TWO LONG-TERM ROADMAPS, TWO GOVERNANCE PHILOSOPHIES: WHAT ABIA LEARNED FROM IKPEAZU’S PLAN — AND WHY OTTI’S 25-YEAR STRATEGY IS STRUCTURALLY DIFFERENT
Long-term development plans are not unusual in governance. What distinguishes success from failure is not the length of the document, the cost of consultants, or the beauty of launch ceremonies, but whether the plan is institutionally embedded, legally binding, fiscally aligned, and execution-driven. Abia State has now witnessed two such long-horizon plans within a short span, and the comparison raises legitimate questions that deserve answers rooted in facts, not sentiment.
In 2017–2018, the Abia State Government under Governor Okezie Ikpeazu unveiled what was described as a 30-Year Abia Development Plan, produced by external consultants and presented as a framework for successive administrations. The plan was widely reported in the Nigerian press and formally launched with fanfare. The Guardian reported that the plan was intended to reposition Abia’s economy through industrialisation, SME growth, and infrastructure development, projecting Abia as an emerging manufacturing hub over three decades (The Guardian, 2017: https://guardian.ng/news/ikpeazu-unveils-30-year-abia-development-plan/).
Similarly, Vanguard and Daily Trust covered the launch, noting that the state government committed hundreds of millions of naira to consultancy, stakeholder engagements, and documentation, with figures reported in the range of ₦500 million for preparation and advisory services (Vanguard, 2018: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/03/abia-launches-30-year-development-plan/).
However, beyond the announcements, three structural weaknesses quickly became evident.
First, the Ikpeazu roadmap was never domesticated into law. It remained a policy document without statutory force. The Abia State House of Assembly did not pass a Development Planning Act to bind annual budgets, MDAs, or successor governments to the roadmap. This omission violated a basic principle of development planning highlighted by the World Bank, which notes that long-term plans fail when they are not legally integrated into budgetary and institutional frameworks (World Bank, Beyond the Annual Budget, 2016: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/governance).
Second, the plan was not aligned with Abia’s Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). BudgIT’s analysis of Abia budgets between 2018 and 2022 shows no clear mapping between capital allocations and the priorities listed in the 30-year plan (BudgIT State of States Reports, 2019–2022: https://yourbudgit.com). Projects appeared ad hoc, politically reactive, and disconnected from any long-horizon sequencing logic.
Third, and most damaging, no delivery institution was created to drive execution. Unlike Lagos State’s Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget or Rwanda’s National Implementation and Coordination Unit, Abia under Ikpeazu had no permanent delivery unit with KPIs, dashboards, or sanctions for non-performance. As BusinessDay observed in a 2021 review of state development plans, Abia’s long-term plan “suffered from presentation without institutional muscle” (BusinessDay, 2021: https://businessday.ng).
The result was predictable. By 2023, independent assessments showed Abia lagging in industrial output, internally generated revenue, healthcare infrastructure, and capital project completion despite having a “30-year roadmap” on paper (National Bureau of Statistics, State GDP Reports: https://nigerianstat.gov.ng).
This historical record provides the necessary context for evaluating the new 25-Year Abia Development Roadmap signed into law by Governor Alex Otti in 2025.
Unlike its predecessor, the Otti roadmap has been enacted into law, not merely unveiled. According to official government disclosures, the roadmap is anchored in a Development Planning and Implementation framework that legally binds annual budgets, sectoral strategies, and public investment decisions to the long-term plan (Abia State Government Gazette, 2025: https://abiastate.gov.ng).
More importantly, the roadmap is sequenced, not aspirational. It is structured into short-, medium-, and long-term phases that correspond to political cycles, with measurable milestones every four years. This mirrors international best practice identified by the OECD, which stresses that successful long-term plans must be broken into politically realistic implementation windows to survive leadership transitions (OECD, Strategic Foresight for Public Policy, 2020: https://www.oecd.org).
The fiscal architecture is also different. The 25-year roadmap is explicitly tied to Abia’s MTEF, capital ceilings, and debt sustainability thresholds, with private-sector participation built into project design rather than added rhetorically. This approach reflects the “de-risking state” model discussed by Mariana Mazzucato in The Entrepreneurial State, where government focuses on fixing coordination failures rather than running everything directly (Mazzucato, 2013).
Critically, the Otti administration has created delivery mechanisms to support the plan, including sector-specific reform teams and performance tracking linked to budget releases. This responds directly to the execution vacuum that crippled the Ikpeazu roadmap.
The question, therefore, is not whether Abia has “too many plans.” It is whether Abia has learned from the failure of planning without institutions. The evidence suggests that the new roadmap is less about producing another glossy document and more about correcting historical design flaws: legal weakness, fiscal misalignment, and absence of delivery capacity.
Scepticism is healthy in a democracy, especially given Nigeria’s history of abandoned plans. But equating the two roadmaps as identical “money-making ventures” ignores documented differences in law, structure, and governance design. As the African Development Bank notes, development plans fail not because they are long, but because “they are not owned by institutions that outlive administrations” (AfDB, Long-Term Development Planning in Africa, 2019: https://www.afdb.org).
Abia’s challenge now is not drafting another plan in 2031, but protecting this one from political reversal. That test will depend not on slogans or consultants, but on whether the institutions being built today endure beyond Governor Otti’s tenure.
History will judge which roadmap was merely announced — and which one was actually implemented.
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
