Enugu 2026 Budget: A Bubble Built on Fictional Revenues
Chief Ude Livinus Governor Peter Mbah’s signing of a ₦1.62 trillion 2026 budget, anchored on a projected ₦870 billion Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), raises serious questions of credibility, fiscal honesty, and governance realism. This is a state that is currently owing over ₦36 billion in pensions and gratuities and about ₦40 billion to contractors. Yet, the same government now claims that revenue operatives at Lion Building “generated” ₦400 billion by the end of 2025 and can magically scale that figure to ₦870 billion in 2026. To put this claim in perspective, the Governor further asserted that Enugu State is now generating ₦2.5 billion daily. This is not economic transformation; it is statistical fantasy. Enugu residents have effectively become the latest minting press, expected to conjure revenues that do not exist in the real economy. There is no corresponding industrial base, no manufacturing boom, no export surge, no disclosed tax-base expansion to justify such exponential g...