Benue turns fifty this year. Time has passed. Wealth has passed. And we must ask.What have we actually built?

Benue turns fifty this year. This is not a celebration. It is an audit.

Some of our classmates built economic engines. We built anniversaries.

Fifty is not youth. It is not experimentation. It is the age of reckoning, the age when consequences mature.

Benue was not born alone in 1976. Ogun, Niger, Ondo, Oyo, Bauchi, Borno, Plateau, and Sokoto emerged from the same constitutional moment. Same decree. Same federal structure. Same allocation system. Same Nigeria.

They faced the same military transitions, the same oil booms and recessions, the same structural adjustment era, the same democratic resets. Time was equally distributed. History did not favor one and punish another.

Yet five decades later, the trajectories are no longer parallel.

Ogun understood early what proximity could mean. Bordering Lagos, it positioned itself as an industrial spillover zone. As costs tightened in Lagos, Ogun absorbed manufacturing plants, cement factories, food processing companies, breweries, packaging industries, and logistics hubs. Industrial corridors emerged along the Lagos Abeokuta axis. Geography became recurring revenue.

Proximity became policy. Policy became infrastructure. Infrastructure became investment.

Niger leveraged federal presence and energy assets, anchoring itself in power generation and large-scale agriculture. Ondo did not merely grow cocoa; it structured and branded its agricultural economy while building tertiary institutions and nurturing export identity. Oyo capitalized on Ibadan’s historic commercial weight and academic ecosystem, evolving into a regional economic anchor.

Even states burdened by security or environmental strain anchored at least one structural advantage into a durable economic spine.

The question that shadows Benue at fifty is simple and uncomfortable. With comparable time and undeniable agricultural dominance, what enduring economic architecture did we build?

Benue became comfortable being called the Food Basket of the Nation. But a title is not an economy. A slogan is not a system. A nickname does not build processing plants, cold chains, commodity exchanges, export hubs, or agro-industrial parks.

Benue is strategically located near Abuja, along major northern corridors, and close to an international border. Geography handed us leverage. Did we structure it?

Why does Makurdi not look like the capital of a fifty-year-old state positioned beside the Federal Capital Territory?

Fifty years is enough time to build an ecosystem. Where is ours?

Our land is fertile. That was never in doubt. Our farmers are resilient. Our people are intellectually strong. Our proximity to Abuja is strategic.

So what failed? Not destiny. Not absence of blessing. Not lack of natural advantage. What failed was conversion.

We did not convert land into industry. We did not convert proximity into logistics dominance. We did not convert agriculture into structured wealth. We did not convert political cycles into long-term economic planning.

To see the gap in tangible terms, consider revenue generation. While Ogun State generated nearly ₦195 billion in internally generated revenue in 2024, Benue generated just ₦20 billion, a gap of almost tenfold despite equal time and constitutional birth. This sharp contrast shows the difference between states that convert advantage into structure and those that do not.

Other states created in 1976 faced the same instability. Yet some built manufacturing clusters. Some built export identities. Some strengthened internally generated revenue enough to reduce dependence. Some leveraged adjacency to economic hubs and made themselves indispensable.

Benue remained structurally dependent on allocation.

That is uncomfortable to say at a golden jubilee. But anniversaries are mirrors, not makeup.

For fifty years, we have produced harvests. But have we produced systems?

We export raw produce and import finished goods. We celebrate bumper harvests yet struggle to guarantee farmer security. We speak of feeding the nation while our own economic structure remains fragile.

If land is wealth, why are we structurally poor? The answer is not in the soil. It is in discipline.

We built politics around personalities, not policy continuity. Administrations arrived with new slogans and resets. Long-term blueprints were diluted or abandoned. Institutions did not outlive individuals. Projects were not layered into cumulative economic architecture.

Fifty years requires layering. Layering rural roads into industrial zones. Layering industrial zones into processing clusters. Layering processing clusters into export corridors. Layering export corridors into revenue stability. Layering revenue stability into reduced federal anxiety.

Instead, we layered speeches.

This is not an indictment of one governor or one era. It is a diagnosis of a culture that never made economic urgency its central ethic.

We celebrate symbolism more than structure. We defend familiarity more than performance. We rally around identity more than measurable outcomes.

Performance becomes secondary.

At fifty, that habit becomes visible.

A state bordering the Federal Capital Territory should be the agricultural logistics spine of the capital. Warehousing, processing, aggregation, cold-chain transport, these should define its economic identity. Yet scale remains elusive.

We have intelligence. We have manpower. We have land. But we have not embedded discipline into governance culture. And discipline is what converts advantage into prosperity.

Leaders do not descend from the sky. They emerge from us, from our party structures, our tolerance thresholds, what we reward, what we excuse.

If we reward rhetoric over results, we will get rhetoric. If we reward familiarity over competence, we will get familiarity. If we attack critics instead of demanding metrics, we will get silence instead of reform.

Fifty years is long enough to see patterns. Benue did not lack opportunity. Benue lacked urgency.

We operated as though potential was permanent. As though being called the Food Basket was an achievement rather than a responsibility. But potential decays when not structured.

Look at our industrial footprint. Look at our export systems. Look at our revenue independence. Look at the scale of private sector magnetism. Then look at fifty years.

This is not shame. It is clarity.

At fifty, excuses lose weight.

The question is no longer what happened in 1976. The question is what happened in every year after.

Did we build institutions that outlive administrations? Did we create economic models that reduce vulnerability? Did we demand strategy beyond election cycles? Did we convert agricultural dominance into industrial architecture?

If the answers are hesitant, celebration must be cautious.

But fifty is also opportunity.

If the first half-century was defined by advantage without conversion, the next must be defined by structure without sentimentality.

No more comfort in titles. No more dependence disguised as inevitability. No more recycling ambition without blueprint.

Benue does not need new slogans at fifty. It needs discipline. Discipline in planning. Discipline in leadership selection. Discipline in continuity. Discipline in turning every hectare into value, not just harvest.

The tragedy of Benue is not poverty. It is underperformance relative to blessing. And that is correctable.

But only if we admit that the problem was never the land. It was the will to build beyond personality, beyond applause, beyond identity.

Fifty years is not the end of the story. It is the age when seriousness must begin.

The next twenty-five will reveal whether we finally do.

Stephanie Shaakaa writes from shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com