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Less than 72 hours after BusinessDaySunday’s special report on possibility of Rivers State joining the status of an ‘ungoverned territory’, the state’s 2026 budget which had caused uproar for not being looked into by the state’s House of Assembly, was debated, approved, and signed into law.

The speed was described by some observers as ‘supersonic’ for the fact that the budget had remained ‘abandoned’ since July 10, 2026, only to gain speed after media uproar.

By Monday, August 31, 2026, the House led by Martin Amaewhule picked it up and began action. By Wednesday, talks were more serious, and by Thursday, September 3, 2026, the budget was transmitted to the Government House for signing.

This, again, has demonstrated the power of public opinion, or what the voice of the masses can do.

Friends again: Gov Sim Fubara in warm handshake with Martin Amaewhule, Speaker, backed by others.

Friends again: Gov Sim Fubara in warm handshake with Martin Amaewhule, Speaker, backed by others.

A Government House statement signed by Onwuka Nzeshi, Chief Press Secretary to Governor Siminalayi Fubara, aroused the people of the state announcing that the governor just signed the budget into law.

He said that Governor Fubara described it as ‘a breath of fresh air’ and the beginning of a new chapter of unity and progress for the state.

Fubara was quoted thus: ‘First of all, we want to thank the Almighty God for making this day a reality. I strongly believe that it is a breath of fresh air and a healthy relationship moving forward.’

The governor was said to have commended the members of the Rivers State House of Assembly particularly, for their diligence and speed in handling the budget at a critical time in the state’s history.

Fubara reaffirmed his administration’s commitment, to the ‘Rivers First’ mantra, and pledged that the 2026 budget will be implemented with the people’s welfare as the central focus.

‘I want to assure you that our intention will still remain the progress and development of our dear state,’ he said.

Fubara, who was said to have had a meeting with Nyesom Wike, minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), when the budget was stranded, publicly commended his once-estranged godfather for facilitating the process that led to the passage of the bill and its eventual signing into law. Probably to show that the impasse was purely a political battle, the governor appreciated his family for their support, noting that governance was a collective responsibility.

Major Jack, majority leader of the Rivers State House of Assembly, who had earlier presented the bill to the Governor for assent, said the lawmakers passed the budget with the best of intentions, believing that it would be implemented accordingly for the benefit of the people of Rivers State.

In a remark shortly after the bill had been signed, Martin Amaewhule, speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, commended Fubara for the various provisions made in the budget, describing them as indications that the Fubara administration was prepared to deliver the dividends of democracy to the people of Rivers State.

It is not clear what the Speaker saw that convinced him that Governor Fubara was truly committed to moving the state forward.

Rumours were rife that the lawmakers placed a demand of N500million for each member. Other sources mentioned demands of an SUV vehicle to each member.

Though no source was ready to confirm these openly spoken demands, it was gathered that the total liability of the budget to the lawmakers was to be N204bn. Many said it was to be for ‘constituency projects’ the banner name under which elephants can be covered.

It is not clear whether the ‘demands’ were agreed or not, but the speed of the passage showed that ‘peace’ had truly been achieved.

What seemed to give signs of political interference in the budget process is the alleged rejection of N6bn subvention to Peter Odili’s PAMO Medical University. Many hailed the rejection but some other pointed out that the tradition was started by the same camp (Wike’s) that was now against it. They also pointed out that the lawmakers would need to track its origin and probably punish the administration that initiated it.

Fubara had however, once backed the subventions to PAMO, saying it was necessary because the state stopped foreign scholarships and resorted to awarding scholarships to 100 indigenes to study medical courses at home (at PAMO).

Financials

FAAC N936bn or N78bn per month

IGR: N437bn or 40bn per month

Loans: N382BN

Budget details: While presenting the budget on Friday, July 10, 2026, Fubara placed the total estimated revenue for the year at N1.8 trillion but gave total expenditure at N1.85trn.

He said the 2026 budget, titled ‘Budget of Resilience for Growth and Development,’ is the result of considerable public participation in a shared vision for building an economically resilient, thriving and prosperous Rivers State.

Fubara said that despite the challenges confronting the state, ‘The machinery of governance has continued to function, and we have made significant progress in our priority areas of road infrastructure, human capital development, as well as in the security of lives and property.’

The governor said the total projected revenue for the 2026 fiscal year N1.85trn only. ‘This means our proposed total operating revenue for 2026 is projected to increase by 24.49 percent over the 2025 adjusted budget projections, due to possible increases in returns from FAAC, derivation funds and internally generated revenue, as the national economic outlook continues to show positive growth,’ he said.

Fubara noted that the details of the 2026 Budget assumptions and fiscal objectives were outlined in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework 2026-2028, which he said the House had already considered.

He listed projected revenue and sources as follows: Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) N487.6bn; total FAAC allocation, including derivation funds, value-added tax and exchange gain N936.0bn; opening and closing balances N48.1bn; and total capital receipts, including domestic loans, grants and asset sales N382.5bn; with total projected revenue placed at N1.85trn.

Fubara further said a total of N413.1bn was allocated to recurrent expenditure.

A breakdown of recurrent expenditure included: total personnel costs, including salaries for ministries, departments and parastatals N154.7bn; new recruitments N15.2bn; consolidated revenue fund charges N772.9m; overheads for MDAs N36.7m; grants, contributions and subsidies N9.7bn; gratuities N20bn; death benefits N7.bn; and monthly pensions N55bn.

Others include Employee Compensation Act N4bn; legacy pension gratuities N20bn; group life insurance N5bn; interest on domestic loans N28bn; interest on foreign loans N6.5bn; short-term domestic loan principal repayment N3.9bn; long-term domestic loan principal repayment N30.4bn; and foreign loans principal repayment N15.7bn, totalling N413.1bn.

Fubara added: ‘Mr. Speaker may wish to note that we have proposed at least a 50% increase in overhead expenditure, to be enacted immediately once the budget becomes law.’

He said the sum of N1.4trn is allocated to capital expenditure. The sectoral breakdown is as follows: Administration N278.7bn, Economic N625.9bn, Law and Justice N65.3bn, and Social N435.4bn, totalling N1.4trn.

Fubara noted that ‘the capital budget has increased from N713.7bn in 2025 to N1.4trn in 2026, saying it is a 22.49% rise in infrastructure services expenditure.

‘Major capital expenditure is planned in the following areas: Works and Infrastructure N533.3bn, Educational Development N315bn, Healthcare Delivery N105.4bn, Rivers State House of Assembly N41.5bn, Rivers State Judiciary N30bn, Agriculture N19.3bn, Power N15bn, Chieftaincy and Community Development N8.5bn, Sports N8bn, Youths N7bn, Women Affairs N6.5bn, and Environment and Sustainable Development N6.6bn.’

Fubara made it clear that his administration did not tolerate mismanagement at any level. ‘We have wisely utilised public funds to provide services, attract investment, create jobs, and offer socio-economic opportunities for our people.

He said the budget has proposed at least a 50 percent increase in overhead expenditure, to be enacted immediately once the budget becomes law. He said the N15bn has been provided for payment of new employees.

Now that the budget has been signed, many expect faster speed in implementation and project execution, especially as the rains would begin to recede. The state’s construction window is usually from November to May.

…As Bala Mohammed commends Commission for improving ease of doing business

The board Chairman of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Ibrahim Ida who is the Waziri of Katsina State, has said that the Commission was using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to reduce the time it takes to register a company from days to minutes, assist staff to clear backlogs automatically, verify names, detect similar names, and pre-screen documents.

He said this during the 2026 Annual retreat with the theme: ‘AI at scale: Advancing an Intelligent Corporate Registry for Efficient and Trusted Service’, which held at the Ahmadu Bello International Conference Centre, Bauchi State.

The board chairman said that AI was also helping the commission to detect fraudulent companies, clean their data so that when other institutions or any foreign investor queries the CAC database, they get accurate and real-time information because, according to him, a trusted registry powered by AI is capable of attracting massive investment.

According to him, ‘Over 70% of Nigerian businesses are informal and most are in rural areas. Many do not have computer literacy. AI-powered chatbots in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Fijian and any other Nigerian languages that may come in the future can guide a vulcanizer in Katsina or a fashion designer in Bauchi to register, and with their phones.

He further said that through AI dialogue they move from being a mere registry to becoming an intelligent hub for economic planning.

The chairman also said that the Board’s role was to provide the policy framework to ensure that the use of AI is ethical, secure, and compliant with the Nigerian Data Protection Act 2023, to ensure that no citizen’s data will be misused or compromised under their watch.

They are also to provide the management resources and work closely with their supervising ministry, the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the Budget Office to ensure funding for AI infrastructure, secure cloud systems and staff training will be prioritised.

He said that the board would also support the management to retain and upskill all staff of the Commission.

‘The Renewed Hope Agenda of His Excellency, the President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, demands that we serve 200-plus million Nigerians at scale, efficiently, without bias, without delay and without the loopholes associated with corruption.’

Ibrahim Ida urged all the participants to engage fully, speak freely and leave the venue with a shared vision to make the CAC and indeed Nigeria, a more conducive business environment.

Governor Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir of Bauchi State, who also spoke at the event, commended the good effort of the Corporate Affairs Commission for ensuring accurate data, curbing corruption and intimidation and generally improving the ease of doing business in Nigeria.

He said that Corporate Affairs Commission also provides a foundational space in the economic architecture of Nigeria, as the sole custodian of business incorporation and corporate regulation directly correlating with the vitality of the country.

He also commended the Registrar-General, Hussein Ishaq Madamisin and his visionary management team for the remarkable transformation the Commission has recorded for moving the CAC from manual registries to advance digital platforms and actively pioneering artificial intelligence to achieve world-class results rapid name reservation and swift certificate issuance are highly commendable.

According to him, ‘Our government agenda is anchored on my party’s blueprint, the response plan seeks to build massive infrastructure, enhance social services and aggressively stimulate a prosperous economic environment, riding on the private sector. To break free from reliance on federal allocations, the administration is systematically opening up the state’s abundant agricultural, solid mineral and tourism potential to the private sector.

‘In our drive towards ensuring ease of doing business, we have taken several measures, including the institutionalisation of reforms to remove bureaucratic bottlenecks and foster friendly private-corporate cooperation. We have also taken measures to eliminate multiple integration and streamline fees and processes for entrepreneurs.

‘We have empowered the state investment promotion agency to function as a seamless one-stop shop for local and international investors. The state has maintained economic engagements, including the highly successful Economic Investment Summit in 2025, that screened about billions of dollars to markets from minerals, mining, agriculture, solid minerals, energy, and infrastructure.

‘We have also constructed over 3,000 roads, over 10,000 classrooms, and over 1,000 primary healthcare facilities. Also moved from the kind of regionalist system, we were to more than six that are completely healthy, with our counterparts at the national level.

‘We are mindful of the fact that practical policy can only succeed if businesses can register and organize transparently. This is why the synergy between the state government and the CAC becomes essential.’

Regular readers will notice a shift in this week’s column. It steps away from commercial property and infrastructure to attend to a personal matter. Sometimes a column must leave its usual ground to settle a debt. In the coming days, a man I consider one of the finest minds Nigerian journalism has produced will present his memoir. Before that happens, I want to say in print what I am not certain I have ever said to him directly.

There was a season in Nigeria when a newspaper column could summon a head of state. Dr Chidi Amuta once wrote a piece titled ‘Ibrahim Gorbachev,’ drawing a comparison between Nigeria’s military leader, Ibrahim Babangida, and Mikhail Gorbachev, then undertaking sweeping reforms in the Soviet Union. In another article, ‘Thesis on Liberia,’ he argued that Nigeria should use its influence in West Africa to prevent Liberia from descending into civil war. Both pieces found their way to Dodan Barracks. The president read them and wanted to meet their author.

That episode may seem like a footnote in a long career, but it has stayed with me because it captures what serious writing once represented in this country, and what it can still represent. A column was not decoration placed between advertisements. It was an instrument of public thought. It could clarify a national problem, disturb official comfort and travel all the way to the highest office in the land.

That power has not entirely disappeared. More recently, Amuta’s commentary on the state of the nation drew a sharp response from the presidency. The setting may be different from the days of Dodan Barracks, but the central point remains: those in authority still read him, still answer him and, occasionally, still seem unsettled by what he writes. Decades later, the Amuta pen continues to command attention.

Regular readers will notice a shift in this week’s column. It steps away from commercial property and infrastructure to attend to a personal matter. Sometimes a column must leave its usual ground to settle a debt. In the coming days, a man I consider one of the finest minds Nigerian journalism has produced will present his memoir. Before that happens, I want to say in print what I am not certain I have ever said to him directly.

There was a season in Nigeria when a newspaper column could summon a head of state. Dr Chidi Amuta once wrote a piece titled ‘Ibrahim Gorbachev,’ drawing a comparison between Nigeria’s military leader, Ibrahim Babangida, and Mikhail Gorbachev, then undertaking sweeping reforms in the Soviet Union. In another article, ‘Thesis on Liberia,’ he argued that Nigeria should use its influence in West Africa to prevent Liberia from descending into civil war. Both pieces found their way to Dodan Barracks. The president read them and wanted to meet their author.

That episode may seem like a footnote in a long career, but it has stayed with me because it captures what serious writing once represented in this country, and what it can still represent. A column was not decoration placed between advertisements. It was an instrument of public thought. It could clarify a national problem, disturb official comfort and travel all the way to the highest office in the land.

That power has not entirely disappeared. More recently, Amuta’s commentary on the state of the nation drew a sharp response from the presidency. The setting may be different from the days of Dodan Barracks, but the central point remains: those in authority still read him, still answer him and, occasionally, still seem unsettled by what he writes. Decades later, the Amuta pen continues to command attention.

Here I must make a small confession. Although I had read and admired his articles for some time, providence later brought me much closer to him. The writer I had known from a distance gradually became someone whose character, habits, and discipline I could observe up close. I will leave the precise circumstances of that closeness unstated; they belong to the private part of life. What matters here is that proximity did not diminish the admiration formed from afar. It deepened it. I discovered that the discipline visible on the page was not a pose adopted for publication. It was part of the man.

I began to notice the behind-the-scenes effort: reading, curiosity, and a refusal to become intellectually lazy. While many can produce a single memorable article, few manage to remain relevant across various political eras and shifting editorial standards. Amuta has accomplished this without allowing longevity to become an excuse for repetition. His consistency extends beyond weekly content submissions; it includes a sustained discipline of continuous thinking.

I now write a weekly column on commercial property and infrastructure in the Perspective section of BusinessDay Sunday, drawing from more than two decades of professional practice. The challenge is not finding opinions. It is translating experience into a clear argument, meeting the weekly deadline and returning with something else worth a reader’s time. My journey bears no comparison with Amuta’s. Yet his example has made me understand that influence is built quietly: through preparation, careful reasoning, consistency and the humility to keep improving after publication.

His career has been as varied as it has been consequential. Over the decades, he has worked as an academic, literary theorist, newspaper editor, editorial adviser, chief executive and columnist. He was an early member of The Guardian’s Editorial Board, served as Group Editorial Adviser and Chairman of the Daily Times Editorial Board, and later became Chief Executive of The Post Express. He remains associated with the THISDAY Editorial Board and continues to write his weekly column, Engagements.

What strikes me is that he has never truly stopped. Decades into a career that would have given most people sufficient reason to rest on past achievement, he continues to turn up with something worth saying. He has therefore become a model to me beyond writing: a lesson in how a career is built, repaired and sustained, and in how one continues to work with integrity long after there is anything left to prove.

Even now, he often sends me a simple message: ‘Keep going.’ From someone who has lived those words throughout his career, they carry heavy weight. They are encouragement, certainly, but also a rule: do the work, survive the disappointment, resist self-pity and return to the page. I have come to treasure those two words because the life behind them gives them authority.

If I have one quarrel with the way his career has been received, it is this: a man whose columns once travelled through the corridors of power, whose academic work contributed to the study of African literature, and whose public commentary has interpreted Nigeria over several decades deserves a wider and younger audience than he has been given. Nigeria too often celebrates its elders quietly, among those who already know, instead of introducing them loudly to those who need to know.

Those of us who grew up reading writers like Amuta deserve to acknowledge them more publicly. This piece is a modest attempt at that recognition, written before the presentation rather than after, because delayed gratitude can start to seem more like an obituary than a tribute. The best time to honor intellectual work is while its creator can appreciate the words.

HOMAGE: Return to Familiar Places appears to be a fitting vessel for that conversation: a life recalled with enough honesty and range to become, at the same time, a record of the country’s passage through journalism, scholarship, politics and public life. A memoir by someone who has spent decades interpreting Nigeria cannot be merely personal. The country inevitably enters the story, with its promises, ruptures, characters and recurring disappointments.

The memoir is only one part of a much larger body of work. Years ago, Amuta demonstrated its scale with Writing the Wrong, a collection of more than a thousand pages drawn from decades of newspaper columns. Taken together with his later writings, the work approaches an unbroken record of Nigeria’s condition: its politics, crises and stubborn hopes, recorded in real time by a writer equipped with the history and language to explain events as they unfolded.

There are university departments teaching Nigerian political history from material far thinner than what sits in his back catalogue. I expect to read HOMAGE as I read his columns years ago: slowly, attentively and with a pencil nearby. But I will now read it with an added privilege, the knowledge of the man behind the sentences and with greater appreciation for the discipline required to turn a lifetime of observation into a body of work.

This column will return to its usual ground soon enough. But some debts are worth interrupting the schedule for. This is one of them.