FAAC Is Not Charity: Why the Cubana Chief Priest Narrative Fails History, Law, Economics, Politics, and Common Sense
Let us begin where serious thinking begins: with first principles. In a federation, a state does not survive on presidential pocket money. It survives on law. Abia’s monthly share from the Federation Account is not a favor from President Tinubu to Governor Alex Otti. It is a constitutional and statutory entitlement distributed through the Federation Account Allocation Committee under Nigeria’s revenue-sharing framework. RMAFC describes this as a constitution-based allocation system, and Nigeria’s revenue allocation law establishes FAAC for that purpose. So the attempt to portray Abia’s revenues as some private benevolence from the President is not just inaccurate; it is civically corrosive. It trains citizens to think like subjects waiting for generosity, instead of citizens protected by law.
That is the legal error. The political error is even worse. In political science, federalism exists precisely to prevent this kind of patronage myth. A governor may cooperate with the President, negotiate with the centre, align on policy, or benefit from a better macro-fiscal climate. All of that is normal. But cooperation is not servitude, and allocation is not alms. If every state receiving FAAC must pretend the President is personally “funding” it, then federalism collapses into monarchy. That is not democracy. That is feudal thinking dressed in social-media confidence.
History is even less kind to the anti-Otti thesis. The Geometric Power story did not begin under Tinubu, and anyone who knows that history should be embarrassed to suggest otherwise. Channels Television reported Otti’s account that the Aba Geometric project had been in the works since 2004 and faced years of delays due to gas-supply issues, regulatory bottlenecks, and distribution complications. Afreximbank and Geometric Power likewise describe the project as a long-gestation, integrated independent power venture serving the Aba ring-fenced zone. This is not a 2024 or 2025 invention. It is a 20-year infrastructure saga.
And Alex Otti’s fingerprints on that story are not invented after the fact. Otti himself has publicly stated that while at First Bank he secured approval for an $85 million facility for Geometric Power, and that after moving to Diamond Bank he helped restructure and continue the funding to completion. That account is set out in his own speech, “The Power to Dream,” and echoes the public narrative around the project’s financing history. So if one is being honest, the argument is not whether Otti suddenly discovered Abia’s power question because Tinubu became President. The record points the other way: Otti was part of the financial rescue architecture of Geometric years before he became governor and years before Tinubu entered Aso Rock.
This is where philosophy enters the matter. There is an old difference between cause and occasion. The occasion of a project’s commissioning is not the same thing as the cause of its existence. Tinubu’s administration may have presided over the federal context in which commissioning occurred, and Vice-President Shettima inaugurated the plant in February 2024. But to leap from that occasion to the conclusion that “everything Otti is doing is funded by Tinubu” is a category mistake. It confuses ceremony with authorship, event with origin, and protocol with causation. Philosophically, that is lazy reasoning. Politically, it is propaganda.
Economically, the argument is just as thin. States do not run on one source of finance. They rely on FAAC allocations, internally generated revenue, grants, borrowing frameworks, counterpart funding, capital planning, and the efficiency—or waste—of expenditure. A president can influence the macro environment, yes. But it is still the governor’s job to prioritize, allocate, negotiate, and execute. That is why two states can receive federal allocations under the same President and still perform very differently. Competence matters. Sequencing matters. Fiscal discipline matters. Administrative seriousness matters.
To erase all of that and reduce governance to “the President gave him money” is beer-parlour economics.
Common sense should end the matter even faster. If federal allocations alone automatically produced results, then every state should look equally transformed under the same federation. They do not. Some governors burn cash and manufacture excuses. Others convert statutory revenues into roads, health centres, energy infrastructure, schools, and payroll credibility”. That difference is called governance. So when Abians point to progress under Otti, the proper argument is not to say “money came from the federation” as though that settles everything. The proper question is: what did he do with what constitutionally came to Abia? That is where Otti’s defenders have a real case. Because the state can point to visible works, a revived power ecosystem in Aba, and a political culture increasingly organized around delivery rather than drift.
Street sense says the same thing in rougher language. If somebody is trying to convince you that your state’s constitutional allocation is a personal gift from one man in Abuja, he is not informing you; he is trying to shrink your mind. He wants you grateful for what already belongs to you by law. He wants you to stop judging competence and start worshipping access. That is how patronage politics survives—by making people forget the difference between entitlement and charity. But Abians are not children waiting for pocket money. They are citizens in a federation.
Now to the harder political truth: this narrative is not accidental. It is useful because it tries to steal authorship from Otti. It says, in effect, “Do not credit the governor’s choices, systems, or persistence; credit the President alone.” That is a very old political trick. When an opponent is gaining legitimacy through visible governance, you do not always deny the visible. Sometimes you reassign the credit. You tell the public that the person they are praising is merely a beneficiary of someone else’s power. It is a strategy of symbolic dispossession. And it deserves to be called what it is: dishonest.
None of this requires hostility toward President Tinubu. A governor can acknowledge the federal centre, work with it, and still retain ownership of his own state-level performance. Tinubu did not create FAAC. Tinubu did not originate Geometric Power. Tinubu did not sit in First Bank or Diamond Bank pushing through Geometric financing in 2010–2014. Tinubu’s government did, however, preside over the political moment in which commissioning occurred. That is an occasion worth noting, not an excuse for historical theft.
So the thesis collapses on every front. Historically, it ignores the long arc of the Geometric project. Legally, it misrepresents constitutional allocation as presidential generosity. Economically, it confuses federation revenue with personal patronage. Politically, it tries to reassign authorship from a governor to a president for convenience. Philosophically, it commits a category error between cause and occasion. Common-sense wise, it insults citizens by asking them to celebrate dependency instead of understanding federalism. And by street sense, it is a hustle—an attempt to sell inferiority to people who should know better.
The stronger, cleaner position is this: President Tinubu did not “put Abia on feeding bottle.” Abia receives what the law entitles it to receive. Governor Alex Otti is then judged by what he does with that space. On Geometric Power in particular, the historical record gives him standing no propagandist can erase. Before the office, before the title, before the microphone, he was already in the room where part of Abia’s energy future was being rescued. That is not spin. That is record.
That is why the smarter conclusion is not noisy at all. It is simple: cooperation with the centre is good; surrendering the truth is not. Abia’s money is Abia’s right. Otti’s role in Abia’s power story is historically grounded. And the lie that everything he is doing is merely a presidential handout deserves not applause, but dismantling.
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
