THE LETTER THEY QUOTED, THE CONTEXT THEY HID
How Mischief Makers Are Distorting Alex Otti’s 2018 Position
There is a growing desperation among some opposition voices in Abia State. Unable to confront the present administration with facts, they have returned to an old letter written by Dr Alex Otti in 2018 and are now presenting it as evidence of hypocrisy.
But their argument collapses immediately the full context is restored.
The 2018 open letter was written during a period of deep humanitarian crisis in Abia State. At the time, civil servants were reportedly owed up to ten months’ salaries, while pensioners were owed as much as sixteen months’ pension arrears. Leave allowances and gratuities had also remained unpaid.
That was not an isolated payroll complaint.
It was not a temporary delay caused by verification.
It was not an administrative dispute affecting a small category of workers.
It was a prolonged and systemic failure that pushed families into hunger, sickness, debt and despair.
Dr Alex Otti’s letter was therefore not a political gimmick. It was a humanitarian appeal to a government that had allowed non-payment of salaries and pensions to become almost normal.
Today, the same people who presided over or defended that era are attempting to compare it with isolated complaints arising from payroll verification, inherited liabilities, administrative restructuring and efforts to clean up a deeply compromised salary system.
That comparison is dishonest.
No responsible government should ignore genuine complaints from workers, pensioners or corps members. Every verified entitlement should be paid promptly, and every legitimate grievance deserves attention. But fairness also demands that temporary administrative issues should not be falsely equated with years of systemic abandonment.
The opposition cannot erase the difference between a government that inherited mountains of arrears and one accused of deliberately creating and sustaining them.
They cannot pretend that payroll reform is the same as refusing to pay workers.
They cannot compare verification challenges with ten months of unpaid salaries and sixteen months of unpaid pensions.
They also cannot quote Alex Otti’s appeal for empathy while hiding the exact circumstances that produced that letter.
That is the mischief.
The letter condemned a government that had turned salary and pension arrears into a permanent feature of governance. It appealed for immediate intervention because lives were genuinely at risk.
Nothing in that letter prevents Governor Alex Otti from correcting legitimate complaints today. In fact, the principles contained in the letter demand that every genuine worker and pensioner must be treated with dignity, fairness and compassion.
However, those principles must not be weaponised through false equivalence.
Criticism is necessary in a democracy, but criticism must be truthful. Opposition politics cannot become an exercise in removing dates, hiding circumstances and twisting humanitarian appeals into propaganda.
Abians remember the past.
They remember the months without salaries.
They remember pensioners collapsing under the weight of unpaid entitlements.
They remember workers borrowing to survive while government promises remained unfulfilled.
That painful history cannot be rewritten by screenshots and selective quotations.
The letter they quoted remains valid.
But the context they hid exposes their desperation.
Facts matter. Context matters. Abians are wiser now.
#ContextMatters
#AbiaFacts
#StopTheMischief
