HOW THE “GRASSROOTS ARE NOT BEING WATERED” ARGUMENT AGAINST ABIA COLLAPSES UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THE FACTS
There is nothing wrong with interrogating a government. Indeed, democracy demands that governments be questioned relentlessly. But criticism loses its moral force when figures are mixed up, expenditure categories are misrepresented, achievements are deliberately omitted and unresolved policy questions are converted into sweeping declarations of failure. That is the fundamental problem with the intervention by Obinna Oriaku, Ekwedike.
The first warning sign appears in the very fiscal premise upon which much of the argument is built. Nigeria did not share ₦3.7 trillion through FAAC for July 2026. The officially reported distributable FAAC revenue for July 2026 was ₦3.007 trillion. The ₦3.7 trillion figure referred to gross statutory revenue collected in June 2026, before deductions and distribution. The distinction is elementary but crucial. The Office of the Accountant-General figures, independently reported by The Punch and The Guardian, are unambiguous on this point. If we are going to interrogate how public money reaches the grassroots, then the arithmetic must first be correct.
“The Punch: FAAC distribution for July 2026” (https://reference-url-citation.invalid/1)
The second major assertion—that Abia has simply refused to implement the ₦70,000 national minimum wage—is equally difficult to sustain as a blanket statement. Abia began implementing the new wage in October 2024. There were subsequently complaints about consequential adjustments affecting workers on Grades 8–17, and those discrepancies became the subject of negotiations between the state and organised labour. In February 2025, the Abia Government and organised labour formally signed the corrected salary structure. More importantly, the Abia NLC chairman himself publicly acknowledged in May 2026 that the Otti administration had implemented the ₦70,000 minimum wage. That does not mean every category of worker or every agency has no grievance. It means that saying simply that “Abia has not implemented the ₦70,000 minimum wage” erases an established and documented reality.
“Federal Ministry of Information: Abia and labour sign corrected minimum-wage structure” (https://reference-url-citation.invalid/3)
There was, admittedly, a separate and serious problem concerning some teachers under local-government employment. In July 2025, the Nigeria Union of Teachers listed Abia among states where some teachers had yet to receive the new wage. That is precisely why responsible criticism should identify the affected employment category instead of converting a sector-specific implementation problem into the claim that the entire Abia civil service was still being paid below the national minimum wage.
The attempt to portray Abia as a fiscal basket case is even harder to reconcile with independent evidence. BudgIT—not the Abia Government—ranked Abia fourth among the states assessed in its 2025 State of States fiscal sustainability ranking, with a score of 51 per cent. Only Anambra, Lagos and Kwara ranked higher. The same BudgIT analysis established that capital expenditure accounted for 77.05 per cent of Abia’s 2024 expenditure, amounting to about ₦215.46 billion. This does not prove perfection; no serious analyst would claim that it does. It does, however, make nonsense of any portrait of a government doing virtually nothing beyond propaganda while public resources disappear without corresponding capital investment.
“BudgIT: 2025 State of States ranking” (https://reference-url-citation.invalid/6)
The agricultural argument similarly requires far more care than the article gives it. One can legitimately argue that Abia should spend much more on agriculture. In fact, that is a debate worth having. But “Abia has no agricultural policy” is contradicted by actual programmes. On 10 July 2026, the state formally launched a farmers’ support programme targeting more than 18,000 farmers across all 17 local government areas, following farmer registration and verification and involving agricultural inputs and logistics support. Whatever judgment one makes about the adequacy of the programme, a programme covering 18,000 verified farmers across the state cannot simultaneously be described honestly as the complete absence of agricultural intervention.
“Abia Government: Farmers Support Programme covering more than 18,000 farmers” (https://reference-url-citation.invalid/8)
There is an even more revealing problem with the expenditure comparison between agriculture and “orientation”. Abia’s published 2025 fourth-quarter Budget Performance Report shows that expenditure classified under the broad programme heading “Societal Re-orientation” is substantially larger than agriculture. That is a legitimate matter for citizens to examine. But the programme classification is not automatically synonymous with expenditure by the Abia State Orientation Agency alone, much less proof that billions were spent employing social-media attackers. The same report shows total 2025 agriculture programme expenditure of approximately ₦1.95 billion, including personnel and capital expenditure. Turning an accounting programme classification into an assertion that a particular agency consumed the whole amount is not a safe inference unless the underlying administrative schedules prove it.
The allegation that four people were recruited in each of 184 wards and paid ₦100,000 each “just to counter” criticism of the government is even more serious. Such a charge requires payroll records, appointment letters, appropriation lines or another verifiable documentary trail. None accompanied the argument. The same applies to the sensational claim that individual media aides “control about ₦25 million each monthly”. Where are the warrants? Where are the payment schedules? Where are the audited accounts? In public-finance criticism, allegation is not evidence. Repeating a figure loudly does not transform it into an audited fact.
Transportation provides another example of selective narration. The criticism acknowledges the electric buses and then asks what they have achieved. Fair question. But it leaves out the scale and chronology. Twenty electric buses entered the Abia Green Shuttle fleet in December 2025 and another 20 were inaugurated on 7 August 2026, taking the operational rollout to 40 buses. Channels Television independently reported the second deployment. This is not merely a press statement about buses that may arrive someday; buses have actually been commissioned and placed into the transport programme.
“Channels Television: Abia inaugurates 20 additional electric buses” (https://reference-url-citation.invalid/11)
The Umuahia Central Bus Terminal is similarly dismissed almost as decoration. Yet the terminal was commissioned on 27 May 2026, with capacity for more than 340 buses, as part of an attempt to consolidate fragmented motor parks into an organised transport system. Citizens can debate its cost, utilisation, location or economic return. What cannot reasonably be done is pretend that a transport terminal, charging infrastructure and a growing public electric-bus fleet constitute no transportation policy at all.
On pensions and gratuities, however, critics do raise a genuine issue, and the Abia Government should not be exonerated from answering it merely because other parts of the argument are defective. Pensioners publicly disputed the 2024 Memorandum of Agreement concerning inherited arrears and gratuities. The Punch and THISDAY documented those objections. Pensioners argued that they had not authorised the surrender of portions of their entitlements. That dispute is real and deserves transparent resolution.
But here again, the current position has to be reported completely. On 25 August 2026, the Abia Government announced commencement of a programme to clear ₦61.8 billion in verified outstanding gratuities, covering state and local-government retirees and liabilities extending back to 2001, with final clearance targeted for 2031. One may reasonably argue that 2031 is too distant. One may demand faster payment. But “they remembered pensioners after almost four years” overlooks both the monthly pension payments already occurring and earlier pension-arrears interventions, while confusing inherited liabilities with obligations created entirely by the present administration.
“The Guardian: Abia’s ₦61.8bn gratuity-clearance programme” (https://reference-url-citation.invalid/15)
There is also an important contradiction in trying simultaneously to argue that President Bola Tinubu deserves credit for increased FAAC revenues but that state governments alone must carry responsibility for every household consequence of national macroeconomic reforms. Economic responsibility does not work that way. Subsidy removal, exchange-rate liberalisation, monetary tightening, inflation, food prices, transport costs and state-level fiscal choices interact. The Federal Government cannot be blamed for everything occurring in Abia; equally, increased FAAC receipts cannot absolve Abuja from the distributional consequences of federal policy. Serious economics demands that responsibilities be separated rather than reassigned according to political convenience.
Indeed, the same FAAC windfall being invoked against Abia is a national phenomenon. BudgIT reported that gross FAAC transfers to states rose dramatically, and its analysis shows states becoming beneficiaries of much larger federal transfers following the subsidy-removal era. The proper question therefore is not merely, “How much FAAC did Abia receive?” It is: how does Abia compare with other states in converting its total revenues into infrastructure, human capital, services, reserves and sustainable fiscal outcomes? On that more rigorous measure, BudgIT’s independent 2025 assessment places Abia fourth nationally, not at the bottom.
And therein lies the great weakness of the original thesis. One cannot claim to be exposing the “hidden curves” while leaving out inconvenient independent evidence. One cannot cite government budget documents when a line appears damaging and ignore the same documents when they reveal substantial capital expenditure. One cannot invoke organised labour on wages but ignore organised labour when its leadership confirms implementation. One cannot describe 40 electric buses as merely media theatre without acknowledging that independent national television reported their commissioning. One cannot say agriculture is nonexistent when an 18,000-farmer support programme exists. And one certainly cannot transform allegations concerning social-media personnel and monthly media allocations into established facts without documentary evidence.
Abia has problems. Pensioners deserve faster relief. Agricultural spending deserves continuous scrutiny. Every category of worker should receive the remuneration lawfully due to it. The government must demonstrate that expensive infrastructure produces measurable welfare gains. Those are legitimate demands of citizenship.
But criticism must remain criticism—not arithmetic by convenience.
If the conversation is genuinely about whether resources are reaching the grassroots, the evidence paints a more complicated picture than the one presented by Ekwedike. Abia is investing heavily in capital projects; BudgIT independently places it among Nigeria’s strongest states fiscally; the ₦70,000 minimum wage has been implemented in the mainstream civil service following corrections agreed with labour; a statewide agricultural-support programme is running; a 40-bus electric public-transport fleet has been deployed; a major transport terminal has been commissioned; and a ₦61.8 billion inherited-gratuity clearance programme has commenced.
Challenge the government where it fails. Demand explanations where figures do not add up. Insist that pensioners receive their entitlements faster. But do not manufacture a picture of total failure by mixing gross revenue with distributable FAAC, presenting disputed allegations as audited expenditure, suppressing independent rankings and omitting programmes that contradict the thesis.
Abians deserve opposition. They also deserve truthful opposition.
And the truth, inconvenient as it may be to every political camp, must survive the figures.
