When will Otti’s malicious distractions end?

By JOHN OKIYI KALU

“Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.” — Joyce Meyer

ELECTORAL contests are like every other game: he who wishes to win must also learn how to lose. There are no provisions for “draws” in electoral contests and those who engage must be prepared for one of two outcomes; victory or defeat.

But where a loser refuses to accept defeat we refer to such people as sore losers.

Clearly Alex Otti is a sore loser who is finding it extremely difficult to accept his electoral decimation by “common” Okezie Ikpeazu that he wrote off even before the contest started.
To underscore the above, it is important to note two events that unfolded after the highest court in Nigeria affirmed the victory of PDP’s Okezie Ikpeazu over Alex Otti of APGA.

First was the vehement refusal of Otti to congratulate Governor Ikpeazu after the Supreme Court verdict. Compare that to Dakuku Peterside of Rivers’ APC and Emeka Ihedioha of PDP Imo State who promptly congratulated Governors Nyesom Wike and Rochas Okorocha, respectively, after the Supreme Court ruled on their even more fiercely contested elections.

Days after his resounding unanimous defeat at the Supreme Court, Otti returned to Aba and organized a motley crowd of supporters mostly ferried in from Anambra and Rivers state at Etche Road field for what he termed “thanksgiving service”. In the course of that gathering he was introduced as “Governor of Abia State” several times by different speakers including the Chairman of APGA. He did not at any time correct the treasonable misrepresentation but audaciously told his audience to expect something to “happen before December 2016” that will catapult him (Otti) to Umuahia government house.

Yet the real Governor of Abia State, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, preferred to indulge him and continued to focus on his job of governing Abia State. May be that was a mistake.

While I was enjoying my democracy day vacation, my attention was drawn to a widely circulating malicious publication titled “one year down the line, light is yet to come to Abia”.

It was sponsored and endorsed by the same defeated APGA candidate, Alex Otti, and his social media employees who are still smarting from the disappointment of the irreversible defeat by Dr Okezie Ikpeazu gleefully circulated it at social media.

When I finally found time to read a copy of his advertorial published by two newspapers and circulated by his social media hirelings, the contents shocked me even though I have always known Otti and his people to be masters of lies and half truths. It was a new low and a script written by a still sore loser seeking to keep his gullible audience high on overdose of his readily available hallucinatory conjectures.

Otti’s tissues of lies publications clearly confirmed that he is not on ground in Abia but merely receive his information from social media gossip publications as the anointed “Abia Facebook Governor”. Like a popular proverb says: “Gossiping and lying go hand in hand.” If Otti or his hirelings live and pay taxes in Abia they would have had firsthand knowledge of progressive events in the state since Dr Okezie Ikpeazu ascended a year ago and be able to express informed opinions on issues regarding Abia.

Even the blind in Abia can see the improvement in infrastructural development at Aba and other towns in Abia. The deaf must have heard of the good works of “Okezuo Abia” while the populations of those that are high on Otti’s propaganda overdose have diminished drastically since May 2015 that Okezie resumed at work to flag off reconstruction of four roads at Aba.

I challenge Mr Otti and his goons to come down from the air and undertake a tour with me round Aba and Abia to show them what Governor Okezie was able to achieve even in the midst of ill advised distractions from Otti and his co-travelers.

Firstly, for the avoidance of doubt, the Eze of Nenu is alive and well, contrary to the malicious lies of Alex Otti in his advertorial. Again, I invite the media to travel to the Obingwa community where he presides and meet with the Eze that our sore election loser claimed was murdered by kidnappers.

But the fact of the Eze being alive and well does not in any way say that there are no security challenges at Aba or Abia. Those who know Abia will tell you that Aba is central to the south east and south south. Security challenges in neighboring states surely affect Abia and since Otti lost at the Supreme Court there have been further spikes in security incidences including the well reported one involving the abduction of a trader at Aba and his recovery by security forces at a community close to Otti’s ancestral hometown that led to the demolition of kidnappers den recently.

Ordinarily, it is tempting to remind Otti of the armed thugs from Aguleri and others he imported into Aba during the polls. Have they been disarmed or still hanging around Abia to wait for the promised November 2016 swearing in of Alex Otti?

As responsible citizens, we hope and pray there are no plans by desperate office seekers to murder the traditional ruler of Nenu Autonomous Community, Eze Nguma Iregbu, and hang it on Okezie government. The same way Obingwa INEC office was burnt during the polls. We call on security agents to take necessary steps to protect the life of the Eze and that of all Abians and residents.

It is also important that Mr Otti consider availing security agent’s detailed information on how he got the news of the kidnap and killing of the Eze. Obviously it must have been the same source he got information on the purported assassination attempt on him at Abuja while he was actually in Abia, according to him.

The most disheartening part of Otti’s advertorial to me personally was his attempt to politicize the death of another community leader from my hometown, Senator Onyeka Okoroafor, who ill advisedly backed him during the polls. Coming from a man whose supposed best friend and great Abiriba son died recently in a US hospital after a brief illness and in spite of the availability of the best medical facilities in the world, it is the height of irresponsibility to link Senator Onyeka’s death to “poor medical facilities at Aba”.

For the records, Chief Onyeka reportedly died of complications related to ruptured appendix a day after arriving Aba from Abuja. How that ailment was not diagnosed and treated at Otti’s “Abuja” till the appendix burst and the man had to be rushed to the teaching hospital at Aba is something some of us are still asking questions about. Could it be that such a frontline supporter of Otti’s ill fated ambition wasn’t able to find or pay for life saving Medicare at Abuja where he was abandoned by Otti until it was too late for his life to be saved at Aba?

Only Otti will have answers but I know for a fact that people still die under the best medical doctors and facilities in the world. Otti should know that more than any other person.

It beats my imagination that Otti prefers to use Abiriba and her great people as political pawns in his continuing rage against his political conqueror. Does he have to mention Senator Onyeka’s name or the “Abiriba man from abroad….” to drive home his lies? May be it is time for Abiriba community leaders to rise up and tell Otti that elections are over and we wish to support Governor Ikpeazu to make Abia greater. Since the creation of Abia State no other Governor has done for our community what Governor Ikpeazu is doing for us including the construction of Abiriba Ring Road, remediation of Abiriba round about gully erosion and re-certification of Okezie School of Midwifery among others, Nobody anointed Otti to speak for us and we surely should no longer tolerate his continued meddling in Abiriba affairs even to the extent of deciding for us who to invite to traditional ceremonies like burials or how to mourn our children. Enough!

Governor Okezie has retooled security forces in Abia to enhance their capacity to fight crimes such as kidnapping and armed robbery. In one year he has donated more than 30 vehicles to the police and the military, fully fitted with communication gadgets. In addition to that, he is strengthening community policing through the expansion and retraining of the state vigilante services. Just weeks ago he approved the recruitment of additional 7540 able bodied youths to join the service and work with the police to safeguard Abia communities…

We are not the only state facing the challenge of kidnapping and armed robbery but our Governor has shown determination to tackle the situation and safeguard lives and properties within his constitutional powers. Even states in the north like Kano and Kaduna are witnessing upsurge in kidnap cases. Yet Governor Okezie considers the menace of armed robbery and kidnapping major threats to his economic growth agenda especially with regards to Aba as the commercial hub of Abia and the South East. While he will continue to support security agents to confront and defeat the criminals he is also embarking on aggressive job creation drive to ensure that our youths are gainfully employed and unavailable to be used as thugs or sent on kidnap missions by desperately sore politicians.

Okezie’s job creation efforts include launching an education for employment scheme aimed at training youths in appropriate skills and helping them to find jobs or become self employed. Private entrepreneurs like tailors and shoe makes are receiving material support and training to profitably improve their output and margins to enable them support and benefit from the governor’s aggressive promotion of made in Abia goods. He is also supporting the resuscitation of moribund factories like Aba Glass Industry and Golden Guinea breweries to enable those plants add more jobs. An ongoing Intra-city transport scheme is currently delivering over 120 taxis to Abia youths with more expected in the coming months.

In just one year he has added nearly 20,000 new jobs. including private sector jobs.

In summary the approach of Governor Okezie to meeting the challenge of armed robbery and kidnapping includes supporting security agents to do their jobs in a smarter and more efficient way as well as providing jobs for our youths to remove them from the temptation of engaging in crimes. Otti’s disruptive rhetoric, including categorizing criminals into APGA and PDP members, is to say the least unfortunate and unhelpful. When criminals are arrested Otti’s vuvuzelas quickly allege political persecution as if there are people wearing APGAor PDP badges on their foreheads while committing crimes.

Otti really needs to snap out of his electoral defeat mode quickly.

It should be recalled that after his final defeat at the Supreme Court, Mr Otti rejected the olive branch extended to him by Governor Ikpeazu who also invited him to come and join hands with him to further develop Abia. Just like he rejected post-election overtures by many well meaning Abians to settle electoral disputes outside the courts and avoid unnecessary distraction of the new Governor with litigations after the supplementary Governorship polls.

In case he does not know, many in Abia readily point to Otti’s propaganda driven legal challenge as potentially distracting to the new Government that had to endure nine months of frivolous litigations while also delivering dividends to Abians. Why should it be same Otti that will be raving and ranting about wasted first year when he practically attempted to waste 9 months of Governor Okezie’s one year?

I make bold to state that if Otti had spent just 30% of the money he was wasting on litigations from tribunal to Supreme Court in building just one factory at Aba many of our youths would have been gainfully employed. It is a shame that to date Otti does not have a single job creating investment in Abia yet he rushes to whine about high crime rate in a state he only visits with retinue of paid security agents armed to the teeth, for only political purposes.

Where in Abia is Otti’s job creating business or philanthropic works located?
Otti may not have used the new roads constructed by Okezie but he should at least ask those living at Aba. They will tell him that Ukaegbu, Ehere, Umuojima/MCC, Owerri, Omni, Ochefu, Umuocham, Kamalu, Umuola, Umule, East, SDA off Udeagbala, MCC, Umuocham/Umule express link road, Adazi, Tonimas off PH Express, Park, St Michael’s, and many other roads have been reconstructed with gutters and street lighting for at least 18 roads. They will also tell him about extensive drainage desilting works that saved Aba from flooding during the heavy rains of last year as well as the dredging of waterside to receive more storm water.

If Otti comes down from the air and visit Abia today he will see that Governor Okezie is actively working on 67 roads with 28 fully delivered while others like Abiriba Ring road, Idima-Abam and Arochukwu roads are partially realized. Road 2 at world bank Umuahia, Uwalaka, Kaduna, Umuwaya, Dozie way and other roads have been delivered at Umuahia while Aba Road-Ubakala junction dualization is ongoing alongside 4 other roads at Umuahia.

Contrary to Otti’s propaganda and lies, Governor Okezie is even working on more roads, by kilometers, in Abia North where Otti is from than at Aba. So what exactly is his beef?
As further proof of his lying nature, Otti alleged that a report from the Debt Management Office (DMO) placed Abia as the most indebted state with N78b loans. For a supposed first class graduate, that is shocking. NO SUCH REPORT EXISTS FROM DMO. What our propaganda challenged sore loser may have been referring to was a Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report that individual borrowing by private businessmen in Abia was N78b.

How does that translate to Governor Okezie exposing Abia to debt of N78b? How are we even sure Otti’s personal loans are not part of the reported amount?
It is unfortunate that Otti has refused to snap out of his sore losing mode to join hands with Governor Ikpeazu and contribute in a more meaningful way to Abia’s development. It also beats my imagination that Otti who has been intimately involved and acted as unofficial financial adviser to the Governors of Abia from 1999 to 2015 is the same person railing against those Governors and Governments. He needs to come clean with common Abians and tell us what exactly he was doing for our former Governors that he is now calling names because one of them listened to the cry of Abians for equity in power distribution.

Who exactly are those elders being paid N1m monthly as alleged by Otti? Abians want names and evidence. Not campaign style noise. Elections are over and if Otti dares to name the elders we will haunt them down and recover our money. We don’t need Otti’s empty court threat. Give us names and figures or shut up sir.

Truth be told, revenue to Abia State from federal allocations have dropped by more than 50%. Before Dr Okezie came to power the state was receiving around N4b monthly with a wage bill of about N2.5b. Just last month the state received N1.7b as allocation. It is not peculiar to Abia and even oil rich Rivers state recently applied for bailout loan of N10b to enable it pay salaries after receiving N3.5b as allocation. Niger state and more than 28 other states have declared their inability to pay salaries because of dwindling allocations. In case Otti does not know, Nigeria is in dire economic straits such that even the federal government is complaining about salary load.

For the avoidance of doubt, salary payments are currently being rotated by the state government such that one group will be behind by a month before the next allocation. Is it Otti’s position that the government should use the N1.7b allocation and add whatever is received as IGR and pay salaries alone then forget every other responsibility of government? If that be the case, thank God we didn’t make the mistake of voting for Otti.
I know for a fact that nothing gives Dr Ikpeazu more sleepless nights than the challenge of paying salaries every 25th as he promised during the campaigns. But then when he made that promise Abia’s financials were healthier. It is on record that under pressure in December 2015 with allocation of about N2b Dr Okezie ensured that workers were paid by 23rd of December.

If Otti had obtained published figures on allocations to Abia he possibly would have been asking how Governor Okezie is keeping Abia state going with new projects being commissioned almost weekly without substantially increasing the tax burden of Abians, particularly the long suffering traders at Aba. May be Otti would have opted to impose new levies on the traders to fund his champagne lifestyle.

How does one separate workers at a local government into PDP and APGA outside the fertile imaginative minds of a sore loser? What exactly did Alex mean when he wrote that “Umuahia South LGA, workers who are accused of being anti PDP have been denied their salaries for about 7 months as against their pro PDP counterparts who are owed for only about 2 months. Some of them have been given punitive transfers to hostile local governments to encourage them to resign.”

In the first place civil servants are expected to maintain political neutrality and as far as I know voting in Nigeria is via secret ballot. All the LGAs in Abia have PDP members as transition heads. How does one identify individuals who voted for APGA or PDP prior to preparation of pay roll? Does that not confirm the fact of Otti’s patronage of gossip news sources? That Otti has tried to politicize every single activity in Abia should now be clear to all. Just like his goons will rush to claim that a captured kidnapper was arrested by soldiers because he is an APGA member even when the man confessed to his crime.

If indeed Governor Okezie is punishing those who didn’t vote for him what is he doing working on Aba, Abiriba and Arochukwu roads? I suppose Otti’s unfounded rants should provide a window to how he would have governed Abia if God had allowed his elaborate rigging scheme to work. Fortunately for Abians, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu is not Alex Otti. He does not even care about who voted for him or not hence his offer of olive branch to the defeated Otti to come and join him in growing Abia. Apparently Otti’s malicious mindset prevented him from taking up the offer.

Otti and his band of social media desperadoes who aptly tagged him “Abia’s Facebook Governor” should come down to Abia and pay taxes so we can have more money for development projects. Spreading distracting lies against Okezie’s administration is not what Abia needs now. Even those who voted for Otti at Aba are celebrating that God gave Abia Governor Ikpeazu.

This same clique of desperadoes were running round Abuja whispering lies to everyone who cared to listen to the effect that Governor Ikpeazu was sponsoring IPOB protests. When that failed they resorted to recruiting paid social medial activists to tarnish the governor’s image through the malicious claim that Governor Ikpeazu ordered the unfortunate incident at National High School involving IPOB members and security agents. Haba Otti!

While the Governor and his team may have decided to ignore the malicious lies of Otti, his latest concoctions appear over the cliff, even for a man known to hug gossip and form opinions from such dark sources.

I urge all Nigerians, especially young impressionable Abians at social media, to totally ignore the malicious ranting of Alex Otti. If anything, put him to task and ask him to point out any public comment he made, for instance, to demand the release of Nnamdi Kanu or the location of his employment generating business in Abia. Otti and his supporters who sought to make political capital out of the Biafra agitations by suggesting that Governor Okezie was sponsoring IPOB do not deserve your listening ears. They are liars of Abia State.

On his claims regarding bailout funds, that should not be surprising coming from a man who lives in the air, Lagos or Abuja but was only interested in buying the governorship of Abia as a trophy. Everyone in Abia is aware that the state collected N14.1b bailout loan and Governor Okezie Ikpeazu promptly constituted a committee that included representatives of NLC, TUC and others to disburse the funds. The committee concluded its assignment and produced a report detailing how they disbursed the loan. Otti and his gang must have seen that report, if indeed they have genuine interest in the affairs of the state. ICPC applauded Governor Ikpeazu for the transparent way he handled the bailout disbursement and Otti can ask ICPC for their report.

If the orchestrated lies and propaganda by Otti and his social media recruits are part of the plot to “remove Okezie before December 2016” as per his Etche field declaration it will surely fail like other desperate plots by the same band of desperadoes. Power belongs to God and He has chosen Dr Okezie over Otti. The earlier Otti and his co-travelers realize that the better for Abia.

It is not the fault of Dr Ikpeazu or his supporters that Otti is currently out of job. Rather than Otti and his goons attacking the Governor and the current commissioner of Finance, he may wish to reach out directly to the Governor to lobby for the office of the commissioner of Finance in Abia State. If he is better qualified than the incumbent he just might be hired.

It is time for well meaning Abians to ask Alex Otti to stop maliciously distracting Governor Okezie Ikpeazu. The Governor and his team have been transparent in letting Abians know the true state of our finance, including monthly information on Federal allocation to the state. If a state that was previously receiving an average of N4b monthly is receiving N1.7b in the month of April 2016, Abians expect adjustments in expenditure patterns. Such a situation calls for support to the government and understanding. Not desperate distractions.

Those who have Otti’s ears should tell him that it is high time he starts making tangible contributions to Abia’s development instead of offering maliciously polarizing commentaries on Abia affairs. We want to read about his job creating business investment in Abia or acts of philanthropy aimed at supporting common folks of Abia. And while at it please ask Otti the same question Sean Covey asked years ago: “Isn’t it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?”

Governor Okezie certainly has not done everything there is to do in Abia but real Abians know that he has done some things and he is certainly on track.

John Okiyi Kalu wrote from Aba
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @johnokiyikalu