A Jurisprudential Anatomization of Political Atavism
The cacophony emanating from the purveyors of yesterday’s malaise, those erstwhile lords of our collective patrimony, constitutes a veritable symphony of intellectual bankruptcy. Their dissenting murmurs against the Otti administration, founded on the quicksand of spurious allegations regarding fiscal management, have been rendered not merely obsolete but judicially preposterous by the recent encomiums from the European Union and UNICEF. These global arbiters of probity have undertaken a forensic audit of Abia’s budgeting ethos and returned a verdict of res ipsa loquitur—the thing speaks for itself. While the opposition engages in a pre-Socratic level of epistemological inquiry, unable to distinguish between phantom allocations and tangible allocations, the government is busy architecting a Platonic ideal of a transparent polis.
The Phantom Pains of Dethroned Kleptocrats
One must engage in a philosophical interrogation of this phenomenon: what is the ontological status of an opposition whose very raison d’être is negated by empirically verified progress? They are Hegel’s “unhappy consciousness” made manifest, wailing at the gates of a state they can no longer plunder. Their critique is a study in bad faith, an existential nausea born from their sudden irrelevance. They speak of “huge allocations” as if money, in se, were a panacea, ignoring the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality. Under their maladministration, allocations were not funds for development but mere potentialities for private aggrandizement. Now, under Otti, the actualization of these funds into roads, schools, and hospitals has induced a collective psychosis among the old guard—the phantom pains of amputated illicit cash flows.
An Historical Interlude: From Arochukwu to Umuahia, A Legacy of Prudence
Let us not forget, this is not an alien philosophy being imposed on our soil. The governance principle of transparency and accountability finds its deep roots in the old Eastern Region, where fiscal discipline and infrastructural ambition were the cornerstones. The great Zik and his contemporaries understood that the people’s treasury was a sacred trust. They built the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, the Niger Bridge, and a thriving industrial base not with magic, but with meticulous, program-based budgeting. Dr. Alex Otti is, therefore, not an aberration but a renaissance—a return to that golden era of pragmatic and visionary leadership. The current opposition, by contrast, are the political descendants of the reactionary forces that have historically opposed progress, the very reason our region’s potential was stifled for decades. Otti is completing a historical arc that was violently interrupted.
Street-Level Epistemology: Why We Dey Laugh for Garage
But make we come down comot for all these big-big grammar talk am for vernacular wey everybody go hear. Wetin dey happen so tey? See, as dem dey for beer parlour dey yarn nonsense about “billions wey don vanish,” better people from oyibo land and UN don come see with their own eyes say our Governor no dey play ayoo-ayoo with our money. Dem don confirm say na “open chance” him dey run. So, we ask the agbata-ekee opposition: Wetin concern agbero with overload? Your time don pass! Your own na to dey look for which gutter the money wey una chop dey hide. The whole matter na pure jealousy because one competent person don show say governance no be by shakara and sharing akpu for night. Na now we know say budget fit transparent like pure water. Una don see am? So, instead to dey make noise, why una no go koro for corner dey learn how to count one to ten without stealing number seven?
Peroration: The Irreversible Dialectic of Progress
In the final Hegelian analysis, the thesis of entrenched graft has been met with the potent antithesis of Otti’s radical transparency. The synthesis, already unfolding before our very eyes, is a new Abia State, vindicated by the most stringent international benchmarks. The opposition, trapped in a pre-dialectical state of intellectual inertia, is left clutching at the straws of dead narratives. Theirs is a forlorn hope, a quixotic battle against the inexorable tide of history and good governance. The EU and UNICEF have not merely commended; they have certified the burial of an old, decadent order. Let the pallbearers, therefore, cease their lamentations and accept the finality of their interment. The people have moved on.
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
