By Ibrahim A Jombali
Criticisms , especially when they are objective, are necessary ingredients of development in a democracy. The trouble with some political commentaries is that they begin with a verdict and then go hunting for evidence. Mr Bello Abdullahi’s essay on Kebbi State’s 2025 budget is a textbook example. Presented as a sober fiscal analysis, it is, in reality, an exercise in statistical theatre: long on insinuation, short on understanding, and remarkably reluctant to follow its own evidence to its logical conclusion
His central proposition is that Kebbi’s N580 billion budget somehow represents a puzzle demanding explanation. Yet by the time he finished presenting the figures, he has inadvertently demolished his own case. Political convenience is not a substitute for reality. Political propaganda is also not a reflection of knowledge.
The first weakness lies in the deliberate confusion between a budget and cash in hand. A budget is not a bank account. It is a projection of expected revenues and planned expenditures. Across Nigeria, federal and state governments routinely prepare budgets based on anticipated revenues from FAAC, grants, loans, internally generated revenue, and development financing. No serious analyst measures budget performance merely by comparing the approved budget size to realised revenue and then raising an eyebrow.
If that was the standard, nearly every state government in Nigeria would stand accused.
What Mr Abdullahi describes as a revelation is simply the normal operation of public finance.
More curious is his fixation on the revenue shortfall while carefully avoiding the economic context that produced it. Nigeria’s fiscal environment in 2025 was marked by exchange-rate volatility, inflationary pressures, fluctuating federal transfers, and changing macroeconomic assumptions. Revenue projections made at the beginning of the fiscal year were affected by factors beyond the control of any state government.
The question is not whether projections fell short. The question is how the government responded.
Here, the writer’s argument collapses entirely on his head.
He acknowledges that Kebbi realised over N172 billion from FAAC, achieved more than 70% of its internally generated revenue target, and recorded over 90% performance in transfers from recurrent resources Those are not indicators of fiscal recklessness. They are indicators of a government maintaining operational discipline under difficult conditions.
Indeed, the most astonishing aspect of the article is that it treats the non-materialisation of N228 billion from the Capital Development Fund as evidence of failure while ignoring what happened next.
A reckless government would have borrowed aggressively, accumulated unsustainable liabilities, or continued spending against imaginary revenue.
Kebbi did none of those things.
Instead, expenditure adjusted downward in line with available resources—the very definition of fiscal prudence.
In other words, the figures Mr. Abdullahi presents as an indictment are actually evidence of responsible financial management.
Then comes the article’s most glaring contradiction.
The author repeatedly asks: “What happened to the money?” Can you see the missing link ?
Yet the same article clearly states that the projected revenue never materialised.
One struggles to see how money that never entered government coffers could have “happened” to anything.
The question is intellectually incoherent and rationally incorrect.
It is rather like asking what happened to the harvest from a farm that never received rainfall.
There is no missing money in the figures he cites. There is only unrealised revenue.
That distinction is elementary. Yet the entire article depends on blurring it.
More revealing still is what the piece omits.
Readers are told that agriculture received over N103 billion in allocations. Works and Transport received nearly N60 billion. Education and health received more than N110 billion combined.
Yet nowhere does the writer provide evidence that projects were abandoned, funds diverted, contracts inflated, or programmes nonexistent.
Instead, he asks questions, many questions. An endless procession of questions.
This is not analysis. It is the oldest trick in political communication: substitute insinuation for evidence and hope readers mistake curiosity for proof. Interstingly, the people are wiser.
If there are roads that were not built, identify them.
If there are schools that were not renovated, name them.
If there are hospitals that exist only on paper, present the evidence.
If there was corruption, document it.
But asking questions after admitting there is no evidence of diversion is not scrutiny; it is speculation dressed as accountability, fueled by desperation to simply criticise the government.
The irony is that the article accidentally highlights the strength of Kebbi’s fiscal management.
Despite significant revenue constraints, the state still recorded nearly N240 billion in expenditure and over N152 billion in capital spending. In a year when many subnational governments struggled to balance developmental ambitions with economic realities, Kebbi maintained investment in critical sectors without abandoning fiscal restraint.
That is not evidence of collapse. On the contrary, it is evidence of adaptation.
The broader lesson for Mr Bello to learn is that budgets should not be judged by the size of the headline figure alone. They should be judged by whether governments respond rationally when economic assumptions change.
Kebbi’s administration adjusted expenditure to revenue realities, avoided fiscal adventurism, and continued funding development priorities. Those are the actions of a government managing uncertainty, not one presiding over financial disorders.
Mr Abdullahi’s article begins with a provocative question: “What happened to the money?”
The documents he cites provide a straightforward answer beyond confusion.
Nothing happened to it.
Most of it never arrived.
The more pertinent question is what the government did with the money that did arrive.
And on the evidence he himself presentrd, the answer is rather less scandalous—and considerably more competent—than his headline would have readers believe.
It is obvious the opposition’s communication strategist is strategically dislocated from the matter he sought desperately and unwittingly wanted to project.
Ibrahim Abubakar Jombali is
Special Adviser on Public Enlightenment and Orientation to the Executive Governor of Kebbi State.
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