As a leader, always give leadership responsibilities your very best shot;

Abia state in the past one year has been in the news for the right reasons, this is as a result of the uncommon privilege the present state government led by Dr. Alex Otti of Labour party enjoys in the media space.

May I remind you my dear reader that ever since 1999 when we returned to democracy, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) peopled by men and women of all sorts of character held sway and did to the state and its treasury as they liked. They never cared if there would ever be any form of consequences for their actions.

You may want to also know that Dr. Alex Otti the present governor was alleged to have had very close dealings with former Governor, T.A Orji who is quite aged at this moment. So, this takes away any confusion as to how saintly the present leadership of the state is, as he has been a part of the establishment in a way, but you still cannot take away from him how much of a smart man he is.

Having sought for what he wanted from the hands of the then governor which is alleged to have been the ticket to succeed him at the time as a governor without any success, Otti smartly aligned himself with the masses as the one who had come to save ndi Abia State from the many years of plunder of the state resources by the PDP. The strategy worked excellently.

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One thing we must all acknowledge very firmly is that no other person made it easy for Dr. Alex Otti to beat the PDP in the last gubernatorial election in the state more than the PDP members themselves. These political players in the party assumed the position of God in the state and this made it easy for the masses to rally behind the present governor to support him to win the elections.

While we acknowledge that there are other dynamics not in the public domain that aided the victory of Dr. Alex Otti, every tom and dick before the election knew that supporting Otti’s ambition at the time no matter how stained you were with corruption or looting in the previous governments made you saintly – the masses don’t think. He had the overwhelming support of the masses.

Anyone arguing if he is with the people’s mandate is a cunny fellow who doesn’t want to tell him or herself the truth. However, the issue now is, how is this mandate being used in the interest of the common people in the society?

Assuming that the PDP government that was ousted from office did their due diligence, served the people the way they ought to, it would have been almost impossible to get them out of office but they didn’t think in that line.

Criticizing any policy of Otti’s government seems punishable by the masses;

Apart from the political stakeholders whose interest is in getting power to serve their own interests, the regular Abia man or woman believes that even objective criticism of anything that has an Otti signature is criminal and must not be allowed to thrive.

This explains why the moment you make a sincere analysis of the policies of government, with the aim of holding the government accountable being that the resources they are working with belongs to all of us, you are called a PDP Apologist despite the evidence which litters everywhere of how critical you were of the PDP government when they were in power.

While it is a thing of great privilege for Dr. Alex Otti that he enjoys such level of support from the masses, he must not get carried away by praise singers who would rather die than tell the governor that what is wrong is wrong.

There are a lot of things that the state governor is getting right which is commendable relative to his predecessors but there are a lot also that he should look at and pay critical attention to, so that he succeeds as a leader and a politician.

At all times, we must be deliberate to remind ourselves that Dr. Alex Otti is human and prone to human frailties in some of his decisions as it pertains to governance in the state. While I don’t expect him to respond to every criticism made against him, I expect him to acknowledge valid concerns of the citizens as it would help him to do better.

Abia Airport reality;

Assuming we run a true democracy here in Nigeria where the conception and implementation of such projects as this, are exposed to public scrutiny through debates and their likes, it would have dawned on us that while it is very necessary for us to have an airport in 2024, looking at the needs of the state at this time, committing such huge resources into the construction of an airport by the state is nowhere in the best interest of majority of Abians who I doubt if they can afford flight tickets.

While we would not dwell on whether the airport is necessary at this time or not as it has been commissioned, what we must put as much pressure as we can on the government for, is for this project that would gulp a lot of tax payers’ money to not have the same fate like their Ebonyi State airport where after a year, nothing is yet to happen in the airport in terms of commercial flight schedules and movement of goods.

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The Abia airport project has come to stay but we earnestly wish that this funding from the state is done in a very transparent way to carry the masses along. We know that the state legislature is almost non-existent, so we cannot call on them to hold the executives accountable on our behalf as citizens as they don’t have such ability.

Knowing that Abians needs a lot more road infrastructure which the governor and his team are addressing, functional health service delivery institutions, educational institutions, security of lives and property. We must deliberately remind the governor and his team of these sectors and the need to invest aggressively in them.

The concerns of Ubaha Nsulu people about land grabbing should be addressed exhaustively, as using state power to confront perceived dissents would not help. We are glad to hear Dr. Otti reiterate that compensations would be paid.

Conclusively, Dr. Alex Otti must understand that as citizens we have the inalienable right to ask him valid questions about how he arrives at making certain project decisions on our behalf, how he uses our resources for such projects and how such projects would impact on the welfare of the masses which are largely poor and survival minded in their social disposition.

We wish his excellency well, but may we remind you Sir that the civil servants in the state who are a large voting population would appreciate it if you deliberately looked at their welfare just the way you do to those who work closely with you.