ABIA AT CHRISTMAS: A LEARNING STATE IN A SEASON OF NOISE, HOPE, AND RENEWAL
Christmas is traditionally a season of reflection, renewal, and truth-telling. It is a time when societies pause to separate noise from meaning, theatrics from substance, and promises from purpose. In Abia State, this Christmas arrives at a politically charged moment—one marked by fierce narratives, contested reforms, and an administration attempting to reshape institutions while navigating a hostile information environment. In that sense, Abia’s moment mirrors a global pattern far larger than local politics.
Across the world, Christmas 2025 is unfolding against a backdrop of deep concern about disinformation, political polarisation, and the weaponisation of narratives. From Europe’s enforcement of the Digital Services Act to debates in the United States about “lawfare” and Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), governments are grappling with how unchecked misinformation corrodes trust and sabotages reform. The European Commission has repeatedly warned that democracies now fail less from policy error than from “narrative capture” and institutional distrust. Abia’s current experience—where governance is daily tried in the court of social media rather than evaluated through data and delivery—fits squarely into this global reality.
Yet Christmas is also a season of rebuilding. International development thinking has shifted decisively toward subnational transformation, recognising that states and regions—not federal capitals—are now the frontline of economic renewal. The United States’ “Build Back Better Regions” agenda, India’s state-led industrial corridors, Rwanda’s city-driven reforms, and the UK’s ongoing levelling-up debate all underscore a shared lesson: development is increasingly local, institutional, and place-based. Governor Alex Otti’s emphasis on roads, health systems, industrial revival, and fiscal order situates Abia within this global movement, even as the state wrestles with legacy decay and high public expectations.
What distinguishes successful reformers in this season, however, is not the scale of announcements but the capacity to learn. This is the central argument of one of the most influential policy books circulating globally this year: How Nations Learn: Technological Learning, Industrial Policy, and the Future of Growth by Mariana Mazzucato and Rainer Kattel. Widely discussed at the World Economic Forum, within OECD policy labs, and across African development circles, the book argues that modern development is driven by “learning states”—governments that experiment, correct mistakes, build institutional memory, and protect reform trajectories from sabotage.
Christmas, in Christian tradition, is not about perfection but incarnation—ideas becoming flesh, promises becoming lived reality. Mazzucato and Kattel echo this logic in secular terms: reform succeeds when policies are embodied in institutions, not personalities. This insight is particularly relevant to Abia. The fiercest risk facing reformist administrations today is not opposition or criticism, but the failure to institutionalise gains so that they survive political transitions and information storms.
In this season of goodwill, Abia’s challenge is therefore not to win every argument, but to build systems that speak for themselves. Global experience shows that governments trapped in daily media defence exhaust political capital, while those that focus on transparency, data publication, and delivery quietly reshape narratives over time. Christmas reminds us that light does not argue with darkness—it reveals.
There is also a deeper Christmas lesson embedded in the human capital dimension of reform. International institutions—from the World Bank to the OECD—now emphasise that infrastructure without health, education, and trust produces hollow growth. Abia’s recognition in primary healthcare leadership and its renewed focus on social services align with this global orthodoxy. In the language of the season, roads may carry commerce, but healthy people sustain economies.
Ultimately, Christmas is about continuity—generations inheriting something stronger than what they met. The most enduring message from global reform literature is that reforms collapse when succession is ignored. Learning states prepare successors early, embed policy memory, and reduce dependence on individual charisma. For Abia, the true Christmas task is not merely celebrating current reforms, but ensuring they outlive their author.
As carols speak of peace amid turmoil and hope amid uncertainty, Abia’s story this Christmas is neither tragedy nor triumph alone. It is a state at a crossroads, reflecting a global moment: reform under pressure, governance under narrative assault, and institutions being tested in real time. Whether Abia emerges stronger will depend less on the volume of praise or criticism, and more on whether this season is used to deepen systems, protect learning, and anchor renewal beyond the present moment.
In that sense, Abia’s Christmas question is simple, timeless, and global: will reform remain a moment—or become a legacy?
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
