By Linus Obogo
After reading the so-called “quality-of-life” sponsored report by SBM Intelligence, I could not but come to the inescapable conclusion that the exercise stands as one of the laziest and most tendentious pieces of armchair research ever foisted on public discourse.
To proclaim that Cross River State is in a state of “collapse” based on a laughably inadequate sample of 442 respondents across eight states is not scholarship; it is statistical vandalism wrapped in sensationalism. The report’s sweeping conclusion that Cross River has “no key strength, only collapse” reeks of predetermined bias rather than objective inquiry.
Serious research demands nuance, methodological rigor and empirical depth, not melodramatic declarations crafted merely to provoke outrage and attract headlines.
What makes the publication especially insane and absurd is its deliberate blindness to the visible transformation underway under the administration of Bassey Otu. Since assuming office, Governor Otu has pursued aggressive infrastructural renewal through road reconstruction, urban rehabilitation and rural accessibility projects reconnecting communities and stimulating commerce across the state.
The administration has also sustained the payment of WAEC registration fees for thousands of public secondary school students, a critical intervention that has widened access to education and reduced financial burdens on struggling families. A government investing consistently in roads, schools and human capital can hardly be described as “collapsed” except by analysts hopelessly detached from reality.
The report becomes even more comical when confronted with the administration’s expansive social investment programmes. The government launched an ₦800 million Agriculture Grant Scheme, empowering 400 youths and ex-agitators with ₦2 million each after specialized agricultural training. Through the Retiree Entrepreneurship Development Initiative (REDI), another ₦250 million was disbursed to 500 retirees to establish sustainable businesses and regain economic independence. The Cross River State Social Investment Programme (CRSIP) has equally supported widows, orphans and the elderly through stipends, food distribution and strengthened welfare nets. These interventions are concrete markers of governance focused on economic inclusion and social stability, not evidence of societal collapse.
Even more damaging to SBM Intelligence’s half-hearted conclusions is the glaring contradiction presented by independent fiscal and governance assessments. In what clearly exposed the hollowness of the “collapse” narrative, BudgIT, in its most recent State of States report, ranked Cross River State first nationally in women’s economic empowerment in agriculture and emerging industries. The state topped the agriculture pillar nationwide with an impressive score of 3.5 out of 4 points, while also earning strong national recognition for targeted budgetary support toward emerging industries and STEM education. It is therefore astonishing that while credible governance monitors are acknowledging Cross River’s measurable progress in economic inclusion and women-focused development, SBM Intelligence is busy manufacturing dystopian fiction from a microscopic and statistically anaemic survey pool.
In addition, targeted empowerment schemes have trained and supported over 5,000 women and youths through programmes championed by the First Lady’s foundation, while 150 mini-buses and enterprise-support equipment were procured to strengthen micro-businesses and household livelihoods. Skills acquisition initiatives in ICT, agriculture and vocational trades, particularly through CRS-YEEP, continue equipping young people with practical economic tools. More significantly, the administration released over ₦10 billion to settle arrears and backlog obligations abandoned by successive governments, restoring confidence and injecting relief into countless homes. The purchase of one hundred electric cars and buses for empowerment and transportation support further demonstrates a government consciously investing in sustainable development. If these interventions do not qualify as human capital development, then SBM Intelligence must be operating from a dictionary of absurdities unknown to rational governance discourse.
Ultimately, Cross Riverians do not require imported pessimism from detached and sponsored analysts to define their lived reality. They can see the roads under construction, the educational support schemes, the empowerment programmes and the deliberate efforts to revive economic confidence across the state. What SBM Intelligence produced is not an authoritative diagnosis of Cross River State but a breathtakingly lazy exercise in speculative pessimism, collapsing under the weight of its own exaggeration and intellectual dishonesty. It is, in every sense, a bunch of baloney dressed clumsily as research.
Obogo is Chief Press Secretary and Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Governor Bassey
