EKE O. AKO: WHEN ONE FAMILY HOLIDAY BECOMES AN “ABIA DEVELOPMENT INDEX” 😂
Engr. Eke O. Ako, this latest intervention deserves attention—not because it is a rigorous assessment of Abia State, but because it is an almost perfect example of how one man’s personal experience can be dressed up as statewide development analysis.
You brought your children home, travelled from Abuja to your village, observed conditions around your immediate community, and from that family experience effectively pronounced judgment on Abia.
Very emotional.
Very touching.
But, sir, A FAMILY CHRISTMAS VISIT IS NOT A DEVELOPMENT SURVEY. 😂
You are publicly identified as an Abia-born civil engineer based in Scotland who has repeatedly criticised successive Abia administrations. That makes your views legitimate contributions to public debate. It does not magically convert the experience of your children during one visit into a statistically representative assessment of 17 LGAs.
- “MY CHILDREN CAME TO ABIA…”
Wonderful.
But how exactly did we move from:
“My children visited my village”
to:
“Therefore, this is the condition of Abia State”?
😂😂😂
Was this a household survey?
How many communities were sampled?
How many wards?
How many LGAs?
What was your sampling frame?
What was the control group?
What indicators were measured?
Or has “my children were disappointed” become a new econometric estimator?
At this rate, National Bureau of Statistics should close office and simply ask every Christmas visitor how the road to his ancestral compound looked.
- “ABUJA HAD ELECTRICITY, ROADS AND BASIC AMENITIES.”
Engr. Ako, Abuja is the Federal Capital Territory.
Comparing Abuja casually with one rural community in Isiala-Ngwa North and presenting the contrast as some devastating revelation about Abia is analytical acrobatics.
If your children drove through Maitama and then entered a rural village, congratulations—you have discovered the urban-rural infrastructure gap, something development economists have been studying for decades. 😂
The relevant question is not whether every village in Abia today looks like Abuja.
The serious questions are:
What was inherited? What has changed? What projects are ongoing? What are the measurable trends in roads, health, education, water, power and public finance?
That is analysis.
“My children saw Abuja before my village” is storytelling.
- “THERE WAS NO ELECTRICITY.”
If the electricity situation in your community is poor, raise it.
If residents have been without supply for years, document it.
But perhaps a civil engineer based in Scotland should know that Nigeria’s electricity chain involves generation, transmission and distribution, with distribution companies playing a central role in retail supply.
So before hanging every failed transformer around the Governor’s neck, identify:
Who owns the network?
What distribution company serves the community?
What exactly failed?
Has government intervened?
What projects are underway?
ENGINEERING FIRST. POLITICS SECOND.
Otherwise, Scotland may demand the return of that engineering certificate. 😂
- “THERE WAS NO PIPE-BORNE WATER.”
Fair question.
Now provide the serious follow-up:
What water infrastructure existed there before May 29, 2023?
When was it last functional?
What was its condition under previous administrations?
What intervention has been budgeted or commenced?
That would make the criticism useful.
But apparently the methodology is now:
Arrive village → open tap → no water → Alex Otti has failed.
😂
Peer review will be very interesting.
- “OUR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS WERE BAD.”
Again, document the schools.
Name them.
Show their condition.
Ask whether they are among schools already renovated, currently being renovated, budgeted for intervention, or untouched.
That is how public accountability works.
Nobody serious argues that every school in Abia became Eton College immediately Governor Otti took office.
The relevant issue is the direction, scale and verifiable progress of intervention.
A government can be criticised for what remains undone without pretending that what has already been done does not exist.
- THE MOST INTERESTING PART: ONE MAN’S EXPERIENCE BECOMES STATEWIDE EVIDENCE
Engr. Eke O. Ako, you routinely demand data from government.
Excellent.
Then kindly extend the same intellectual discipline to yourself.
You cannot demand audited figures from government on Monday and submit “my children visited home” as your own dataset on Sunday.
😂😂😂
Sample size: one family.
Principal investigator: Daddy.
Research assistants: the children.
Study area: road to the village.
Instrument: eyesight.
Methodology: disappointment.
Conclusion: Abia has collapsed.
Wonderful research!
- AND THEN COME THE POLITICAL “COLLABORATORS”
This is where the performance becomes even more entertaining.
A man presenting himself as the lonely, independent, fearless voice of accountability somehow keeps finding himself in the same political conversation with personalities associated with the governments of yesterday.
Public reporting has, for example, repeatedly paired your criticism of the Otti administration with that of former Abia Finance Commissioner Obinna Oriaku, while the PDP itself has publicly amplified both sets of criticisms.
That does not by itself invalidate your arguments.
But it creates a perfectly legitimate question:
If yesterday’s governance actors are now useful witnesses in your prosecution of today’s government, where was this generous assessment of their expertise when the conditions you now complain about were being created?
😂
You cannot prosecute the present for inherited decay and simultaneously parade architects, occupants or defenders of yesterday’s system as expert witnesses without expecting somebody to notice the irony.
- THEN THERE IS SCOTLAND… AH, SCOTLAND! 😂
Oga Eke O. Ako, you invoke Scotland so often that one might think Glasgow was constructed through Facebook posts written from Umuahia.
Scotland did not become Scotland because Scots relocated permanently to Abia and sent angry essays home.
SCOTLAND WAS BUILT, MAINTAINED AND IMPROVED OVER GENERATIONS BY PEOPLE WHO LIVED THERE, WORKED THERE, PAID TAXES THERE, BUILT INSTITUTIONS THERE, CONTESTED IDEAS THERE AND ACCEPTED RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR SOCIETY.
So since Scotland is your recurring benchmark, perhaps borrow the most important lesson from Scotland:
COME DOWN.
Come and live here.
Bring the engineering expertise.
Build a firm.
Employ Abia youths.
Adopt that primary school.
Design the community water system.
Help solve the electricity problem.
Develop housing.
Invest in agriculture.
Train engineers.
Build something.
Then criticise from the construction site every evening—we will even bring you a microphone. 😂
Because development is not a spectator sport.
YOU CANNOT LIVE IN THE SCOTLAND THAT SCOTS BUILT AND MAKE A CAREER OF EXPLAINING TO PEOPLE LIVING IN ABIA WHY ABIA HAS NOT YET BECOME SCOTLAND.
At some point, sir, bring your shovel.
- YOUR CHILDREN “SAW THEIR OWN KIND” — GOOD. NOW HELP BUILD THEIR OWN HOME
That sentence should actually produce a different conclusion.
If your children felt a special sense of belonging in Nigeria, wonderful.
Then the logical response should not merely be another Facebook prosecution.
It should be:
What can I contribute to make this place better for them?
Those of us who insist that Abia must improve should all ask that question—government supporters, opponents and diaspora critics alike.
Criticism has value.
But criticism becomes particularly easy when the critic enjoys infrastructure elsewhere while sending daily invoices of disappointment to those trying to rebuild at home.
- FINALLY, NOBODY SAYS OTTI HAS TURNED EVERY ABIA VILLAGE INTO EDINBURGH
There are still bad roads.
There are communities requiring electricity interventions.
There are schools needing rehabilitation.
There are water challenges.
There is poverty.
There is enormous work ahead.
That is precisely why Abia needs serious scrutiny.
But serious scrutiny requires evidence, baselines, context, comparable indicators and intellectual consistency—not converting a family visit into the Ako Index of Abia Development. 😂
So, Engr. Eke O. Ako, continue criticising.
Ask hard questions.
Government should answer legitimate questions.
But please understand something:
YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IS EVIDENCE OF YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. IT IS NOT, BY ITSELF, EVIDENCE OF THE CONDITION OF AN ENTIRE STATE.
And the next time Scotland enters the discussion, remember:
THE SCOTS DID NOT DEVELOP SCOTLAND BY SITTING IN ABIA AND POSTING ABOUT HOW TERRIBLE SCOTLAND WAS.
They lived there.
They worked there.
They invested there.
They built there.
OGA, COME DOWN. COME AND HELP BUILD ABIA.
The Facebook Ministry of Works cannot construct one kilometre of road. 😂😂😂
