By Chief Basil Ani
When a trader in Ogbete Main Market is slapped with a daily levy by an agent flanked by armed police, or when a mother at a Primary Health Centre in Uwani waits hours for a drug that never comes, they aren’t debating the merits of the APC versus the PDP.
Their calculus is far more basic: where is the governance? Where are the essentials? Contrary to much-touted ojectives, there is no functioning health center available to the community at present.
No branding echo, no glossy billboard, and certainly no change of political party allegiance can replace the tangible presence of functioning clinics, equipped classrooms, or paved roads.
Yet, as swirling rumours suggest Governor Peter Mbah is poised to defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC), a move seen by many as a pre-2027 survival strategy, it is imperative to spotlight Enugu state’s structural headaches. Performance, as the people’s lived reality attests, does not pivot on party colours but on palpable delivery.
Through debt and extraction, a vice-like grip now appears to have been exerted on the state’s struggling economy.
Governor Mbah’s ambition is grand: to grow Enugu’s economy from $4.4 billion to $30 billion by 2031.
However, the strategy to get there appears less about creating wealth and more about extracting it aggressively from an already strained populace.
According to the Debt Management Office (DMO), Enugu’s domestic debt stands at a staggering ₦188.42 billion as of March 2025. While the state’s 2024 Debt Sustainability Analysis revealed over ₦51 billion in federal-guaranteed loans were written off to ease the books, the debt burden continues to pinch capital spending.
The question echoing across the state is: where are the payoff projects?
The borrowed billions haven’t materialised into the promised factories or agro-clusters. Instead, the government’s answer has been an unprecedented drive for Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). IGR shot from ₦37.4 billion in 2023 to over ₦200 billion in 2024, with projections aiming for an audacious ₦500 billion in 2025.
For the government, this is a cause for celebration. For ordinary residents and SMEs, it feels like a vice-like grip.
The revenue is not flowing from new thriving industries but from the pockets of petty traders, transporters, and small business owners.
In Enugu state, it has been a labyrinth of levies that feel like death by a thousand cuts
The promise was a streamlined tax system through the Enugu State Internal Revenue Service (ESIRS). The reality is a proliferation of agencies – ESIRS, ENGIS, Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority, ESWAMA, Ministry of Health officials, VIOs, and local councils – all acting as overlapping revenue points, each with its own set of levies and sanctions.
For transporters, it’s a daily ticket system for keke, okada, minibuses, and trucks, which must be paid before noon or face penalties.
For shop vendors, it’s ₦30,000 annually; for market traders, ₦36,000, plus sanitation, signage, and other myriad charges.
Enforcement is often militarised, with ESWAMA officials and others accompanied by police, creating an environment of fear rather than voluntary compliance.
A petty trader at Ogbete, who pleaded anonymity for fear of reprisal, captures the mood: “They come often with police. I pay rent, utility charges, and now these endless levies. They claim it’s for development, but I see no change. I only see more padlocks on other shops that couldn’t cope.”
This aggressive extraction has a direct, inflationary impact on households. Landlords are passing the costs of government levies to tenants, with rents in some areas jumping from ₦350,000 to ₦600,000 in a single year.
It is little wonder the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently listed Enugu as one of Nigeria’s most expensive states to live in.
The grand illusion in the state is in the so-called flagship projects that appear pitted against genuine populist needs,
The government points to its flagship projects to justify the revenue drive: the renovated Hotel Presidential, plans for an International Conference Centre, and the NigerGas revival.
Yet, these elite-focused projects have little direct impact on the daily struggles of the average citizen. To make matters worse, the Presidential Hotel project is also incomplete; the third and fourth floors still remain unfinished. Despite this, the hotel was officially commissioned, leaving critical work outstanding
Smart Schools? More Like Smart Talk! Sadly, Governor Mbah’s Smart School project remains largely incomplete; although 260 schools were promised, less than ten have been completed to date and some of the already built structures have even collapsed.
The administration’s flag off of its 260 smart schools project claims to have trained over 18,000 teachers but this is only slightly more impactful than a mirage.
Out of the 260 schools target meant to be sited across various wards, only fifteen have been constructed as at the beginning of September, 2025.
School heads in Nsukka and Udi still report no ICT equipment, unreliable solar panels, and no meaningful training follow-through.
“They showed us devices during launch. But we’re back to slates, cramped rooms, and unpaid teaching assistants,” a head teacher confessed.
There are also terminals that terminally don’t exist: the much-trumpeted ultra-modern bus terminals in Emene and Abakpa remain largely empty and dusty.
There are no ticket booths, no schedules, and no functional shelters. Commuters still pay cash to drivers on the street, under the watchful eyes of taskforce squads collecting their own levies.
Sadly too, health and agriculture reflect promises without pulse: the pledge of 260 Type-2, 24-hour PHCs and a new 300-bed hospital rings hollow when a midnight visit to a centre reveals no doctor, no drugs, and no staff.
Meanwhile, farmers in Nsukka say the promised “one million hectare agro-industrial” scheme is yet to translate into road access, tractors, or improved security.
On-going purported moves towards defection can hardly serve as anything more than mere distraction: a change of clothes won’t heal the wound.
In the face of glaring governance inadequacies in Enugu state, a defection to the APC would be the cheapest form of political theatre. It can only be a manoeuvre designed for survival, not service.
As an Abuja-based political analyst bluntly put it, “Changing parties is cheap theatre. Without delivery of democracy dividends, it’s just political cosmetics.”
Such a move would not reduce the state’s crippling debt burden, rein in the multitude of agencies extorting residents, power a single smart school or stock a single PHC with drugs. Neither can it reverse Enugu’s damning ranking as 36th out of 36 states on the ease-of-doing-business index.
Governance is not an identity parade! As Enugu inches toward 2027, the subtext is clear: party change or political restructuring won’t fix broken pipelines or classrooms.
The voters demand substance over spin, results over rhetoric. Soiling new party labels with old, unmet promises won’t erase what Ndi Enugu truly ask for: real schools, functional health centres, open roads, fair taxation, and thriving jobs.
Many feel concerned about what they see as Peter Mbah’s pretentious governance. Of what essence is branding without bread? Governor Peter Mbah promised Ndi Enugu “a new dawn.”
Instead, what we see today is a government heavy on cosmetics and light on content; a government obsessed with photo shoots and billboards, yet indifferent to the gnawing hunger of its people.
Surely phantom industrialisation cannot be an answer to yearnings for true economic development.
Mbah’s industrialisation dream is nothing but smoke.
Two years down the line, not one new factory has sprung up, not a single investor has pitched a tent, and not one Enugu youth has found work in the so-called “industrial revolution.”
Instead, borrowed billions are wasted on phantom “smart schools” that exist more in glossy presentations than in the broken classrooms where our children still sit under leaking roofs.
Can citizens live with luxury on empty stomachs?
When a government pours billions into renovating Hotel Presidential while its people scavenge for food, priorities are upside down.
What ordinary trader or keke rider can afford to step foot into that hotel?
The project, concessioned to friends and financiers, reeks of self-enrichment in a state where hunger stalks the streets.
The rampant daily complaints about taxation without mercy deserves attention.
Ask the average Enugu trader or driver what Mbah’s “ease of doing business” means, and they will laugh bitterly.
It means multiple taxes, endless levies, harassment, and extortion. It means shuttered shops and crippled small businesses.
Instead of empowering his people, Mbah has become a tax collector-in-chief.
Every visitor is greeted with billboards of shiny transport terminals. Ndi Enugu know better.
They see no terminals, no order, only harassment by taskforces who collect government levies with intimidation. It is deception in its purest form.
Debt and deceit cannot be a recipe for the pursuit of greatness.
Mbah is alleged to have mortgaged the future of Enugu’s children with reckless borrowing running into hundreds of billions.
Yet the loans vanish into contracts without jobs, without industries, without infrastructure.
The people are left with debt, while cronies laugh all the way to the bank.
Even the farmers feel betrayed. The much-hyped “1 million hectare” agriculture revolution? Now appears to be pure propaganda.
Our farmers still trek to insecure farms on dangerous roads, with no tractors, no support, no policy framework. Hunger deepens, but the governor keeps boasting at conferences.
Of greater concern to some of his critics is the perceived suppression of democracy. When a government that claims to uphold rule of law brazenly denies Hon. Bright Ngene his mandate, it is clear: this is no democracy, it is a fiefdom.
Dissent is gagged, opposition trampled, yet Mbah preaches about justice abroad while practicing injustice at home.
Too much of healthcare and education appear to be in ruins Public hospitals rot. Schools decay. Teachers are demoralized. But the governor seems to spend more on branding exercises than on human lives, giving rise to perceptions that he governs for headlines, not for humanity.
This gives rise to being seen as a mercantilist government Everything under Mbah is concessioned, outsourced, or sold to cronies. Governance has been reduced to trading public resources among private allies. The people are spectators, not beneficiaries.
The verdict of the streets appears unforgiving; the people of Enugu easily see through deception. They know Mbah is not people-focused but profit-focused, not a reformer but a brand manager. His government is a glossy cover with empty pages inside.
Ndi Enugu did not elect a PR firm; they elected a governor. And until he descends from the billboard to the streets where his people groan, branding-heavy his legacy will remain one of betrayal and branding without bread.
If Governor Mbah or any political actor truly wants to reclaim the hearts of the people, they must pivot from extraction to empowerment, from elite projects to populist needs. Because when the electorate steps into the voting booth, they won’t be voting for banners or party logos—they’ll be voting on their lived experience: the boarded-up shops, the inflated rent, the empty health centres, and the fear of armed tax collectors. No defection can erase that record.
• Chief Ani is APC chieftain based in Enugu
