By Leonard Karshima Shilgba
The latest social media campaign concerning alleged “Paris Club refunds” to the Benue State Government under Governor Hyacinth Alia illustrates how easily complex public finance issues can be distorted by half-truths.
Every serious discussion must begin by separating three entirely different issues:
1. the original Paris Club debt owed by Nigeria;
2. the refunds paid by the Federal Government to states for excess deductions from Federation Account allocations; and
3. the numerous consultancy claims, court cases, arbitration proceedings, and settlement disputes that continued long after the refunds themselves had substantially been completed.
Historically, the refunds to states were largely disbursed between 2016 and 2019 (more than a decade after Nigeria exited the Paris Club debt trap!). That much is not in dispute.
However, it is intellectually careless to conclude from that fact alone that every Paris Club-related matter ended in March 2019. It did not.
The consultancy disputes continued. Court cases continued. Arbitration proceedings continued. Proposed deductions from state allocations generated fresh disputes years later. Successive Federal Governments continued handling matters arising from the Paris Club refund program.
Consequently, anyone who says every Paris Club-related issue “ended” in 2019 is simplifying a far more complicated legal and fiscal history.
Conversely, anyone alleging that Governor Hyacinth Alia received a fresh Paris Club refund also carries a burden of proof. Such a claim cannot rest on insinuations, recycled documents, or suggestive social media posts. It must be supported by verifiable evidence showing the approving authority, the date of payment, the amount received, and the accounting treatment of the funds.
Public discourse should not descend into the manufacture of suspicion through selective presentation of facts.
This is precisely why I publicly proposed a June 12 discourse on “Benue Fiscal Management in the Past Decade.” The invitation was extended openly, including to Dr. Terver Akase. Unfortunately, that invitation was ignored. Yet, rather than engage in evidence-based public conversation, we continue to witness episodic social media insinuations that generate more heat than light.
Benue deserves something better.
If there is evidence that any administration mismanaged public funds, let the evidence be produced and subjected to rigorous scrutiny. If a Benue State Commission of Inquiry, after a year-long combination of meticulous review of financial documents, study of submissions, and public hearings, has indicted an administration or some of its officials and recommended that public funds be recovered from “culpable officials,” it would be disingenuous and an attempt at red herrings for any officials of that administration, along with their sympathetic social media combatants, to attempt to dodge the central accountability issues by exhuming a corpse that themselves had buried in a shallow grave during their reign.
If there is no evidence of any public claims about a Paris Club refund to Governor Alia’s Administration, then intellectual honesty demands restraint. By the way, after receiving from the social media claimants evidence of the approving authority, the amounts paid, and the date(s) of payments, those claimants should indicate other Nigerian states that received similar “Paris Club refunds” during President Tinubu’s Administration. And if they cannot name any state other than Benue State, the natural and rational follow-up question is: why *only* Benue State?
Fiscal accountability cannot be built on cryptic insinuations. It must rest on audited accounts, official records, appropriation documents, FAAC reports, payment schedules, and verifiable financial evidence.
Those genuinely interested in transparency should welcome informed public debate instead of replacing it with innuendo.
Ultimately, the issue is larger than one administration or one spokesperson. It is about cultivating a political culture where facts prevail over propaganda, documentation over conjecture, and reason over partisan passions.
© Shilgba
