Simon Shenge
There is hardly any doubt that roads are important to the development of any society. Good roads connect communities, facilitate the movement of people and goods, reduce transportation costs and open up opportunities for trade and investment. For a state like Benue, where agriculture remains central to the livelihood of a large proportion of the population, functional roads are particularly important.
But rural development is much more than roads.
This is the point that deserves the attention of the Benue State Government as it implements its development agenda and allocates public resources. If the state’s development budget is increasingly dominated by road construction at the expense of other essential sectors, there is a need for a careful reassessment of priorities.
A road is a means to development; it is not development in its entirety.
The real test of rural development is whether the farmer can produce and earn a decent income, whether the child can attend a functioning school, whether a pregnant woman and sick people can access a properly equipped health facility, whether communities have access to clean water, and whether young people can find opportunities that give them hope for the future.
Benue people cannot eat roads. They cannot be treated for illness by roads. They cannot drink water from roads. Their children cannot receive quality education from roads. These are not arguments against road construction. On the contrary, they are arguments for a more balanced approach to development.
The danger of a one-sector development strategy
There is growing concern among citizens and stakeholders that road construction has received disproportionate attention in the government’s current development priorities, while other sectors that directly affect the daily lives of rural people appear to have received less attention. If this perception is correct, it deserves urgent consideration.
Rural development must be integrated. Roads should connect farms to markets, but there must first be productive farmers, functioning agricultural extension services, access to inputs, storage facilities, processing opportunities and markets. A newly constructed road leading from a farming community to an urban centre is of limited developmental value if farmers still struggle with insecurity, poor access to agricultural inputs, inadequate storage and low farm- gate prices.
Similarly, a road leading to a health centre cannot replace the doctors, nurses, medicines, laboratory facilities, electricity, water supply and diagnostic equipment required to make that health centre functional. Benue’s hospitals are sick, they have been sick for years and unlike buildings, constructions of roads, human life cannot be rehabilitated after they are lost.
The same principle applies to education. A road can take a child to school, but it cannot teach that child. Rural schools require classrooms, teachers, learning materials, electricity, sanitation and other basic facilities.
Development, therefore, should not be measured simply by the number of kilometres of roads awarded or constructed. It should be measured by the quality of life that public investment creates for ordinary citizens.
What happens to the rural farmer?
This question is particularly important in Benue.
The state is widely regarded as an agricultural hub, yet many farmers continue to face challenges that go beyond access roads. They need improved seeds, fertilisers and other inputs; access to affordable credit; extension services; irrigation where appropriate; mechanisation; storage and processing facilities; security; and reliable markets.
A farmer who produces more than his family can consume should not be forced to sell his produce cheaply because of inadequate storage or lack of access to profitable markets.
The ultimate objective should be to move the farmer from subsistence to sustainable commercial agriculture. This requires investment across the entire agricultural value chain.
Indeed, a well- designed rural development strategy should make roads serve agriculture—not replace agricultural investment.
Healthcare cannot be left behind
The situation of rural healthcare also deserves very serious attention. Across many communities, the mere existence of a primary health facility does not necessarily mean that quality healthcare is available. A health centre may have a building but lack essential and functional equipment, anesthesia and sterilization, medicines, personnel, electricity, water or functional diagnostic facilities.
For a rural mother, the difference between a functioning health centre and an empty building and outdated equipment can be the difference between life and death. Therefore, while roads may improve access to healthcare facilities, government must equally ensure that those facilities are properly equipped and staffed. There is little comfort in having a good road to a health facility that cannot provide the services a patient needs.
Education is an investment in Benue’s future
Education must also remain at the centre of the state’s development agenda. Every rural child deserves access to quality education regardless of the local government area in which he or she lives. Government investment should therefore extend beyond the construction or rehabilitation of roads to classrooms, teachers, instructional materials, digital learning opportunities, water and sanitation facilities, and other conditions necessary for effective learning.
The long- term prosperity of Benue will NOT be determined only by the roads we construct today. It will also be determined by the quality of the human beings who will inherit and manage the state tomorrow. A road has a useful lifespan. An educated healthy child can contribute to society for generations.
Water is not a luxury
Access to clean and safe water remains another fundamental component of rural development. Communities need water for drinking, sanitation, agriculture, health and other domestic purposes. When government investment focuses heavily on physical infrastructure while basic water needs remain unmet in communities, the definition of development becomes incomplete.
A truly rural development-oriented budget should therefore ask a simple question: What does the ordinary rural household receive from government investment? If the answer is primarily a road, then the question must be asked: what about the school, the health centre, the water supply, the farm, the market and the livelihood?
Roads must be completed too
There is also another important dimension to the conversation.
Even the argument for prioritising roads becomes difficult to sustain if major road projects remain incomplete for extended periods. Government should therefore not only announce new road projects but also ensure that existing projects are not only completed but with high standard and brought into actual use.
The people should be able to see and use the benefits of public expenditure.
It is understandable that infrastructure projects require substantial resources, particularly in an economy facing inflation, rising construction costs and competing demands. This makes prioritisation even more important. Scarce public resources should be deployed in a manner that produces the widest possible social benefit.
A plea for balance, not confrontation
The administration should be encouraged to continue investing in roads where they are genuinely necessary, particularly those connecting rural communities to farms, markets, schools, hospitals and economic centres. But road infrastructure should form part of a broader development framework rather than become the framework itself.
The state needs a development strategy in which roads connect communities, agriculture creates wealth, schools build human capital, hospitals protect lives, water sustains communities, and industries create employment. That is what integrated rural development should look like.
The governor’s legacy should be broader
Every administration ultimately leaves behind a legacy. For the present administration, that legacy should ideally be measured not only in kilometres of roads constructed but in the transformation of the lives of Benue citizens. Years from now, citizens should be able to say that during this period, their communities received functioning schools, better healthcare, improved agricultural productivity, potable water, employment opportunities, security and infrastructure.
They should remember roads, certainly—but they should remember what those roads enabled. A road that takes farm produce to market is valuable. A road that takes a sick person to a functioning hospital is valuable. A road that connects a child to a good school is valuable. But the road itself is only part of the story. The ultimate purpose of government is not to build infrastructure for its own sake, but to use public resources to improve human lives.
Benue therefore needs a development budget that does not ask whether roads should be built or whether schools, hospitals, agriculture and water should be funded. It should ask how all these sectors can work together to produce sustainable development. This is not a call to abandon roads. It is a call to build roads without abandoning the people who use them.
It is a call to ensure that while the government builds the physical infrastructure of Benue, it also builds the human capacity, economic opportunities and social services that will make those roads meaningful. And ultimately, it is a call to the government of the day: please do not let the understandable urgency of road construction swallow the equally urgent needs of education, healthcare, agriculture, water, employment and other sectors that determine the everyday welfare of our people.
Benue deserves roads. But Benue also deserves a complete
development agenda.
* Shenge, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja