Reminiscence: Dousing Abia opposition’s baseless fear of political vendetta in 2027
- By Eagle Okoro
Gov. Alex Chioma Otti’s resolve in 2014 to quit his comfort zone as an accomplished financial expert and banker, having hit the peak of his career in the banking sector, in preference for the murky waters of Nigeria’s politics, left many, especially his relations, friends and close business allies, jolted and discomfited.
But the banker-turned politician would always defend his decision by quoting the famous theory propounded by French elder statesman, Charles de Gaulle, which states that “Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians”.
So, for him, the intolerable decay in infrastructure and gross underdevelopment of God’s Own State, occasioned by wasted 24 years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the saddle, called for such a drastic decision and action, if Abia and its good people must be liberated from the stranglehold of transactional, cash-and-carry politicians.
That was the huge sacrifice Otti had to make, when he took the risk to stake his plum job as the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the former Diamond Bank Plc to join Abia’s governorship race, notwithstanding the obvious uncertainties, life-threatening challenges and dangers that defined politics in the state at the time.
From October 2014, when he formally declared his ambition to run on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, having dumped the ruling PDP, he became the leading opposition figure in the state. Consequently, he parted ways with chieftains of the party, especially the then Gov. Theodore Ahamefule Orji (a.k.a Ochendo), who was desperately working to install his anointed candidate in the 2015 governorship poll, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, as his successor.
It was, therefore, not surprising to political pundits, when he became the target of all the apparently sponsored, politically-induced attacks ever recorded in Abia’s political archives.
There were plots severally hatched to either get Otti politically decapitated or fatally removed out of the way, if PDP must continue its brute dominance of Abia’s political space and the plundering of the people’s common patrimony by its leaders for their personal aggrandisement.
One of such brutal assassination attempts happened on July 24, 2015, when unidentified gunmen stormed his private guesthouse in Abuja at about 2a.m, killing one of the policemen on duty.
The narrative from the media reports at the time was that the gunmen ransacked the guesthouse in search of Otti, who was already back to Abia a day before the incident.
There were several other similar physical attacks on his motorcades and campaign trains back home in Abia State in the 2015, 2019 and 2023 campaigns, respectively. The sinister plots were all targeted at stopping him from actualising his governorship aspiration that was literally tied to a divine mission to redeem Abia and Abians from the long years of poverty, suffering, deprivation and economic stagnation.
That explained the reason each election circle in the state always witnessed high-level political conspiracy and gang up by the chieftains of the ruling party, leading to greater political persecution of one man – Alex Otti.
During the campaigns, PDP’s stalwarts would mobilise their thugs to frustrate every step he took to market himself and sell his manifesto to the Abia people, who were already disenchanted and visibly angry with a system that was largely retrogressive rather than progressive, hence their loud and earnest yearning for a change.
Otti’s door-to-door campaigns, initiated and sponsored by his ardent supporters at home and in diaspora, were violently obstructed in most parts of the state. The government outrightly banned the airing of his campaign jingles and adverts in the Broadcasting Corporation of Abia, a station that is owned and run with the taxpayers’ money.
Imagine the disturbing height of PDP’s audacity, impunity and excesses in Abia for two decades plus! Which was the reason political analysts described Abia as a captured state, where nobody outside PDP was anybody – “Usu Enweonu” (the bat has no voice), as they would haughtily banter among themselves.
Again, while the party and its candidates enjoyed unrestricted and absolute freedom to hold their campaign rallies anywhere in the state, mostly in public places, such as school premises, and boldly mounted their campaign billboards indiscriminately in any part of the state, without regard to due process, Otti was persistently hounded about. His campaign venues were abruptly cancelled by government fiat through radio announcements issued by Government Spokesmen, especially the Commissioners of Information and Chief Press Secretaries to the Governors during the period.
The persecution of Otti and his political platforms – whether APGA or Labour Party – was mind boggling and provocative, yet he would always advocate peace and non-violent electioneering exercise.
He continued to admonish the party chieftains and his supporters to always toe the path of peace and “follow peace with all men”. But he would also be firm to counsel them not to cowardly succumb to any form of intimidation by anybody. His common refrain then was that “Abia State belongs to all of us”.
But the intimidation climaxed in the 2015 Governorship Election with the storming of the venue of the State Collation Centre at the Independent National Electoral Commission Headquarters, Ogwurube Layout, Umuahia by five PDP chieftains. These men, who were led by the desperate, out-going Gov. Theodore Orji, threw caution to the wind, disrupted the process, and illegally altered Otti’s leading election results in favour of Okezie Ikpeazu. Others in Ochendo’s entourage were Sen. Enyinnaya Abaribe, Chief Onyema Ugochukwu, Col. Austin Akobundu (rtd.), now Senator, representing Abia Central, and the Anambra-born, former PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olise Metu.
Otti’s stoic push to capture power in 2023 was also met with stiff and vicious resistance by the PDP stalwarts that deceitfully regarded themselves as the “landlords” of Abia Government House.
So, to successfully execute the undemocratic strategy towards dimming Otti’s electoral fortunes, the army of political thugs groomed by PDP, was steadily roaming the major Abia towns and cities, day and night, defacing and vandalising his campaign posters and billboards.
Although, the disturbing and shameful act became a common, unchallenged trend, the bestial destruction of the giant billboard mounted at the ever busy Umuikaa Junction on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway elicited wide public outcry, particularly among champions of democracy, who advocate that elections should be conducted on a level playing field, free, fair and credible, and should not be a do-or-die affair.
This political blunder happened even after Otti had fulfilled all the statutory conditions required by the regulatory advertising agencies at the state and federal levels, including paying the scandalous, whopping N10 million advert rate imposed by the Abia State Signage and Advertisement Agency.
That notwithstanding, the party leadership reasoned that allowing Otti free space to campaign was potentially disastrous and bound to spell doom for them at the poll. So, for being a torn in their flesh, a horrendous nightmare, an enigmatic one-man squad and irrepressible nemesis to PDP, he must be frustrated and disoriented at all cost.
In the party’s official reaction to the allegations of sponsoring the wanton destruction of Otti’s billboard at Umuikaa, it pointed to what it described as its “provoking” message that stated: “Weep no more, help is here”. Although, many Abians and other non-partisan Nigerians rated the message differently as most captivating and an award-winning campaign stunt.
Interestingly, with the role reversal in governance, the irony of fate has begun to unfold in the Abia political space ahead of 2027, with the opposition now having the short end of the stick and crying wolf.
And with another election circle here with us, the anti-democratic elements in PDP that have found shelter in the All Progressives Congress, having permanently destroyed PDP in Abia, are amusingly gripped by the fear of possible reprisal measures by the ruling Labour Party, which currently calls the shots.
Of course, in their human frailty and spiritual shortsightedness, little did they contemplate in their widest imagination that a time would be when the cookies would crumble and PDP becomes lifeless, never to rise again.
Today, all the political actors that constituted PDP’s hatchet team and unleashed terror that scuttled the liberation of Abia and its good people between 2015 and 2023 are terribly haunted by their own evil deeds.
Glad, however, to point out that prominent members of the team, who sincerely and genuinely acknowledged their political atrocities while under the umbrella, have admitted their shortcomings and, like the prodigal son in the scripture, remorsefully retraced their wrong steps. They have long joined Gov. Otti in his avowed struggle for Abia rebirth.
In their separate, evidence-based public commentaries, devoid of partisanship, they have been taking turns at every public event to praise Gov. Otti’s litany of achievements within three years in office to high heavens, proclaiming him not only as God-sent but also the best governor Abia ever produced.
And being regularly conscious that he derived his mandate in 2023 directly from God, through the instrumentality of over 90 per cent of the Abia electorate, Gov. Otti has dutifully piloted the affairs of the state, guided by his conscience and fear of God. He does not take for granted the ultimate hand of the Almighty in his emergence as governor after two foiled attempts.
It, therefore, becomes absolutely misplaced and baseless for opposition chieftains to harbour the fear that the governor was going to pay them back in their own evil coin during the upcoming campaigns. Far be it!
Of course, Gov. Otti is not trivial with power. Neither is he power drunk. He is absolutely intentional about how he deploys power. He appreciates power, in its real sense, as an instrument in his hands to effectively and frontally confront the long years of rot brought on Abia by rudderless, inept, visionless and insensitive mercantile politicians that masqueraded as Abia leaders. He is in office not to witch-hunt nor pursue personal political vendetta.
Above all, he has already won the 2027 governorship poll, given his sterling and impressive record of performance across all the sectors and geopolitical zones of the state. Hence, he would not have any need to resort to any such debasing act, capable of suppressing and silencing the opposition.
His programmes, policies and actions as governor are driven by an unflinching and uncompromising commitment to properly reposition and adequately activate and harness Abia’s huge economic and industrial potential for greater national and global acceptability and competitiveness.
Those are the critical factors that have continued to eloquently shape his governance model in the past three years plus, with positive multi-sectoral outcomes, aided by his able and resilient lieutenants, who share his philosophy and campaign mantra that “Abia shall rise again”.
- Eagle Okoro, a Public Affairs analyst, writes from Umuahia.
