05/03/2026
ALEX OTTI LIED
Let me tell you something about Alex Otti.
He lied.
You know the kind of lie you tell when you genuinely do not want the spotlight, even when the spotlight is chasing you down the street. YES. THAT ONE
But a lie is a lie. And I am not letting this one go.
If you could clearly recall the period when Otti received the report of his Transition Council in May 2023, just days before his inauguration as the 5th Executive Governor of our beloved Abia State, he stood before members of the committee and said words to this effect:
"I will say that this job has been made very easy by the job that you have done. Granted, some of the things that you have recommended are things that we have talked about, but a lot of them are also things that are new. And even the things that we have talked about, you have brought in sharper relief and focus. So, it becomes EASIER TO IMPLEMENT "
That was the promise. And true to his word, when he signed 18 executive bills into law at his second anniversary expanded State Executive Council meeting in May 2025, he said they aligned with his manifesto and the recommendations of the transition committee report of 2023. Very consistent man.
Now, here is where the lie lives. Because crediting your transition committee for what is happening in Abia State right now is not the full truth. And he knows it. We all know it.
Let us talk about this transition committee for a moment as the people on that list deserve to be named properly.
The 100-member Transition Council was chaired by Victor Onyenkpa, Partner and COO of KPMG. Co-chaired by Ifueko Omogui-Okauru, former Executive Chairman of Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service. These are not political jobbers. They are people who have sat at tables where serious things are decided.
Then there is Professor Ndubuisi Ekekwe. My professor ( Ive sat under him in Tekedia 2022). The Ovim Village Boy. A man who attended Secondary Technical School in Abia and set a record that still stands. He went on to earn degrees at Tuskegee University, Johns Hopkins University, and built a career in the United States semiconductor industry. He co-designed an accelerometer at Analog Devices Corp that went into the iPhone. Yes, the same mighty iPhone you use . He invented a microcontroller for medical robots. He has served on the US National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. He founded First Atlantic Semiconductors, West Africa's leading embedded systems company. He was honoured by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2013. He is a man who knows what working systems look like because he has built them. No be small man!!
Then there is Arunma Oteh. Former Director-General of Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission. Former Treasurer and Vice President of the World Bank. Currently a Director at FSD Africa, an international development finance body focused on sub-Saharan Africa. Resident scholar at Oxford's Saïd Business School.
There is Uche Orji, immediate past CEO of Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority. Okey Oramah, President of Afreximbank, Cairo. Victor Okoronkwo, GMD of Aiteo Oil and Gas. Chief Frank Nneji, the man who built ABC Transport Company from the ground up.
When, in 2024, he constituted the Abia State Global Economic Advisory Council( AGEAC) ,he appointed former Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, former Central Bank Governor, as co-chair. Lol! You didn't know that right ?
Honorary Advisor to the AGEAC is a name that needs no long introduction in Africa or the world: Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The first woman and first African to serve as Director-General of the World Trade Organization. Twice Nigeria's Finance Minister. Former Managing Director of Operations at the World Bank, where she oversaw an $81 billion operational portfolio. A Harvard and MIT graduate. Listed consistently among Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women in the World. A woman who once negotiated the cancellation of $30 billion of Nigeria's debt. That Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
These are the caliber of people Otti called. And they came.
Think about what that means for a moment.
These are people who have lived inside functioning systems. Who have worked with governments in America, in Europe, in global institutions where competence is a baseline expectation, not a pleasant surprise. People who have built businesses across continents and sat in boardrooms where billions of dollars move. They know what good governance smells like because they have breathed its air.
And yet, every single one of them answered when Abia State came calling. They worked for months and poured their expertise, their networks, their time, their knowing into a roadmap for a state that had been bled dry for decades. FOR DECADES!! They came because they believed Abia could be different. They came because they believed the man extending the invitation was serious.
So, Alex Otti meant it when he said he would implement their recommendations . And he has been doing exactly that.
Now ask me, Nne Bryte what then is your problem with Otti ? Why d'you label him a liar ?
I'll tell you.
Nigeria has a long and painful tradition of brilliant transition committees. Governments across this country have assembled world-class advisors, produced thick documents full of bold ideas, hired the best hands money could recruit, and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing. You can fill a library with the recommendations Nigerian governments have buried. You can wallpaper Nnamdi Azikiwe stadium with the names of distinguished Nigerians who gave their expertise to incoming administrations and watched it dissolve into the usual fog of inaction.Neither the documents nor the people were the problem.The problem, always and without exception, has been the person sitting at the very top. It all collapses or rises at that seat. A leader without the heart to work will take the finest blueprint ever drawn and use it to fan himself or as firewood to roast bush meat.
So when Otti keeps redirecting the praise to his team ( his transition committee, his appointees, his commissioners) , he is technically telling the truth. But he is also performing a very calculated act of modesty that is actually a slight misrepresentation of reality.
Without the man at the helm having the will, discipline, and hunger to see it through, all of that expertise piled up in those reports would have gathered dust like every report before them.
Let even talk about what is actually happening in Abia.
At his one-year anniversary, Otti himself reported that his administration had either rehabilitated or started reconstructing over 80 different stretches of roads across all 17 local government areas of the state. 80! Within JUST one year!
We are talking about my Port Harcourt Road, Aba.( I fell on that road more times than I can count because of how terrible it was. In 2021 , one of those falls left me with a badly sprained right leg. I still remember the nightly massages Oge my cousin gave me to help reset my limbs.) That Portharcourt road had been in terrible condition for nearly three decades. University Road, College Road, Kent by Ehi Road, and Old Court Road, all in Aba. Ossah Road in Umuahia expanded into a six-lane expressway. The dual carriageway Dozie Way rehabilitated in Umuahia. The Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene Road (this in collaboration with FG) . Obohia Road and Ohanku Road in Aba. Abam-Arochukwu Road. The Arochukwu-Ndi Okereke-Ozuabam Road. The Ohafia-Arochukwu Highway. The Nunya Isuikwuato Road. And of course the crown jewel so far, the 67.6 kilometre Umuahia-Uzuakoli-Abiriba-Ohafia Road, a road that had not been reconstructed since the Second Republic, divided into three simultaneous sections under three separate construction companies so that it would be completed faster.
Anyone who has been in Aba during rainy season knows it was not a question of whether you would encounter floods, it was a question of how deep. Everyone had made peace with waterlogged roads as a seasonal ritual. That ' normalcy ' is being disrupted. Have you not seen the drainage work??????? It shows a deliberate attention to the infrastructure beneath the infrastructure, it is changing the story of Aba in the rain.
Markets are being rehabilitated. Residents who had given up on their properties are now renovating. People are relocating to Aba. Rents are going up. And before someone complains about rising rent, understand what that means: it means Aba has become a place people want to live in. It has become a city people are choosing. That is the clearest signal an economy can send.
Electricity in some parts of the state is now available around the clock. And in the way that only Nigerians can find humour in progress, residents have started complaining about how often they need to recharge their electricity tokens because the power is actually on. 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Transportation costs within the city have dropped because the roads work now and trips are shorter.
The Abia State University Teaching Hospital, whose accreditation had been suspended for three years, has had that accreditation restored. The State Specialist and Diagnostic Centre in Umuahia now runs one of the leading eye centres in the region.
This man has turned Abia into a construction site while simultaneously keeping salaries paid, settling inherited debts, commissioning a forensic audit of the previous administration's finances, and establishing global advisory structures populated by some of the finest Nigerian minds alive.
My Aba people do not gather to celebrate government activity. There has been nothing to celebrate. But this Governor has made celebration unavoidable.
Otti thanks his team at every opportunity. He calls himself a member of the team, not its leader. He praises his commissioners in public. He credits his contractors. He names his advisors. He shares the stage.
It is beautiful to watch.
And it is also, allow me to say it plainly, a beautiful lie.
Dear His Excellency Alex Otti, a team without a willing captain drifts. It was your invitation that set the tone. It was your discipline that kept the pace. It was your willingness to be accountable, to show up in the rain at flag-off ceremonies, to reject the comfort of doing nothing and getting paid for it, that made every single recommendation in those documents mean something.
There is a Michael Bolton song called "Said I Loved You But I Lied." The hook of the song is that the lie was actually an understatement. He told her he loved her, but the truth turned out to be bigger than that word could hold.
So, My Dear Governor Alex Otti, I see you.
I see a leader who understands that the highest compliment you can pay your team is to implement what they recommended, and then to thank them as though you were just the facilitator. It is the finest form of leadership. Rare in this country. Rare anywhere.
But the Abia that is rising right now is rising because you have the heart for it. Your transition committee gave you the map. You are the one who got in the car. (Nehemiah 4:6)
Thank you, sir.
And please, keep lying exactly like this.
We see you.
God bless you real good 🙏🙏🙏🙏
