Good Governance

When Facts Become Inconvenient: The Politics of Manufacturing Scandals in Abia By AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke There is an emerging pattern in the political conversation around Abia State that deserves closer attention. Every major project is increasingly approached from the standpoint of suspicion, every institutional success is interpreted as evidence of hidden interest, and every professional relationship is stretched until it begins to resemble a conspiracy. This is not the same thing as accountability. Accountability begins with questions and proceeds to evidence. Propaganda begins with a conclusion and then searches desperately for fragments that can be arranged to support it.…

Otti’s Masterstroke: From ABSUTH’s New Synergy to a Brighter Future for ABSU Why the Governor’s CONMESS Directive, Board–Management Cooperation and Welfare-First Approach Offer a New Template for Institutional Stability By AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu EkeEconomist, Public Policy Analyst and Associate Professor of Economics Governor Alex Otti’s meeting with the Board and Management of the Abia State University Teaching Hospital on August 20, 2026 may ultimately prove to be far more important than an ordinary presentation of a progress report. Beneath the statistics, requests and administrative exchanges was the emergence of something Abia’s public institutions have desperately needed for years: a functioning…

The photograph does not disprove Governor Alex Otti’s Star Paper Mill intervention; it actually shows why the intervention became necessary. Star Paper Mill had already become moribund long before the present administration. What Otti’s government did was to acquire the distressed asset from AMCON as part of a planned industrial-revival programme. AMCON formally handed the mill over to Abia State Government in December 2025, and the state disclosed that it paid ₦2.5 billion for the acquisition. 0 So showing pictures of the old gate and abandoned premises shortly after takeover and shouting “agents of falsehood” misses the point completely. The…

Oracle’s latest intervention, circulated under the title “The Much Touted ‘24 Years of PDP’: Otti Was Part of 18 of Those 24 Years!”, contains legitimate questions about workers’ welfare and university remuneration. But several of its central conclusions collapse once history, public finance and measurable outputs are separated from political rhetoric. The first problem is historical. Alex Otti was a banker, not a member of the Abia State Executive Council, House of Assembly or PDP government. His documented career shows that he worked in Nigerian International Bank, Intercontinental Merchant Bank, Société Bancaire Nigeria, UBA and First Bank before becoming Group…

Eke O Ako’s Debt Arithmetic: When Liabilities, Loans and Debt Stock Are Thrown Into One Pot Eke O Ako has produced what looks, at first glance, like an intimidating collection of figures against the Abia State Government. Unfortunately, once the figures are separated into their proper accounting categories, much of the dramatic conclusion begins to wobble. 😂 Numbers may be stubborn, but numbers placed in the wrong columns can also become very obedient servants of propaganda. The first problem with Eke O Ako’s argument is elementary: total liabilities in a government financial statement are not automatically synonymous with DMO public-debt…

VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS AND THE ABSU CONTROVERSY: WHEN OWEI LAKEMFA’S POWERFUL HEADLINE OUTRAN THE FACTS, HISTORY AND ECONOMICS At first, the title “ABSU: Running a University as a Local Village Contraption”, published by Vanguard Newspapers and written by Owei Lakemfa, seemed to promise a serious interrogation of university governance, funding, labour relations and institutional autonomy. It sounded like the beginning of a rigorous public-interest intervention. Unfortunately, as one travelled deeper into the piece, the thunder of the headline increasingly became louder than the economics, history and institutional context required to sustain it. Mr Lakemfa is entitled to criticise Governor Alex Otti.…

A POLITICAL ECONOMY REVIEW OF THE RECKONING IN GOD’S OWN STATE: WHY ALEX OTTI DESERVES A SECOND TERM AND WHY HIS REFORMATIVE INNOVATIONS MUST CONTINUE By AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma, writing under the pen name AI-KO, has produced in The Reckoning in God’s Own State: Why Alex Otti Deserves a Second Term and Why His Reformative Innovations Must Continue an unusually expansive intervention in the political economy of subnational governance in Nigeria. The author identifies himself as a Nigerian writer, analyst and public intellectual whose writings traverse political history, governance and civic affairs. Although the work…