ABIA’S FINANCES: WHY THE OTTI GOVERNMENT AND ITS SPOKESPERSONS DESERVE A FAIRER HEARING ON THE “NO BORROWING” DEBATE
There is a danger in discussing public finance with political slogans while ignoring dates, context and the precise words used by public officials.
Having looked more carefully at the statements made by Governor Alex Otti and the principal officers who have spoken for his administration, the fairer conclusion is that the Abia State Government has been substantially more measured, transparent and fiscally responsible than some of its critics concede.
The starting point must be chronology.
A government can truthfully say at a particular date that it has not yet drawn a new loan, and subsequently obtain approval for, sign or draw a development facility.
There is no contradiction unless somebody falsely claims that a later loan had already been drawn at the earlier date.
That distinction substantially defends Governor Alex Otti.
On Thursday, 7 November 2024, during a media parley in Umuahia, Otti said his administration had paid about ₦90 billion out of the approximately ₦191.2 billion liabilities it inherited and had “not borrowed a kobo.”
The statement was reported by Vanguard and Nigerian Tribune on 8 November 2024.
The crucial point is that Otti was describing the financial position of his administration as at that time.
Nothing in that November 2024 statement logically means that Abia could never thereafter borrow for infrastructure.
Indeed, Otti had consistently argued that if his administration eventually borrowed, the test would be whether the money was invested productively rather than consumed.
The same contextual defence applies even more strongly to Mike Akpara, who was then Commissioner for Finance.
On 3 April 2024, after the Abia State Executive Council meeting, Akpara addressed journalists in Umuahia over the settlement of pension arrears.
Punch reported that more than ₦9 billion had been deployed towards the arrears.
BusinessDay, on 4 April 2024, specifically reported Akpara’s explanation that the government did not borrow any money to finance that pension payment.
That was a narrowly framed and perfectly defensible statement.
Akpara did not say Abia State could never participate in a World Bank, African Development Bank or Islamic Development Bank programme.
He said the money used to settle that particular pension obligation was not borrowed.
There is an enormous difference between those propositions.
In fact, Akpara deserves credit for the maturity of that intervention.
Instead of merely celebrating the payment, he explained what was paid, why it was paid and the arrangement reached with the leadership of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners.
That is the kind of specificity public finance communication requires.
Prince Okey Kanu, Commissioner for Information, was also operating within the same communication architecture.
At that April 2024 post-Executive Council briefing, Kanu explained that a help desk had been established at the Ministry of Finance to deal with pensioners whose records presented problems.
He also explained that pensioners were henceforth expected to receive their monthly pensions alongside serving workers.
That is important.
Mature government communication is not merely about defending a headline number.
It is also about admitting that implementation can generate complaints and establishing a mechanism to correct them.
Ferdinand Ekeoma, Special Adviser to the Governor on Media and Publicity, also deserves a more balanced assessment than he has sometimes received.
At that same April 2024 briefing, Ekeoma insisted that the pension payments were verifiable and that the calculations and negotiations with pensioners had been properly handled.
He also acknowledged that some individuals had unresolved issues and explained that the Commissioner for Finance and Accountant-General were collating such cases.
That is not the conduct of an aide pretending that every government figure is beyond questioning.
Ekeoma’s later interventions on Abia’s debt also require context.
During the controversy over Abia’s 2025 second-quarter performance, Ekeoma responded to claims that the naira value of Abia’s external debt had risen dramatically.
He pointed to the collapse of the naira from roughly ₦460/$ before the Otti administration to around ₦1,550/$ and argued that a large part of the apparent increase in the naira value of legacy dollar debt reflected currency translation rather than a comparable amount of fresh cash borrowing.
On the central economics, he was right.
If a state owes $100 million, that liability is ₦46 billion at ₦460/$ but ₦155 billion at ₦1,550/$.
The state does not need to borrow another dollar for the naira value of that same liability to increase dramatically.
There is, however, an important technical qualification.
Abia’s dollar-denominated external debt itself also moved between reporting periods.
Therefore, exchange-rate depreciation cannot explain every movement in the underlying dollar stock.
But Ekeoma’s broader warning against treating every rise in the naira equivalent as automatic proof that an identical amount of fresh money had been borrowed remains economically sound.
His 18 July 2025 intervention is equally important.
Responding to criticism of the AfDB-linked project, Ekeoma pointed out that the infrastructure initiative itself predated the Otti administration.
His argument was that what the current government had done was to move a long-conceived project towards implementation.
That is a critical point which critics should not erase.
If a financing initiative was conceived years before Otti took office, but the present administration completed negotiations, satisfied conditions and brought the project to implementation, it is misleading to narrate the entire facility as though Governor Otti woke up one morning and impulsively decided to saddle Abia with foreign debt.
Then there is Ukoha Njoku Ukoha, Chief Press Secretary to the Governor.
Far from concealing the IsDB facility, Ukoha publicly announced it.
Following the Federal Executive Council meeting of Wednesday, 13 August 2025, Ukoha issued a statement explaining that the Federal Government had approved a $125 million Islamic Development Bank financing facility for the Abia State Integrated Infrastructure Development Project.
BusinessDay reported the statement on 14 and 15 August 2025, while Arise News reported it on 16 August 2025.
More importantly, Ukoha did not disguise the financing structure.
He publicly stated that the project had a total cost of approximately $263.8 million, consisting of:
$125 million — Islamic Development Bank
$100 million — African Development Bank
$15 million — Canada-Africa Development Bank arrangement
$23.8 million — Abia State counterpart funding
That is transparency, not concealment.
It would therefore be unfair to accuse the same government of secretly borrowing while citing information that the government’s own Chief Press Secretary openly released to journalists.
Governor Otti himself subsequently faced the issue directly.
On 18 August 2025, Vanguard reported Otti’s explanation during a media parley in Umuahia that the $125 million IsDB facility was a development facility and had nothing to do with religion.
More importantly for the fiscal debate, he pledged that the funds would be applied to the projects for which they were procured and defended borrowing tied to productive development.
That is a more mature position than the simplistic doctrine that borrowing is inherently bad.
Governments borrow.
Companies borrow.
Development banks exist precisely because some infrastructure has a useful life far longer than one annual budget cycle.
The responsible questions are the interest rate, tenor, grace period, foreign-exchange exposure, project return, procurement integrity and debt-service capacity.
By 2026, the Abia Government’s own language had evolved even more clearly in that direction.
On 11 July 2026, at a three-day Capacity Building Workshop on Public Debt and Financial Management in Umuahia, Finance Commissioner Uwaoma Ukandu stated that public debt was not inherently a burden but could be a strategic financial instrument when prudently acquired, carefully managed and productively invested.
He also stressed accurate debt data, risk assessment and forward-looking projections.
That is precisely the kind of statement one expects from a serious Finance Commissioner.
He was not pretending that debt does not exist.
He was teaching the proper distinction between reckless debt and developmental debt.
At the same event, the Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Emmanuel Emeruwa, put the matter even more plainly:
Governments borrow, but what matters is what they use the borrowed funds to accomplish.
That single statement considerably clarifies the entire controversy.
The Otti administration’s position should therefore not be caricatured as:
“Borrowing can never happen.”
Its evolving and more complete position is that Abia should first strengthen its finances, reduce legacy obligations, avoid borrowing for recurrent consumption and, where debt is used, tie it to productive infrastructure.
At the same July 2026 workshop, Dr K. O. Nwaigburu, General Manager of the Abia State Debt Management Office, explained that the administration had strengthened debt-management institutions, developed a Debt Management Policy Framework and updated its Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy.
He also presented the administration’s account that inherited obligations had been substantially reduced and emphasised more disciplined debt recording, reporting and sustainability analysis.
Whether one accepts every classification within the often-quoted ₦191.2 billion inherited-liability figure or prefers to separate DMO domestic debt, external debt, pensions, gratuities and contractor obligations, institutionalising debt management is unquestionably preferable to governing by opaque figures.
There is also external evidence that the broader fiscal-management story is not merely self-praise.
On 12 May 2026, during a visit by BudgIT Foundation, Abia State was publicly commended for moving from 17th to 4th in BudgIT’s state performance assessment within two years, with fiscal sustainability, transparency and accountability central to the discussion.
This does not mean that Abia’s finances must never be questioned.
They should be questioned relentlessly.
Loan drawdowns should be published.
Debt-service schedules should be disclosed.
Procurement should be scrutinised.
Citizens should know what portion of an approved facility has actually been drawn and what portion remains undisbursed.
But scrutiny must also be intellectually fair.
It is unfair to take Mike Akpara’s April 2024 statement that pension arrears were settled without borrowing and pretend that he was making a promise that Abia would never again access development finance.
It is unfair to take Alex Otti’s November 2024 statement that his government had not borrowed up to that point and use a facility approved in August 2025 to retrospectively declare the earlier statement false.
It is unfair to accuse Ukoha Njoku Ukoha of hiding borrowing when his own press statement publicly set out the $125 million IsDB facility and the full $263.8 million project structure.
It is unfair to dismiss Ferdinand Ekeoma’s exchange-rate argument when the depreciation of the naira undeniably multiplies the naira valuation of dollar debt, even though movements in the dollar principal should separately be acknowledged.
It is unfair to ignore Uwaoma Ukandu’s much more sophisticated formulation that debt can be a legitimate developmental instrument when responsibly acquired and productively deployed.
And it is unfair to ignore Prince Okey Kanu’s repeated willingness to explain government decisions, acknowledge implementation complaints and establish channels for correction.
The more defensible interpretation of the record is therefore this:
Alex Otti spoke truthfully about the administration’s borrowing position at the time he spoke.
Mike Akpara spoke specifically about the funding of pension arrears.
Ferdinand Ekeoma correctly highlighted the massive exchange-rate distortion in naira debt comparisons.
Ukoha Njoku Ukoha openly disclosed subsequent development financing.
Prince Okey Kanu consistently provided institutional explanations.
Uwaoma Ukandu later articulated the mature economic principle underpinning the administration’s approach: borrow prudently, manage professionally and invest productively.
That chronology matters.
So does maturity.
Abia does not need a government that shouts “never borrow” merely to win applause.
It needs a government that knows when not to borrow, when borrowing is justified, what it should finance, and how the resulting obligation will be repaid without mortgaging the future.
Judged by the public statements of these officials, that is increasingly the fiscal doctrine the Otti administration is articulating.
