One of the most memorable and eventful work I have had to undertake as a media professional outside of the newsroom was working with the then gubernatorial aspirant and now Governor of Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti, during his campaigns. I was introduced to Dr. Otti in 2018 by our mutual friend, the irrepressible Prince Emeka Obasi (God bless his soul), a quintessential journalist and publisher of the Hallmark Newspaper, who ascended into eternity in 2022, to help organise and strengthen Otti’s media.
Governor Otti, then candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), was making his second attempt for the gubernatorial office of Abia State. He had run for the same office in 2015 on the platform of APGA and was coasting to victory when the results of the election was magically flipped to favour the candidate of the then ruling party in the state, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Even though Candidate Otti had gone to the courts to claim his victory and got the Appeal Court declare him winner, his hope of becoming Governor in 2015 was eventually sealed by the Supreme Court, which effectively shut the door against him in a very controversial decision.
I joined the Alex Otti Campaign Organisation in 2018 as the Director of Media and Publicity. It was my very first outing in local politics. I was born and bred in Aba and spent my formative years in the Enyimba City, where I attended both primary and secondary schools before leaving for ‘greener pastures’ in Lagos. So, I can confidently say that I am Nwa Aba! By the time the campaign train roared into life, it was apparent that a new wave of communicating political messages in Abia had begun, notwithstanding initial taunts by the ruling PDP and its agents that Candidate Otti imported strangers from his base in Lagos to take over Abia government. The 2019 election came and went and as usual PDP had a field day, manipulating the results of the election to maintain its strangle-hold on Abia. But Otti was not discouraged.
Just like many who had been with Otti since 2014, when he resigned his lucrative job as the Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of one of Nigeria’s then foremost banks, Diamond Bank (now merged with Access Bank), I saw in him a genuine desire to bring about a positive change in the lives of the residents and citizens of Abia and the state, and stuck with him. Many of us volunteered our services and support pro bono.
So, in 2022, when we returned for the campaigns in Abia for the jinx-breaking 2023 election, the campaign team became bigger as the stakes were obviously higher and so there was a lot of adjustments to accommodate new entrants. Meanwhile, Candidate Otti had moved from APGA to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and finally settled in Labour Party (LP). Otti’s entry into Labour Party and subsequent adoption as the party’s gubernatorial candidate had immediately shot the party into limelight in Abia and positioned it as the biggest opposition to the incumbent PDP. Again, I was appointed into the media team, this time as the Head of Media, working directly with Dr. Otti. Unlike in 2018-2019 when I worked out of the campaign office, this time I was embedded in Candidate Otti’s convoy.
The 2022-2023 campaign was more intense for obvious reasons. First, it was the third time that Dr. Otti was taking a shot at the office of the governor of Abia State. Second, the mal-administration going on in Abia under PDP had got to a very embarrassing and putrefying level that Nigerians were now making a mockery of the state, wondering whether anything good can come out of Abia. The third was confronting a political behemoth, whose only winning strategy was perfecting the fraudulent art of rigging elections with result from one local government area.
In the course of the campaign for the 2023 governorship election in Abia, we traveled the breadth and depth of Abia, meeting political, religious, traditional, business and various other stakeholders and groups across party lines in every nook and cranny of the state. It was a very memorable experience for me, for which I remain ever grateful to Governor Otti. I got to really know Abia with its rich natural endowments and saw firsthand the rot and degradation that the state had been allowed to become by its past leaders, especially in the last 24 years, prior to the election. Aba, the commercial nerve of Abia was a shadow of its old self from the days of old Imo State, when Dee Sam Mbakwe was the Governor. Ditto for Umuahia, the capital of Abia, which remained a glorified village, even after 30 years as a state capital.
It was as though past leaders in Abia State, especially during the PDP years, only cared about sharing political offices and appropriating the resources of the state to themselves and their cronies. No deliberate efforts were made to improve on the infrastructure left by Mbakwe or build new ones. I remember one of our campaign stops in a community in Abia South, where Candidate Otti met with the elders and leaders of the land. During the meeting, the community leaders wanted to extract a commitment from the Labour Party candidate that one of their own be appointed Commissioner for Finance, when he (Otti) gets into office. According to them, since Otti is from Abia Central and his deputy from Abia North, it was only logical that the next Commissioner for Finance or Secretary to the State Government would come from their zone, Abia South, precisely, from their community.
The community leaders were left dumbfounded when Otti, who was aspiring to become governor, told them point-blank that he would do no such thing. He gave them his reasons. According to Dr. Otti, political appointments under his government would be given to deserving individuals, based on merit, and not to communities or groups. Besides, Candidate Otti reminded his hosts that some of their sons and daughters had in the past been appointed into different offices in the State and the Federal Government and wondered how that impacted on the infrastructural development of the community. That was Governor Otti staying true to his conviction, not minding if lost the votes. He, however, promised them that if elected, he would work to bring genuine development to the community and the state in general. Abians, including political opponents, have since attested to the fact that Governor Otti has lived up to his promise to develop the State.
So, when I read in the media space the vile spewed by the former Executive Secretary of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), Mr. Paul Ikonne, a member of the old order in Abia politics, who hid under the public hearing of the constitution review committee of the National Assembly, in Owerri, Imo State, recently, to malign Governor Otti for allegedly not calling for the creation of ‘Aba State’ out of the present Abia State, I knew instantly that his outburst was misplaced and borne out of deep-seated hate. It is not Otti’s fault that Ikonne and the groups he represents had the opportunity of presenting their case before the review committee in Owerri, but failed to seize the moment. Many other groups attended the committee hearing and were given opportunity to present papers on the aspects of the 1999 constitution they feel so strongly about change or review.
Many who know Otti and have been following his writings and public speeches before becoming Governor know that he has been consistent in his position that the creation of additional states out of the present 36-state structure would not in any way help the economic development of our country. His position is hinged on the fact that, except for about three, majority of the states are not viable and cannot survive outside of Federal bailout. Rather, he has often argued, just as he did in Owerri, that Nigeria should be more concerned about improving the economic structure of the current 36 states, double efforts at creating jobs for its youthful population outside of the civil service, and generally make the welfare of the ordinary Nigerian a priority.
He, however, made an exception for the creation of another state for the South East zone of the country, simply for political reasons. Out of the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, only the South East has five states, whereas the others – South South, South West, North East and North Central, have six, while the North West zone has seven states. So, in order to correct this injustice and marginalisation of the South East people, Governor Otti clarified his speech that exception be made for the creation of additional state in the zone to give the region a sense of equity with the rest of the country. It is pertinent to note that many have welcomed and re-echoed Governor Otti’s position across the federation.
Governor Otti is never shy of calling a spade by its name or holding on to his conviction, no matter how politically incorrect one might accuse him of. As a first-class economist, successful bank chief executive officer, resilient political opposition figure, and now a sitting Governor of Abia State, Otti has rightfully earned his badge of honour and Nigerians, indeed the international community, listen and pay attention when he speaks. It is therefore incontinent of someone who rode on the back of patriarchy to rise to public office to attempt whipping up dubious public sentiment against a Governor who has worked very hard to turn around the fortune of Abia State for good, and whose record of achievements in two years is in clear sight, just because he does not agree with his view.
●Uko, former Chief Press Secretary to Governor Alex Otti, writes from Umuahia.
