Otti and His Critics

Jones Nnanna

The new administration in Abia State led by Dr. Alex Otti, renown Economist, Writer and Ex Banker is less than 70 days in office. This period could be adjudged as being too early in assessing the performance of the government regardless of any criteria used. Nonetheless, it could be said that within this short period, Dr. Otti and his team could be said to be working tirelessly to ensure that the locust years of Abia history is put to an end in favour of a new flowering era. This assertion is based on several bold, selfless and innovative approaches to governance adopted by the Governor and his team.

The first of such measures was the constitution of a 101-member transition council which was made up of very brilliant minds drawn from diverse backgrounds.

It was these egg heads that expanded and translated Dr. Otti’s 42-page Manifesto document into a workable instrument for public policy action. It might also be necessary to restate the fact that   his inauguration into office on 29th May 2023 was overshadowed by a lingering industrial action embarked upon by organised labour to protest the rascality of the last regime over matters concerning wage bills and general fiscal indiscipline. The Labour Unions had voluntarily called off the strike on the day Dr. Otti assumed duties as a goodwill gesture to the new government. Earlier during the campaigns, the then governorship candidate of the Labour Party had promised to pay the workers on the 28th day of every month.

Two months down the line, it has been a promise kept. Many workers in the state can attest to receiving their salary alert on that date. The government of Dr. Otti is working assiduously to ensure   that the challenges of delayed or non-payment of salaries and pensions which was the dominant character of the last regime will be consigned to the dust bin of history, to be remembered by future generations only as one of the state’s ugly past challenges.      

 Additionally, Dr. Otti has ably demonstrated how prepared he was for leadership through a thorough and meritorious recruitment exercise into the top echelon of his administration. Most of the people so far recruited to manage the different organs of government are top professionals drawn from diverse backgrounds. This is just as they are people of unquestionable integrity. Many of these new managers of the State resources are versed in the modern art of management where efficient and quick service delivery is the mantra. 

Dr. Otti working along with this new crack team has succeeded in blocking leakages which were the instruments for the bleeding and pillaging of State resources. Such leakages had different colorations. Some were erected as instruments for the outright looting of the state treasury while others acted as instruments for the over inflation of costs in public sector procurement. Yet some others acted as conduits for the inflation of wage bills through the instrumentality of ghost workers. The war on this sector is still raging and the new administration is not relenting.

The setting up of a judicial panel of enquiry to recover the looted assets of the state is one of the measures so far taken to boost the war on corruption. This is just as the current verification exercise instituted by the State’s Head of Service for public sector workers is  meant to fish out the numerous ghost workers and those others that were fraudulently employed    into  the state public bureaucracy.  

Another realm that has engaged Dr. Otti’s characteristic efficiency is the rehabilitation of the physical infrastructure in the state. There is now the common site of caterpillars rolling out in different parts of the state particularly in the urban centres of Aba and Umuahia.

 It is expected that with the seriousness attached to the reconstruction of roads by the administration, the coming dry session will witness massive rehabilitation of both urban and rural roads. This is not forgetting the several public sector buildings that are currently undergoing massive rehabilitation works.

Gov Otti’s messianic approach to development is best exemplified in the war on refuse which he declared as an emergency in his first inaugural speech when he was sworn into office.  Government’s hard work on this war coupled with several innovations adopted have ensured a continuous gain on the battleground as the physical environment gradually returns back into wearing a new clean look.

Another notable area that has not escaped the attention of Dr. Otti’s administration is healthcare delivery service in the State. This sector got a boost when the State Government kick started a free health care delivery service on July 15th 2023 at the Aba General Hospital. The program now holds every Saturday of the week. The exercise has since been extended to the General Hospital Amachara, Umuahia. More General Hospitals are expected to be keyed into the program as the Government increases its capacity to do so. The unprecedented number of patients that troop into the two hospitals to seek for medical help every Saturday just goes to show how dire the health care delivery system in Abia was.

However the free medical service is just a stop gap measure that has been put in place to address the emergency situation in the sector  pending when the building blocks  will be erected to sustainably address the challenge of health care delivery system in the State, which in the past suffered a great deal of neglect.

All these developments are in addition to a transparent, open and corrupt free procurement system which the administration has put in place to ensure that the public derives maximum value from its procurement process.

Taking all the above into consideration, it could be said that even though it is still quite early to engage in any meaningful assessment of  the Dr.  Otti’s administration that came into power through widespread popular public support, its early gambits are such that could make discerning observers to come out with the verdict  that Dr. Otti is  doing well . The Government is clearly on track and indeed Dr. Otti is achieving what he set out to do.

However, his hereditary enemies and critics seem to be ignorant of these achievements or they choose to feign ignorance. His enemies who are mainly those that benefitted from the past decadence have since engaged the services of their bootlickers and hirelings to discredit every move of the new government. The same characters whose only qualifications for top government positions was a conscienceless and uncanny ability to tell lies have been recruited for this “yahoo, yahoo job”. In the past their job while in the employment of government was to conjure rosy impressions of government performance while the state was bleeding.

These dark characters who picked the crumbs from the masters table have now found new roles as   critiques of the new Government. These hired musketeers who praised and clapped for those that    looted the state treasury  while all the development indices  stagnated or nose dived have recently upped their games dishing out lies after lies about the current  government performance in office, all in an effort to confuse the general public and weaken the support base of the popular  governor.

However, it is consoling to note that despite the machinations of these hirelings whose stock in trade is well known to the public, Dr. Otti continues to maintain a tight organic relationship with critical sectors of the Abia society. They have always supported him right from his early days in partisan politics till date. Such support has been transferred to his government. It is most likely that such support will endure with the kind of structures of good governance being put in place by his administration. The new structure is intended to jump frog the state development trajectory away from its stagnated past to a new era of prosperity and efficient service delivery. This then is the basis of the failure which all such hirelings have so far met with and will continue to meet no matter how hard they try.