, new enterprises, jobs, incomes and taxable activities emerge,” he said.
The scholar said his argument was not against taxation, stressing that government requires revenue to provide infrastructure and public services. Rather, he said the critical issue was the philosophy guiding revenue generation. “Do we want to tax a small and struggling economy harder, or do we want to grow the economy so substantially that taxation becomes a consequence of prosperity rather than a burden on poverty?” he asked. He urged the state government to pursue an economic strategy built around production, processing, value addition, industrialisation and enterprise creation, saying these were critical to transforming Benue from a supplier of raw materials into a competitive production hub.
Pila also called for greater involvement of entrepreneurship and innovation experts in the state’s economic policy architecture. He said economic development was not solely about balancing public finances, but also about creating the conditions in which entrepreneurs could identify opportunities, establish businesses, commercialise innovations and transform local resources into products and wealth. He noted that Governor Hyacinth Alia had publicly spoken about the need to convert Benue’s economic potential into opportunities, investments, productive activities, jobs and incomes. Pila, however, urged all revenue-generating institutions in the state to ensure their activities complemented rather than undermined that objective. He said a growing productive sector would ultimately provide government with a more sustainable source of revenue than repeatedly increasing the burden on an already constrained economic base. “We need more entrepreneurs, more processors, more manufacturers, more investors and more value-adding businesses not merely more tax collectors,” he said.
Pila described his intervention as a professional contribution to the state’s economic conversation, saying he was offering the advice not as an opponent of government but as an academic interested in entrepreneurship and innovation-driven development. “I believe that Benue can move from being merely a producer of raw materials to becoming a creator of wealth from those resources,” he said.
