Abia: Governance Versus Political Witchcraft

with  Chidi Amuta

Those intent on a head on collision with a moving train must mind their limbs. In Abia State, the 2027 contest for the governorship has mostly been decided. All that is left is the ritual of voting and the ceremony of anointment on 29th May, 2027. If public opinion and the wave of popular acclaim is anything to go by, the 2027 governorship election in Abia state will be more of a referendum. It is a simple choice between the incumbent and the political witchcraft of his three predecessors. The people of Abia are unanimous on one thing: they will re-elect the present good governance against returning to the feudal Babylonian captivity of the politics of darkness and witchcraft.

For the avoidance of doubt, the vast majority of Abia people have said goodbye to the blighted oligarchy that held the state hostage for 24 years prior to 2023. But the remnants of the old order insist on testing the will of the people. They are   parading the mascots of the old order whose legacy is 24 years of unbroken darkness and exploitation in the history of the state. But the authors of the impending anarchy had better think again.

This early assertion of what I call ‘the Abia consensus’ is occasioned by the reported recent conclave of the three immediate past governors of the state.  Their meeting should pass more as an assembly of ancient witches than a political meeting of honest citizens committed to the welfare of the people. Their utterances and resolutions speak more of the envy of a triumvirate of evil. They are weeping over their loss of relevance, revenue and unearned privileges. It is the lament of a triumvirate who together wasted 24 years of the state’s resources and time. They are unhappy that in less than three years, Governor Otti has achieved a mental reconversion of Abia people from being helpless feudal subjects to proud citizens of a state where government is working for the people. Abia people are no longer weeping and mourning. They have regained their smile and bright hopeful countenance.

The former governors are unhappy.  Their vicious stranglehold on the resources of the state is gradually being ended. These are three persons who wielded absolute hegemony and monopoly over the resources of Abia state for 24 years. When their reign of error ended, they approved humongous pensions and allowances for themselves for a lifetime. This is in spite of their unlimited access to resources and patronage while in office, thus making them some of the richest citizens of that impoverished state.

In a drastic and courageous  policy reversal, Governor Otti has just signed a bill ending the barrage of lavish pensions and allowances for former governors. In its place, the governor has approved a life -long subsistence allowance for Abia citizens aged above 60.

The ex- governors have quickly transformed themselves into a trade union of infamous and disgruntled political witches. They have elevated their envious animosity against the incumbent governor into an incoherent opposition platform.  They are threatening the governor with electoral defeat in 2027 for the simple reason that he has achieved in less than three years what together they could not do in 24 years. To replace him in 2027, they are hinting at some unknown and inconsequential  fellow from the National Assembly whose only qualification is an oversize portfolio in Abuja.

In a democracy, divergent voices are a healthy sign. Voices of opposition expressed by citizens including outright villains and even glorified ex-convicts should enrich political discourse. To that extent, the recent resolution of the three past governors can pass as freedom of expression if it they have no common partisan platform. They are only united by a common eye on the Abia treasury.

Mr. Orji Kalu is a senator of the ruling APC and a trumpeter of the Tinubu hegemony. Mr. Theodore Orji used to be a senator of the PDP before his microwave defection to the national “food is ready” party, the APC. Mr. Ikpeazu is a more pathetic specimen. He is still hopefully in Nyesom Wike’s faction of the dying PDP but has been nominated for an ambassadorship by Tinubu’s APC wagon. The three reportedly met over the year end holidays to jointly express their opposition to a second term for Governor Alex Otti. Abia people heard them loud and clear and have been responding in divergent voices.

Interestingly, their incoherent statement acknowledges the giant strides of Governor Otti in the governance of the state. But they insist they could have done more and better only  if they had the quantum of funds available to the incumbent. Of course, the logic of the three blind witches is too narrow to consider the present exchange rate and inflation rate. They also narrow gubernatorial performance and democracy dividends to landscape decorations- list of roads, flyovers, water boreholes etc.

The governance  train in Abia has since left that ancient station. The crucial element in the national accolades being heaped on Governor Otti is not about roads, bridges and culverts. It is about the real essence of governance and democracy. What Otti has achieved is to return the governance and power of Abia state to the people.

He has reached out and touched the very heart and soul of the people in the places where they have felt the excruciating pain of the misrule and feudal oligarchy of the three witchcraft governors for 24 years. Where pensioners died queuing up for pensions that were never paid for years on end, Otti has heard the cries of our senior citizens and paid them promptly. Where  workers in state institutions went without salaries for months and years, the incumbent governor has heard the cries of Abia workers and restored salaries and benefits to ‘as and when due’ obligations.

Of course, we cannot totally write off infrastructure rehabilitation in the assessment of good governance. Where previously darkness ruled, power has been restored to Aba and its environments through the activation of the Aba Power station of Geometrics Power. Markets, homes and Streets have been lit up in place of the darkness of the regime of the three witches.

The essence of democracy is the emplacing of power in the hands of the people in a style of governance that abhors a personality cult. Governor Otti has not named any roads and bridges after himself or his parents.

Prioritizing the welfare of the people is the easiest route to popular empowerment.  Once empowered by a government that places their interest in the forefront, the power of the people becomes the repository of political power. To wrest power from an empowered people by force, ruse or political witchcraft is to invite anarchy and popular revolt. Those dreaming of the power grab of old times in Abia come 2027 had better beware.

It is futile for the ex- governors to mount a campaign of blackmail against the incumbent. They governed Abia on a different political template. Under them for 24 years, Abia was essentially a feudal enclave for 24 years (1999 to 2023). The state  has only been struggling to free itself from feudal captivity since after the 2023 governorship election. Before 2023, politics and the democratic process were only deployed as instruments for state capture and vicious power grab  by different factions of the Abia political elite.

Once captured, the state under each of these three Babylonian emperors was run more like either a private feudal enclave or an unregulated extractive colony. Citizenship rights were in abeyance.  Citizens’ expectations of the good life were limited by the extent of the interests of the feudal overlords. The entitlement of the people to good government in terms of healthcare, education, security , infrastructure and workers emoluments was recklessly abridged for two and half decades.

Each of these governors was more of an emperor, ruling above criticism and reproach. In 24 years, no Abia governor was taken to court by a citizen on account of rights infringement or acts of bad governance. It was all “carry go” all the way.

The machinery of state was ‘privatized’ as the separation of powers was observed mostly in defiance. The legislature ran the errands of the executive and seemed to have a duty to pass legislations ‘for’  the governor for a fee. The legislations that rolled out of the State House of Assembly were more of feudal decrees and imperial edicts  than debated laws of a democratic assembly.

In  the public service, corrupt officials kept their jobs for as long as they knew on whose behalf they were eroding the state. Another way of putting this is to say that state officials were agents licensed to commit acts of criminal malfeasance on behalf of the presiding emperor governor.

Quite routinely, the imperial governor set up and empowered an assortment of task forces and mobile courts to collect sundry revenues and levies in the name of the state but account to no institution of public accountability. Public accountability was mistaken for creative accountancy supervised and administered from the Government House.

From available records, between 1999 and 2007, the Governor’s Office issued and signed off on newspaper full page advertisements of the state’s financial statement compiled and “audited” by the same Governor’s Office. In other words, the governor authorized expenditure, spent the money,  ‘accounted’ for it, audited his expenses and informed the public accordingly that the audit had been certified!

In Abia state in the years under feudal capture, the governments failed as both a badly run feudal enclave and as a dysfunctional extractive colony. The state failed as a government. It failed as an organized criminal cartel. It failed its people, failed itself as an organized syndicate of enlightened criminals and thieves (“there is honour even among thieves”); it failed the nation and failed the concept of democratic sovereignty.

Therefore, the question that Abia needed to answer with the outcome of the 2023 governorship election was simple: would the state correct course and return to the path of responsible democratic governance or continue  as a feudal enclave under the captivity of political gangsters? Governor Otti has responded through nearly three years of unbroken good people oriented good governance.

Hope has replaced despondency and frustration. Good roads now connect previously unreachable places. Street lights and power for homes and industries has replaced years of unbroken darkness. Dead and moribund industries are coming back alive. Confidence in the Abia business environment is returning as investors have begun to return to the state because the governor understands the needs of the private sector.

In a corrupt country where election results are known even before voting takes place, the dark politics of the former governors would make sense. But even in our untidy electoral system, two factors are required to win re-election: the power of incumbency and the overwhelming support and consensus of the people. In the current Abia situation, Governor Otti is on solid ground. Dubious politicians can only rig an election when popular support is doubtful or subject to guesswork. Not in today’s Abia state where the popular masses have embraced the government and made it theirs.

Unlike in previous years, the succession election in Abia State this time will be an unusual one. It is going to be a contest between good governance and politics as usual, between INEC’s usual abracadabra fictitious results and the mandate of the people given through transparent votes that reflect a popular consensus on what true democracy means. At this moment, there is a popular consensus in Abia state. It is simple: Governor Alex Otti has conducted the affairs of Abia State in a manner that has pleased the hearts of the majority of Abia citizens. The people have chosen democracy as good governance over and above the old politics of “anything goes” which squandered the wealth of the state and fed the political and financial oligarchy of a few brigands for 24 years.

The Abia renewal process is like a moving train driven by an empowered people. Anyone who stands on its path will be crushed by people power.