ABIA, LISTEN CAREFULLY. THIS IS ABOUT MEMORY, DIRECTION, AND DEFENCE OF REFORM.
Abians, address yourselves with honesty. States do not fall overnight; they rot when citizens forget who wrecked them and then clap for the wreckers. The loudest attacks you hear today are not courage—they are panic. Panic of those whose era of shortcuts is ending.
Let us be clear and factual. Orji Uzor Kalu had full opportunity—as Governor and now as a long-serving Senator—to transform Abia. The record of 1999–2007 is not opinion; it is lived history: infrastructure collapse, salary arrears, urban decay, and institutional neglect. Aba did not become a national metaphor for abandonment by accident. Abians remember.
It is also public record that Senator Kalu was convicted by a Federal High Court in 2019 for fraud relating to Abia State funds and sentenced to prison, before the conviction was later set aside by the Supreme Court on jurisdictional grounds, not on a declaration that the facts never occurred. That distinction matters in public ethics. History does not reset because someone shouts.
Now contrast that with Alex Otti. In less than three years, Abians have seen roads long written off reopened, salary regularisation replacing years of arrears, budgets tied to documentation, and a governance style that insists on systems over patronage. This is why the noise has increased. Reform replaces shortcuts; those who thrived in disorder feel exposed.
Governor Otti is resisted not because of “media,” but because the old playbook no longer works: no ballot snatching, no cash-and-chaos politics, no ethnic baiting, no fear-driven governance. Process, records, and institutions are returning. That is the real disruption.
Abians, learn from others. In Burkina Faso, when external pressure and internal sabotage circled Ibrahim Traoré, ordinary people stood in front of their reformer—not with violence, but with civic unity and moral clarity—to say no return to looting. That lesson is universal: reform survives when citizens defend systems and refuse to be emotionally rented by those who already had their turn and failed.
This is not about personalities. It is about direction. Abia has tried disorder. Abia knows what collapse looks like. Abia now recognises structure—and will not return to ruins disguised as experience.
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
