By Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma,AI-KO
Let me start by telling you about the laughter. You know, that hearty, unscripted burst between Governor Alex Otti and Rufai Oseni during their Arise TV interview?
It stuck with me. There was something disarmingly human about it – the kind of chuckle that says, “Can you believe we’re even having this conversation?”
There’s a particular kind of laughter that lingers – the kind that crackles with unspoken truths. When Governor Alex Otti chuckled during his Arise TV interview with Rufai Oseni, dismissing allegations of cronyism with a smirk and a jest – “If you go to Aba and make this claim, you’ll probably not come back” – it wasn’t just wit. It was defiance, laced with the quiet confidence of a man who’d bet his reputation on asphalt and action. That laugh followed me home.
Three weeks ago, I embarked on a sad visit to Abiriba to bury my Sister, but it became a pilgrimage to Abia State. It was an Easter visit with a difference – a chance to reunite with family in Abiriba and meet my traditional and cultural obligations, with trips to other communities and villages for events, but they were actually one planned for observations and discovery. And beneath the surface of each of these roadtrips simmered a deeper mission: to investigate the constant news, comments and arguments on the various mainstream news outlets and online Abia and Igbo platforms, through diaspora WhatsApp and Telegram groups. Was Otti’s “Aba Renaissance” another political mirage, or something tangible enough to touch? I’d walked the cracked streets of this state, Aba and Umuahia especially, as a teenager, memorizing shortcuts to avoid certain man-made difficulties. Now, armed with a Historian’s skepticism and a prodigal’s nostalgia, I crisscrossed the state, from the infectious optimism of my trip from Umuahia to Abiriba on the newly refurbished road which I already wrote about and Aba’s streets and markets to the quiet revolution in Umuahia’s sleepy suburbs.
What I found was more than repaired roads. It was a mechanic in Umule who’d switched from fixing shattered suspensions to fixing engines. It was the roasted plantain seller on Udeagbala Road, her once-flooded stall now framed by storm drains, who teased, “Bad road no go fit chase my hungry customers away again!” It was my cousin, a lifelong cynic, begrudgingly admitting, “For once, my car’s shock absorbers can get some rest in this Aba.”
This travel, social and political reportage and commentary isn’t about breathless praise. It’s about the gap between political promises and lived reality – measured in centimeters of concrete, in the absence of floodwater stains on school uniforms, in the reluctant nods of skeptics like my brother-in-law, OJ, who warned, “One smooth road won’t feed a state.” But it’s also about the audacity of a governor who dares to laugh when questioned, not out of mockery, but because some truths no longer need defending. They’re etched into the earth, one reclaimed street at a time.
Come with me past the headlines, social media hypes, likes, commentaries and hashtags. Let’s walk these reborn roads together – and decide whether Abia’s renewal is a masterclass in transformation… or simply a well-paved illusion.
I hadn’t been back to Abia since January 2025 after the Christmas holidays until I visited this April 2025. I was still trying to determine how to collate my written, typed, video and audio notes into a coherent work, when Governor Otti’s viral interview – where he boasted of “rewriting Aba’s story” – pulled me in and confirmed what I had seen on my recent visit. Initially I needed to see if the reports and people’s claims I had seen and read before I travelled could survive the sniff test of reality, then came Otti’s interview. My brother-in-law, OJ, a lifelong Aba resident with a skeptic’s wit beyond his young age, offered to chauffeur me around. “Let’s see if this ‘Youtube Governor’ has done more than just act for cameras,” he said, rolling his eyes as we left my hotel.
Our first stop was Udeagbala Road, a stretch my uncle once cursed as “Aba’s open stomach.” I braced myself for the usual obstacles of potholes and angry drivers. But as we turned off after Osisioma Junction, the chaos gave way to…order. The road wasn’t just “graded” or “under construction” – it was finished. Smooth asphalt, clear markings, even functioning drains. A woman sold roasted plantains where knee-deep floods once stranded buses. “Otti’s men worked like ants in the rainy season!” she shouted, fanning smoke from her grill. “Now, see – my customers don’t run from rain anymore. They come for roasted yam and stay to gossip!” OJ muttered, “Hmm. Maybe one road isn’t a miracle,” but his grip on the steering wheel loosened.
Our next stop was the Eziukwu Market, not an Otti project, but one which I decided earlier I needed to visit for comparison and review, where Madam Nkechi, our former neighbour who sells fabrics, had relocated years ago after her shop drowned in mud in 2021. To my surprise, the road to the market now bore bold stripes, like something from a Lagos expressway. A row of keke drivers huddled near a newly installed streetlight, arguing about football. “Before, this place was a midnight jungle,” one laughed. “Now? We no dey charge special rates again – no more ‘sorry, my tire no fit pass Eziukwu-Cemetery road!’”
But it was the visit to Umule Road that buried my doubts. Five years ago, I’d attended a funeral here where mourners waded through sludge, their black attire spattered with mud. Today, kids played football on the same stretch, their shouts echoing past freshly painted curbs. A wiry mechanic, Nnamdi, waved us down, mistaking OJ for a customer. “Oga, you need anything?” He grinned, pointing to his garage. “Before, I repaired bent axles every week. Now? My apprentices are bored! Tell that governor to send us more cars – the road too sweet, nobody’s motor breaks down anymore!”
We drove to Ngwa Road the next day – once a saga of stalled trailers and market women hoisting baskets on their heads – OJ finally cracked. The previous Administration started work on it and abandoned it half way. Otti got it fleshed out to its present state. Pulling over near a new drainage channel, he gestured at a group of teenagers creating TikTok video contents on the pavement. “See these boys. Last year, this spot was a swamp. Now it’s…a studio?” He shook his head, half-smiling. “Maybe Otti isn’t just blowing grammar. But let’s check other roads tomorrow – that will be the real test.”
By dusk, tired and famished, even the air felt lighter. At a streetside joint in Eziama, we ate pepper soup with a grizzled teacher who recalled students missing weeks of school during the rainy season. “Now? Those children pass here daily, shoes clean, no excuses,” he said, tapping his chest. “Roads are…how do you say it? The first chapter in the development book.”
My mind kept going back to Otti’s smirk during that interview – the unflappable calm of a man who’d bet on bricks over rhetoric. For once, the online clips hadn’t lied. Aba’s streets were becoming archives of proof, one repaired drain, one dry shoe, one amused plantain seller at a time.
But let’s rewind. Growing up, Port Harcourt Road was the go to place in Aba, with the opening of the lush Crystal Park. But before leaving Aba in the mid 80s, it was a metaphor for abandonment. Later intermittent visits to Aba from the 2000s meant clinging to my bag and holding my breath as okada drivers zigzagged through swamps pretending to be potholes. Shop owners here were philosophers of despair. “This road is our second landlord,” Mr. Agu, a spare parts dealer, remembering those years told me. “It collects rent in broken vehicles and lost customers.” My brother Igwe built a house at the tail end of Port Harcourt road in the 1990s, but a combination of bad road and governance made it impossible to visit. He plans his movement into town. Using very circuitous long roads to come into the city center for business or other engagements. Fast forward to 2025: that same Mr. Agu, now a bit aged, waves at me from a repainted storefront, a shiny tricycle parked outside. “See eh, let them call Otti and Julius Berger brothers,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Even if they’re sharing a blood covenant, this road is alive. That’s all my profit margin cares about.”
Port Harcourt road is where Aba’s Past and Present Collide. Port Harcourt road breathes. Its story isn’t told in grand monuments or glossy brochures, but in the sweat of welders, the laughter of schoolkids, and the smoky aroma of various spices rising from roadside grills and joints. I’ve known this road since childhood as earlier mentioned. Back then, in the 1980s, it was a place of neon-lit promise. At the Crystal Park Hotel, with its glowing sign and bustling courtyard, felt like Aba’s own slice of Lagos glamour. Expatriates, Business moguls, city fathers and Traders haggled over drinks and local and foreign cuisines. The road hummed with trucks hauling machinery to Port Harcourt and other parts of the country, their drivers swapping stories at roadside bukas where food cost less than a dollar.
But by the time I left Aba in the mid ’80s, the road had become a cautionary tale. The Crystal Park’s neon flickered out, its courtyard overrun by weeds. Potholes deepened into craters that swallowed motorcycle tires whole. My brother Igwe, who built a house here, became a prisoner to detours – his family’s life dictated by the road’s moods. “Rainy season?” he’d grumble. “We stocked rain boots and coats, not groceries.” Spare parts dealer Mr. Agu, his hands perpetually stained with grease, called the road a “thief” stealing customers and sanity. Yet, Aba’s spirit endured. Shoemakers in Ariaria Market, though not on the Port Harcourt road stretch, but accessible from the expressway, stitched leather under flickering lanterns, earning the city its nickname: “Japan of Africa.”
Decades later, I returned to a road reborn – or at least, remade. The skeptics warned it was another politician’s empty chant. But the proof is beneath my feet: smooth asphalt where floods once pooled, solar street lights shaped like palm fronds, and sidewalks dotted with teenagers filming TikTok dances. The Crystal Park Hotel, like all other run down infrastructures will I hope resurrect as a sleek fortress of glass and steel, and will once again host businessmen, entrepreneurs and investors debating startups over spicy isi ewu.
But progress has its ghosts. The “mammy markets,” once alive with aunties hawking roasted plantains under candlelight, are now sanitized plazas with numbered stalls. The rogue goats that dodged traffic? Will, I hope, be replaced by traffic cameras. At the famous National High School, where students half heartedly recited math tables in chalk-dusty classrooms, a new life is budding. “No more excuses,” says a teacher, “the road chaos is over, we can now focus on what this place was founded to be”.
The road’s heartbeat still thrums in its interlinked markets. Ngwa Road Market remains a maze of haggling voices and hammering metal, where artisans weld generators in open-air workshops. Ohabiam Electronics Market buzzes with traders selling solar panels and phone chargers – a testament to Aba’s DIY genius. But the soul of the road lives in its people: the keke driver who boasts about increased profit now that the road isn’t gulping half of his income, the mechanic Nnamdi joking that smooth roads are “bad for business,” and his wife, who sells homemade soap at a roadside table where mud once ruled.
Yet, questions linger like the scent of burning yam. At the Aba Chamber of Commerce, people whisper about rising rents in Otti’s “new Aba.” A tailor, threading a machine older than her, wonders if her children will be able to afford a shop here. Even the Coca-Cola plant, long closed down because of the bad road, that steadfast titan, faces new competition from craft brewers in renovated warehouses.
Port Harcourt Road is a bit of a contradiction – a place where colonial-era tunnels (recently unearthed by construction crews) lie beneath Instagrammable murals. Where the clatter of typewriters in Schools mixes with the ping of coding apps. Otti’s ambitions loom large: a $1.3 billion medical city to be located at Isiala Ngwá, promises to lure back Aba’s medical tourists, while 900 health centers aim to serve the masses. But for now, the road’s truest story is etched in everyday moments. A boy playfully runs past the spot where wheelbarrows once waded through mud in funeral-like motions. A woman sells akara where her stall was washed away a decade ago. And at dusk, as the streetlights flicker on, the road hums a quiet anthem – not of perfection, but of stubborn, unyielding hope.
Aba has always been a city of second acts. Port Harcourt Road, once a parable of neglect, now dares to dream – one repaired drain, one dry shoe, one laugh at a time.
I really can’t shake off the ghosts of. maldevelopment. The Economic loss and social regression is huge.
To walk Port Harcourt Road today is to tread a graveyard of unrealized potential, where the skeletons of Aba’s industrial past whisper tales of what could have been. Take Crystal Park, once the crown jewel of Aba’s hospitality sector. In its heyday, the hotel was more than a building – it was an ecosystem. Its conference halls hosted deal-making tycoons from Lagos to Douala; its kitchens employed local farmers, and its laundry services kept widows in the Eziukwu Market clothed and fed. Over 300 families depended on its operations, their salaries rippling through the economy like stones tossed into the Aba River. Today, that legacy lies fractured. The hotel’s once-grand lobby is now a Pentecostal church, its fervent hymns echoing through cracked marble floors. The rear wing, where executives once sipped whisky under chandeliers, houses a school where children scratch arithmetic on their desks. The irony is palpable: a temple of commerce reborn as a temple of faith and a temple of learning, yet neither can fill the void left by the evaporation of ₦50 million in annual economic activity.
A stone’s throw away, the Nigerian Bottling Company (Coca-Cola) plant stands as a monument to institutional betrayal. At its peak, this facility was the heartbeat of the Southeast’s informal economy. Over 1,000 workers – truck drivers, line technicians, sales agents – fed entire neighborhoods with their wages. The plant’s hum was the soundtrack of Aba’s ambition, its red trucks emblazoned with the promise of modernity. Now, the gates hang askew, guarded by a few security men napping in a plastic chair. “They took the machines to Lagos,” he mutters, waving at hollowed-out warehouses where pigeons nest in conveyor belts. The air smells not of syrup and carbonation, but of rust and regret. An accountant friend estimates the region has lost ₦200 billion in cumulative GDP over 25 years from these twin collapses – a figure that feels less like hyperbole when you stand in the silence where bottling lines once roared.
The tragedy here isn’t just the loss of jobs or revenue. It’s the unraveling of an ecosystem. Crystal Park’s demise starved nearby markets of patrons; Coca-Cola’s exit severed contracts with local recyclers, truck mechanics, and corner shops. Politicians, of course, still parrot the Igbo axiom “Akụ rụọ Ụlọ” (“Build wealth at home”). Yet how hollow it rings when the very businesses that embodied that ethos – homegrown, job-creating, community-anchoring – were left to rot by the same leaders. The road’s decay didn’t just chase away investors; it became a metaphor for a social contract in ruins.
But this isn’t just a story of death. It’s a diagnosis. The conversion of Crystal Park into a church and school – while Noble and better that a makeshift den of robbers – exposes a deeper societal shift: the privatization of public failure. When the state abandons its duty to maintain infrastructure and enforce accountability, citizens repurpose ruins out of necessity. Churches offer solace where jobs once provided dignity; schools sprout in carcasses of commerce because formal institutions have crumbled. Even the “lounges” that now dot the road – gaudy beer parlors with names like “Dubai VIP” – are monuments to a generation’s lowered expectations: if you can’t build factories, build fantasies.
Governor Otti’s Port Harcourt Road revival is commendable, but asphalt alone won’t resurrect these giants. The challenge now is to confront the rot beneath the surface – the land grabs, the regulatory apathy, the legal loopholes that let corporations abandon communities without consequence. Why hasn’t the state reached out to the Coca-Cola company to get them back on site for a new industrial revolution in Aba? Why let prime real estate like Crystal Park continue to languish in disrepair and disrepute?
Aba’s rebirth demands more than roads; it needs a reckoning. Every church in a dead hotel, every “lounge” in a shuttered factory or warehouse, is a verdict on decades of leadership that prized ribbon-cuttings over sustainability. Otti’s government must choose: Will it be a curator of decay, or a steward of revival? The answer will determine whether Aba’s future is written in the ink of audits and enforceable contracts – or etched, once more, into the epitaphs of abandoned dreams.
Governance, at its core, is a relay race – a handoff of visions, projects, and responsibilities across administrations. While Governor Alex Otti’s reconstruction of Port Harcourt Road has dominated headlines, it is essential to contextualize his work within the framework of his predecessor, Okezie Ikpeazu, whose Urban Renewal Project laid fragments of groundwork in Aba. Roads like Eziukwu Road, Milverton Avenue, and Chisco Link Road stand as testaments to Ikpeazu’s efforts, reconstructed under his administration using rigid pavement technology to combat Aba’s notorious road decay. The Eziukwu-Cemetery Road, abandoned for three decades, was partially recovered under his watch, with expanded scope to include Market Road and Cameroon Road junctions, aiming to revive connectivity in the city’s commercial heart .
Yet history – and the people of Aba – are often unsparing judges. Ikpeazu’s roads, though commendable, became symbols of incompleteness. Take Ojike Lane, left partially finished, or the Immaculate Heart Avenue, which, despite its durable concrete design, failed to address the systemic flooding that continued to plague neighborhoods. For residents, these projects echoed a pattern: ribbon-cuttings without enduring impact. The Ikpeazu administration’s focus on quantity (over 150 roads claimed) often clashed with quality, as noted by critics and residents who observed that many roads lacked drainage systems, leading to rapid deterioration post-construction . Even his flagship Aba Industrial Cluster, designed to empower 40,000 shoemakers, struggled to transcend political rhetoric into tangible economic uplift for artisans.
This dissonance explains why Ikpeazu’s legacy remains overshadowed. His Nwaobasi Ring Road, commissioned with fanfare in 2023, eased traffic but did little to reverse Aba’s perception as a city in decay. Conversely, Otti’s choice of Julius Berger for Port Harcourt Road – a firm synonymous with durability – signaled a shift from patchwork to permanence. Where Ikpeazu’s contractors often delivered “roads” that doubled as seasonal ponds, Otti’s projects integrated stormwater systems and solar streetlights, tackling root causes rather than symptoms .
The public’s tepid memory of Ikpeazu’s strides also stems from context. His tenure coincided with economic recession and legal battles over his election, which critics argue diluted his focus. Meanwhile, Otti’s narrative – amplified by media savvy and a “zero tolerance for corruption” pledge – resonates as a clean break from past failures, even as his administration faces its own scandals, like the suspension of Health Commissioner Ngozi Okoronkwo over alleged procurement misconduct.
Ultimately, Aba’s judgment and positive response towards Otti’s efforts reflects a demand for holistic impact. Ikpeazu’s roads, though vital, were islands in a flood of neglect. Otti’s fewer but transformative projects – like the 6.7km Port Harcourt Road and the 67km Umuahia-Abiriba road – rekindled hope by marrying infrastructure with economic revival, evidenced by banks and businesses flocking back to the Port Harcourt road corridor. Governance, as a continuum, requires not just laying asphalt but rebuilding trust – a lesson Aba’s reclaimed streets are teaching us.
The Ossah road is the entrance point into the Umuahia capital city. Early in his administration, Governor Otti turned his bulldozers toward Umuahia’s Ossah Road – a narrow, potholed strip that bottlenecked into the city. The plan was bold: six lanes to connect the state capital to the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, a gateway for investors. But to carve this future, homes, shops, and even a clinic had to vanish.
I was shown a site one humid afternoon, a skeleton of a demolished pharmacy. A faded sign still clung to a half-wall: “Chioma’s Family Clinic – We Treat you Fast.” Nearby, a woman in scrubs glared at the chaos. This was Chioma, the nurse who’d worked here for 12 years. “They said ‘progress,’” she muttered, kicking a crumpled indemnity form. “But what’s progress when your livelihood is buried under asphalt?”
The government’s compensation process read well on paper: town hall meetings with charts, valuators in crisp shirts measuring square meters, and checks handed over in solemn ceremonies. For some, like Mr. Okoro, a retired teacher whose cracked bungalow was razed, it worked. “They paid me quickly,” he admitted, though his eyes watered as he described uprooting his late wife’s mango tree. Others, like Chioma, claimed the valuations were a joke. “They priced my clinic like a roadside kiosk,” she said. “No one asked about the X-ray machine I’d just installed.”
At a smoky buka nearby, I listened to conflicting stories. A young mechanic, Ifeanyi, praised the road: “Now my customers can reach me in 10 minutes, not two hours!” But his neighbor, Mama Ngozi, wasn’t smiling. Her pepper soup shack had been demolished, and her compensation? “A paper saying ‘Thank you for your sacrifice,’” she spat. “Since when does gratitude buy garri?” Hers were some of those makeshift shacks that simply never cut the line for proper evaluation and compensation.
Even those who praised Otti’s vision added caveats. My aunt in Abiriba, usually his staunch supporter, sighed: “Alex gave us roads, yes. But my generator still drinks more fuel than my children drink water. Tell him light matters too!”
The Ossah project lays bare the paradox of progress: for every commuter cheering shorter travel times, there’s a Chioma tallying losses. Yet, amid the rubble, signs of uneasy coexistence emerge. Down the road, a new shopping complex is rising where Mama Ngozi’s shack once stood – its owner, a Lagos returnee, promises “modern shops for modern Umuahia.” At night, street vendors hawk roasted corn, their lanterns flickering like fireflies. Africa.
Otti’s team calls it “birth pains of development.” Critics call it “bulldozer governance.” But for Umuahia, Ossah Road is now a Rorschach test – what you see depends on whether you’re driving a shiny SUV or counting coins in a displaced kiosk. As the road stretches toward completion, one thing’s clear: in Abia’s renewal saga, not all heroes wear hardhats. Some just pray the future has room for them too.
Back to the interview. When Otti quipped, “The opposition is happy too… they just don’t know it yet,” Rufai’s chuckle echoed on my iPad. I sat to watch the replay, mixed nuts balancing on my lap. My friend, a lifelong PDP stalwart who watched it with me, nearly spilled his Pepsi. “Happy? “ Ọ gwụ la Onyeọlụ” [One person] dị happy – Otti himself!” But a few days later, something took him home and he drove the same road I did earlier home. After driving the Umuahia-Uzuakoli stretch (another Otti project), he called me admitting: “Okay, this one… no be lie.” The road unfurled like a black ribbon, flanked by gully-ravaged landscapes still waiting their turn. Progress, it seems, is a relentless teacher.
Bishop O. Osondu-Emeraku’s post on Ndigbo Lagos WhatsApp platform written and shared on Facebook by Onyebuchi Ememanka, Former chief press Secretary to Okezie Ikpeazu: journey down Port Harcourt Road reads like a parable – a collision of nostalgia, regret, and reluctant awe. Am not sure he authored it or copied it. Whichever, it is instructive.
The account, etched with the raw honesty of a man who once served in Ikpeazu’s inner circle, crystallizes the paradox of Abia’s renewal: progress that heals old wounds while deepening the sting of what might have been.
On a sit-at-home Monday – a grim ritual born from separatist agitations – the author, who was once the Media Man for Ikpeazu, navigated Aba’s streets, now eerily quiet. The absence of traffic allowed him to measure the road’s transformation not in kilometers, but in minutes. From Azikiwe/Asa Junction to the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, a drive that once demanded divine patience now took “seven minutes and 42 seconds”. For a man whose childhood address is “61 Umule Road, Aba,” this wasn’t just convenience; it was resurrection.
“I saw life come back,” he writes. Native compounds along the road, long resigned to dust and decay, now hummed with revived commerce. Banks scrambled for real estate. Abandoned buildings, relics of the ’90s, were shedding their rot for fresh paint. Julius Berger’s signature blue machinery – once a distant fantasy – had birthed a “First Class” highway, its asphalt so smooth the Onyebuchi’s tears fell unbidden. “A reflex kind of smile… my eyes had suddenly become damp.”
But this joy was haunted. As Ikpeazu’s former Chief Press Secretary, the author had once dreamed of scripting this very triumph. He recalls his boss’s “personal agenda” to fix Port Harcourt Road, the ceremonial flag-offs, the promises that dissolved into excuses. “He had done a good number of roads… but PH road would have been the icing on the cake.” The unspoken truth? That cake never materialized. Instead, Otti – Ikpeazu’s successor and political rival – served it cold, garnished with irony.
Ikpeazu’s defenders argue he “laid the groundwork,” but the author’s grief exposes a harsher truth: in governance, intent without execution is theater. The former governor’s passion for Port Harcourt Road, however genuine, collided with a system allergic to accountability. Contractors vanished. Funds bled into nebulous accounts. The road remained a “personal agenda,” not a public priority.
Otti’s achievement, then, isn’t just asphalt – it’s proof that political will, when fused with competence, can shatter cynicism. The author’s tears – part elation, part mourning – mirror Abia’s collective catharsis. “The speed with which this road was delivered is almost unbelievable. One year and some months? No! It can’t be.” Yet here it is: a 6.7-kilometer rebuke to decades of empty rhetoric.
But the Onyebuchi’s account also cautions against hero worship. His younger cousin’s starry-eyed zeal for Otti’s “magic” mirrors a populace desperate for messiahs. Yet the road’s revival, however transformative, cannot erase deeper systemic rot. Why did Ikpeazu’s administration and the ones before him, despite its roads and “Aba Urban Renewal” fanfare, leave Crystal Park Hotel a crumbling husk? Why did Coca-Cola flee? The answer lies in a culture where projects are trophies, not blueprints for sustainability.
Critics, including Ikpeazu’s allies, pounce on Otti’s N36 billion price tag for Port Harcourt Road. “Why spend so much on six kilometers?” they sneer, comparing it to cheaper projects elsewhere. But such critiques ignore context: Julius Berger’s premium reflects not just quality, but the cost of untangling decades of institutionalized sabotage. Demolishing illegal structures, relocating makeshift markets, installing climate-resilient drains – these are battles Ikpeazu’s regime avoided, deferring them to a future someone else would fund.
The narrative silences these quibbles. His drive past Umuagbai Secondary School – a ruin where he once sat for WAEC – wasn’t just a trip; it was a time machine. “I saw myself opposite National High School… I had driven for about 3 minutes.” In a state where leaders routinely mortgage the future, Otti’s road is a down payment on redemption.
Yet the Onyebuchi’s tears carry a warning. His grief isn’t just for Ikpeazu’s failed legacy – it’s for the ease with which Nigerians lower their expectations. “Certain things are beyond politics!” he insists, yet Abia’s history is littered with “beyond politics” promises left to rot. Otti’s challenge now is to ensure Port Harcourt Road isn’t another victory, but a template.
The road’s completion has already sparked a real estate gold rush and banking boom. But will these gains trickle down to the woman frying akara by the Aba River, or the mechanic Nnamdi tuning engines on Umule Road? Or will gentrification – a silent accomplice to progress – push them to the margins?
Bishop Osondu-Emeraku’s shared post by Onyebuchi Ememeaku on Ndigbo Lagos platform, is more than a travelogue – it’s a verdict. History remembers how you made others feel. For Ikpeazu, Port Harcourt Road will forever symbolize squandered potential; for Otti, a fragile lifeline of hope.
But the author’s closing words linger like a prophecy: “The story of this project will be told for a very long time.” The question is, what comes next? Will Abia’s leaders learn that legacies aren’t built in asphalt alone, but in the courage to dismantle systems that profit from failure? Or will we keep trading tears for temporary triumphs, decade after decade?
For now, the road stretches smooth and silent – a ribbon of possibility in a land weary of lies.
Here’s the thing: Abia’s renewal isn’t a fairy tale. I admit it’s messy, uneven, and fiercely debated. For every Port Harcourt Road, there’s a Ndiegoro still choking on waste. For every “Julius Berger is my friend” joke, there are unanswered questions about that N36.5 billion price tag. (My mechanic in Aba, Ifeanyi, put it bluntly: “If na our brother from Aba do this road for half price, will it still hold? Or is ‘Oyibo standard’ the real secret?”) But as I stood at the Abia Tower roundabout in Umuahia, watching workers plant flowers where decay once loitered, I thought of Otti’s words: “What it is, is that… nobody could fix it.”
Maybe that’s the point. For 30 years, Port Harcourt Road was a monument to impossibility – a collective wound. Now, it’s a mirror. Some see cronyism; others see competence. One Ngwa grandmother, who hasn’t left her village since 2015, summarized it best: “When a child finally fixes what the fathers broke, even the ancestors laugh.” And as I journeyed home, past reconstructed roads and lingering doubts, I realized Abia’s story is no longer about perfection. It’s about motion.
Simply miracles. That’s what Uche Nwankwo said, whilst talking about the road repairs across the state. Let me now talk about the anatomy of the miracles. Not the parting-of-seas variety, but the kind that unfolds especially in Aba, where a 6km road, modest by national and global standards, becomes a shrine. Where children kneel to touch asphalt still warm from the paver, as if confirming it isn’t a mirage. Where passersby weep at the sight of streetlights, not because they’re novel, but because they’d forgotten light could be owed to them. This is Igboland’s paradox: our bar for “good governance” has sunk so low that basic competence feels messianic. And in that sinking lies both our tragedy and our tenacity.
You see, the roads themselves – these “tiny specks” as I call them – are not the story. The story is the silence they rupture. For decades, we normalized the absurd: paying levies for roads that dissolved with the first rain; voting for contractors who paved only their bank accounts; watching our brightest flee cities where “development” meant sharing generator fumes with neighbors. My schoolmate, now a teacher in Umuahia once joked, “We don’t need prophets here. Just a leader who won’t steal the road like the airport.” And so when Otti’s roads emerged, smooth and unapologetically durable, they became more than infrastructure. They became a referendum on our collective endurance. How did we survive this long breathing the poison of our own resignation?
I felt this shift during this year’s Easter homecoming in Abiriba. The conversations veered from events at hand to road budgets. “Otti spent N30 billion on Port Harcourt road? Good!” barked Ete Ogbu, his walking stick tapping the earth for emphasis. “Let them probe it tomorrow. Today, my wife’s arthritis isn’t flaring up because the road from Abiriba to the clinic in Umuahia no longer resembles a war zone.” Nearby, a teenager snorted: “Una dey celebrate road like say na rocket science.” But his smirk faltered as he scrolled through TikTok, showing us – a video of Otti inspecting the Trunk B drainage, knee-deep in sludge, barking orders at engineers. “Wait, governors fit do manual labor?” he murmured. That moment – a boy unlearning cynicism – is the true blueprint.
History whispers here. When Peter Obi rebuilt Anambra’s schools, he wasn’t just stacking blocks. He was proving that a state could outgrow its godfathers. When Umahi sculpted Ebonyi’s concrete wonders, he wasn’t just laying flyovers. He was declaring that the Southeast’s destiny needn’t be tied to Abuja and Lagos’ leftovers. Now Otti, with his geotextiles and forensic audits, offers a third testament: that our people’s genius, currently hemorrhaging to Europe and Canada, can be stanched. Not by rhetoric, but by roads that outlive election cycles.
But let’s slice through these ugly romance. Why did we tolerate darkness this long? Why did we accept leaders who treated infrastructure like a favor, not a right [recall: flyover Ọ gbasara gị?]? Part of it is the Igbo addiction to survivalism, a sad bewitching leftover from the civil war – that stubborn belief that we can thrive in spite of the government. “Light no dey? Buy generator. Road bad? Buy Jeep.” Our resilience became our trap. We privatized survival, mistaking hustle for freedom, while politicians weaponized our pragmatism. “Let them suffer,” a former commissioner once told me over lunch, “they’ll still vote based on kinship and tribe.”
Otti’s rebellion against this fatalism is what rattles the establishment. By delivering roads that even his critics use, he exposes the old lie: that competence is impossible here. My friend Emeka Okoli, a pharmacist in Aba, put it bluntly: “When I drive home without swallowing painkillers first, I realize we’ve been governed by men worse than armed robbers.” His words are harsh, but they mirror the disillusionment simmering across the streets, neighbourhoods, markets and motor parks.
Yet euphoria is a fickle muse. For every Otti road, there are villages like Abiriba, Item, Igbere, Abam and many others still drawing water from polluted streams. For every Ariaria trader praising reduced transport costs, there’s a teacher in Arochukwu wondering why her school’s walls crumble louder than the governor’s press conferences. Progress, here, is a mosaic – one where gleaming tiles can often distract from missing pieces.
Perhaps that’s the point. What Otti, Obi, and Umahi share in common with Mbakwe isn’t perfection. It’s the audacity to reset expectations. To say, “See? It’s doable.” Their roads are both pavement and provocation – a challenge to the next generation.
In the end, the roads are not the destination. They’re the wake-up call. A reminder that after decades of accepting scraps, we’ve finally remembered how to demand feasts. That our “stupidity” had an expiration date. That even the mightiest tree begins as a seed pushing through tough hard soils.
So let them laugh at Otti’s “tiny specks.” Let them sneer at our celebrations. Every pothole filled, every drain unclogged, every child who now walks to school without muddying her shoes – these are brushstrokes in a larger portrait. The portrait of a people unlearning helplessness, one kilometer at a time.
But there are Ghosts of Progress. Let’s. talk about ‘the’ ghosts. Not the ancestral kind that hover around our sacred grooves in Abiriba, but the ones living in concrete – the half-plastered walls, the staircases leading to nowhere, the hollow promises cemented into buildings like curses. During my Easter visit, I didn’t just see roads. I saw skeletons.
The story of Abia’s uncompleted but commissioned Government House in Umuahia is not unique, but it is instructive. According to public records and Governor Alex Otti’s own disclosures, the building – commissioned by former Governor Okezie Ikpeazu in 2020 – stands as a physical testament to systemic graft. Though I never visited the site, the facts are stark: Ikpeazu hosted a lavish ceremony to inaugurate the complex, showcasing a fully furnished ground floor with imported Italian furniture, marble finishes, and state-of-the-art facilities. What the cameras didn’t capture were the floors above. The first floor, incomplete and stripped of fittings, lacked basic plumbing and electrical systems. The second floor, as Otti later revealed, was little more than an open-air shell – no walls, no roof, just exposed concrete pillars under the sky. Billions of naira, earmarked for a functional seat of governance, vanished into a structure that served no purpose beyond photo ops and political theater.
This is more than poor planning. It is institutionalized fraud. How does a governor allocate public funds for a project, commission it as “complete,” and face no consequences for delivering a hollow shell? The answer lies in a cycle of impunity enabled by weak oversight, complicit institutions, and a culture of political loyalty over public accountability. Auditors rarely scrutinize state budgets. Anti-corruption agencies prioritize federal cases. Local media, often underfunded or intimidated, hesitate to probe. And citizens, weary of empty promises, grow numb to the spectacle.
Ikpeazu’s Government House is a microcosm of a national disease. Projects are conceived not as public goods but as vehicles for profit. Contractors inflate costs, kickbacks are paid, and substandard work is accepted with a wink. Leaders exploit the gap between “commissioning” and completion – knowing headlines will celebrate the ribbon-cutting, not the rot behind the curtains. By the time the truth emerges, the actors have moved on, shielded by tenure immunity or partisan alliances.
The lesson here is not about one governor or one building. It is about the ghosts of our systems. Without enforceable consequences – audits with teeth, independent anti-graft bodies, and a judiciary empowered to prosecute – corruption will persist. Citizens, too, bear responsibility: voter apathy and the “it’s our turn to eat” mentality perpetuate the cycle.
Aba’s many renovated Roads shows what accountability could achieve. Otti’s administration, by prioritizing transparency in contracts and tracking project milestones, is delivering usable roads. But for every success, there are a dozen abandoned projects gathering dust – and pigeons – across Nigeria.
Until governance shifts from personal enrichment to public service, until we demand integrity as fiercely as we demand infrastructure, and until failure is met with disgrace rather than promotion, Abia’s Government House will remain a metaphor: a nation building castles in the air, one fraudulent floor at a time.
Fraud. The word hung in the air as we drove past the Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH) later that day. I remembered Otti’s boast: “Accreditation restored! No more fleeing doctors!” My aunt, a retired midwife, had scoffed at that. “In 2021, my cousin left for Zambia. Now? They’re begging her to return.” Yet here was ABSUTH, its gates polished, ambulances parked where weeds once ruled. A young intern, clutching a stethoscope, told me, “We’re not Dubai yet, but at least we’re no longer a mortuary.”
Fraud again. But whose?
The soiled and dirty Aba River slinks past Enyimba Hotel, at the popular intersection called the Waterside, like a wary spectator. I stood there two weeks ago, on the cracked banks where butchers had taken over from fishermen; and the few visible ones still mend nets while children dare each other to touch the murky water. The hotel itself – a hulking relic of Sam Mbakwe’s 1980s vision – looms behind a rusted fence, its shattered windows staring out like dead eyes. But don’t be fooled by the silence. Governor Otti’s “Enyimba Rebirth” plan promises to morph this graveyard of ambition into a Radisson Blu-backed jewel, complete with a Dubai-style riverfront promenade.
My father’s stories about this place used to feel like folklore. “Mbakwe planned it for the future,” he’d say, recounting hopes that businessmen from all over the world will gather after the work day in its rooftop bar. By the ’90s, decay had set in. I remember sneaking inside as a teen, dodging squatters in the lobby, their fires flickering under graffiti-strewn walls. Today, the only signs of “rebirth” are a lone excavator parked in the overgrown lot, its tracks sinking into mud.
A security guard, his uniform hanging loose, squatted by the gate chewing kolanuts. “Contractors came last month, snapped pictures, drove off,” he said, shrugging. “People say big cranes will arrive soon. Me? I’ll believe it when I see it.” He spat a nutshell into the dirt. “But ‘bia’, maybe this time will be different. The governor likes to fight ghosts.”
He’s right. Enyimba Hotel is more than bricks – it’s a battleground. Mbakwe’s original dream fell to rot under regimes that treated public assets like personal piggy banks. Later governors leased it to cronies who stripped its copper wires and vanished. Now Otti, ever the showman, vows to resurrect it as a symbol of Abia’s “open for business” era. The deal’s signed. The renderings dazzle. But the riverbank remains cluttered with plastic waste, cow dungs and rubbish, not bulldozers.
This is Nigeria’s eternal tango: grand visions hamstrung by execution. For every Road success, there’s an Enyimba Hotel – a project drowning in delays, half-truths, and the weight of precedent. Why should citizens trust this revival? Because Otti’s track record leans toward action, but also because we’re desperate to believe.
As I left, a group of traders argued by the river. “If Otti fixes this hotel, even the ‘Ụmụ Agbara’ here will vote for him!” one joked. Another scoffed: “Let him finish the road first. This hotel is for big men. We need water, not waterfalls!”
The truth? Both are right. Enyimba’s rebirth could signal a shift – proof that leaders can reclaim plundered legacies. Or it could become another Nollywood set: all CGI [Computer Generated Imagery] promises, no tangible plot. For now, the river keeps flowing, indifferent. It’s seen this kind of show several times before.
Now money – yes, money! The interview’s sharpest twist. Otti claims he’s slashed Abia’s debt from ₦192 billion to ₦66 billion without borrowing a kobo. “Prudence!” he declares. Yet at Ukwa’s palm plantations, where Otti’s new agricultural partnership promises to “replant our future,” there are farmers, skeptical of big words. “No kerosene subsidy, no light,” one growled, “but they’ll grow palm trees? Let them bring the seedlings first.”
Even the children know the calculus of hope. In Umuahia, I watched pupils in crisp uniforms march into a renovated primary school, part of Otti’s free education push. A teacher, her face tired but bright, said, “Thousands applied for jobs here. Imagine! Graduates fighting to teach ABCs.” But down the side road, a mother hawked sachet water and other small stuff with her toddler tied to her back. “School free,” she shrugged, “but who’ll feed him if I don’t sell?”
And then there’s the airport – or the ghost of it. Otti’s interview smirked at the ₦10 billion “drawn for a non-existent airport” under Ikpeazu. “Bring back our money or give us the airport!” he’d demanded.
Through it all, the pensioners. Oh, the pensioners! At Umuahia’s secretariat, I met Mazi Okoro, 78, who clasped my hands, tears glinting. “They owed me 56 months. Otti paid. Not all yet, but…” His voice cracked. “I buried my wife last year. At least she saw a bit of this hope.”
This is Abia’s dance – one step forward, two ghosts back.
But here’s what stuck: Otti’s refusal to probe the past. “Four years is too short for distractions,” he told Rufai. My uncle, a PDP loyalist, nearly spat out his palm wine. “No time? Then why expose Ikpeazu’s fraud?” But Ngozi, a fish seller in Aba, countered: “Let him build! We’ve seen enough probes that built nothing.”
And build he does. The same week Radisson Blu inked the Enyimba deal, I stood on the Ukwa site where Otti’s “palm tree revolution” set to begin. “Soon,” an engineer smiled. “Soon.”
But “soon” is a fragile word here. At the uncompleted Government House, a friend picked up a discarded tile – smooth, imported, Italian. A worker joked, “Keep it! Souvenir of our shame.” he slipped it into my hand and said you might need it, I refused.
Now, back in Lagos, I sit on my home office desk wondering, with scattered images floating around, each worth more than that Italian tile. A reminder: Progress here isn’t a straight line. It’s a mosaic – broken pieces, half-truths, gleaming fragments. Otti’s Abia is a land where pensioners dance beside bulldozers, where classrooms bloom while some clinics still struggle, where every fixed road whispers, “What next?”
Maybe that’s the point. As Otti told Rufai: “Our mantra was ‘Weep no more.’” And for the first time in decades, Abia’s tears are drying – not from perfection, but from motion. Even the ghosts seem to agree.
Let’s now speak about the arithmetic of trust. On my last morning in Aba, I went to one of the Trunk B Road construction site, the Owerrinta-Umuikaa Road (5.5 km) – Undergoing reconstruction and dualization, watching a bulldozer claw through soil. A young engineer, his neon vest splattered with mud, gestured at the chaos: “See this? We’re not just laying asphalt. We’re rebuilding Abia.” He laughed, but his eyes were serious. Back at Aba, Ariaria Market loomed – a labyrinth of ingenuity where tailors stitch dreams into leather and welders bend metal into miracles. These road projects, these billion Naira puzzle, was their lifeline. Or their gamble.
A site engineer, Emeka, became my reluctant guide. “They shout ‘too expensive!’ but have they seen Aba’s underbelly?” He pulled up a photo on his phone: a cross-section of the road’s foundation, layers of geotextile fabric woven like ceremonial akwete cloth. “Without this, the first rain will swallow everything. Remember 2020?” I did. That year, floods drowned 47 shops along this stretch. A man whose vulcanizing workshop vanished in the deluge, told me: “Water doesn’t respect grammar. It only respects drainage.”
We walked past trenches deeper than graves. “Twenty-two percent of the budget here,” Emeka tapped a concrete culvert. “Relocating colonial-era water pipes. They’ve probably been leaking since Azikiwe was premier.” His words echoed Governor Otti’s interview defense – “integrated urban renewal, not just asphalt!” – but here, among sweating laborers, it felt less like rhetoric and more like archaeology. Each shovel exposed layers of neglect: frayed cables from NITEL’s glory days, rusted petrol pipes probably from Shell’s first foray into the East.
At Crystal Park Junction, I met Chidinma, a bead seller whose kiosk was demolished for the road’s expansion. She’d received compensation – “enough to rebuild, but not enough to forget.” Her new stall perched precariously on the road’s edge, a kind of resentment and hope. “Let them build their Dubai road,” she shrugged. “But when my daughter asks why her school has no light, I’ll tell her: ‘Ask the geotextiles.’” A cynic’s snap. Not all will be happy. I now understand.
Yet down at Ngwa Road Market, the calculus shifted. Uche, a leather dealer, showed me his ledger. “Last year, transporting 100 bags to Port Harcourt took almost 12 hours. Now? Eight. Saved ₦400,000 monthly on fuel.” He grinned. “If this road lasts 20 years like they say, I’ll build a factory here. Maybe even buy Italian machines!” His laughter tangled with the whir of sewing machines – a clap for guarded optimism.
The numbers, cold in budget documents, bled into flesh here. The promised ₦1.4 billion annual savings for SMEs? For Uche, it’s extra apprenticeships. The 23% property value surge? For Kunle, my mechanics wife, whose roadside shack is now a “future supermarket site,” it’s a prayer to outlive gentrification. Even the 8,000 jobs – 30% reserved for youth – had faces: like 19-year-old Ifeanyi, mixing concrete at ₦5,000 daily, funding his coding bootcamp. “This road is my GitHub,” he joked, smartphone peeking from his dusty pocket.
But critics linger like harmattan haze. At another roadside buka, I shared peppered goat meat with Okechukwu, an opposition blogger. “₦6.1 billion per kilometer?” He sneered. “In Rwanda, they build for half!” I asked which was the worst: Stealing without building or building at a high rate? Yet his argument crumbled when Emeka arrived, uninvited, with blueprints. “Rwanda’s roads don’t navigate century-old markets mid-construction. Or pay compensation in a currency that loses value between bank transfers.” The silence that followed was thicker than pounded yam.
Sunny Mgbadike Igboanugo’s incisive Facebook post cuts to the heart of Nigeria’s governance paradox: a cycle of grand theft masquerading as leadership, defended by whataboutery and institutional decay. His questions – sharp, unsparing – force us to confront uncomfortable truths about Abia’s past and present. Let’s dissect them, layer by layer, to unravel the tangled web of political theater, propaganda, and the public’s desperate hunger for heroes.
Ikpeazu’s decision to commission an unfinished Government House as “complete” isn’t just incompetence – it’s institutionalized fraud. His aide’s defense – that the next governor should “finish it to his taste” – isn’t just laughable; it’s a confession. State assets aren’t personal fiefdoms. Imagine the UK leaving 10 Downing Street’s roof half-finished for the next PM, or the White House missing floors for “aesthetic preferences.” Such logic thrives only in ecosystems where leaders view public funds as spoils, not sacred trusts.
Otti’s alleged N5 billion renovation of his private residence, if true, would be equally egregious. But here’s the rub: in Nigeria, optics often eclipse ethics. While Boris Johnson resigned over a lockdown garden party, our politicians treat billions like petty cash. The real scandal isn’t just the spending – it’s the normalization of it. Why does a Nigerian governor’s home dwarf the UK PM’s in opulence? Because our system rewards audacity, not accountability.
Yet context matters. Otti’s defenders argue: “Would you live in a building where pigeons nest in boardrooms?” Fair. But transparency is non-negotiable. If Otti used state funds for private renovations, he must answer. The silence isn’t just suspicious; it’s a missed chance to model integrity.
Ikpeazu’s team cites EFCC exoneration as proof of innocence. But in Nigeria, EFCC clearance is worth less than a traffic policeman’s receipt. The agency’s legacy – a mix of selective prosecutions and plea bargains for the connected – renders its “clean bill” meaningless. If Otti’s allegations of a phantom airport are false, let Ikpeazu produce contracts, contractors, or runway blueprints. Otherwise, this is just another ghost project in a nation haunted by them.
Debt isn’t inherently evil – if it builds schools, not Swiss accounts. But when Ikpeazu’s administration allegedly left Abia with N192 billion in liabilities, citizens deserve specifics. Who lent the money? On what terms? Where did it go? Otti’s pledge to “clean the books” is noble, but wiping debts without exposing their origins risks perpetuating the cycle. The public craves forensic audits, not financial magic tricks.
Ikpeazu’s allies cry foul over Otti’s N36 billion road contract, comparing it to a N30 billion, 17km project in Port Harcourt. But this ignores context. Aba’s road required demolishing illegal structures, relocating centuries-old markets, and installing climate-resilient drains in a flood-prone city. Julius Berger’s premium pricing also reflects its reputation for durability – a rarity in Nigeria’s contractor cartel.
The deeper issue? Nigerians distrust all numbers. Decades of inflated contracts – like the $16 million “grass-cutting” scandal – have left citizens allergic to big figures. Otti’s solution? Publish line-item budgets, invite third-party auditors, and turn project sites into open books. Without this, even genuine progress fuels skepticism.
Ikpeazu’s team claims he avoided media hype, trusting his “work to speak.” But in Aba, that “work” whispers through flooded streets and abandoned factories. Otti, meanwhile, leverages viral interviews and slick visuals – a necessity in a nation where perception is power. Yet there’s substance beneath the spin: Osisioma floods, a decades-old scourge, have finally receded under his watch.
But propaganda cuts both ways. Otti’s social media blitz risks overshadowing tangible gains. Are Abia’s citizens “celebrating him like a god” because of progress – or because he’s a shiny alternative to rock bottom?
In this duel of narratives, both sides weaponize half-truths. Ikpeazu’s camp leans on technicalities (“EFCC cleared us!”); Otti’s counters with moral grandstanding (“I’m cleaning their mess!”). But the people’s verdict is emerging: Otti ranks among Nigeria’s top governors not because he’s perfect, but because he’s doing what others failed to do. In a nation where most leaders don’t even pretend to care, effort alone feels revolutionary.
Yet Sunny’s challenge stands: “Somewhere lies the lies and the truth.” Until Otti subjects his reforms to ruthless transparency – and Ikpeazu’s men abandon laughable defenses – Abia’s renaissance will remain a work in progress. The road ahead demands more than asphalt and hashtags; it requires a cultural reckoning. Leaders must fear the people, not the other way around. Only then can we stop confusing motion for movement, and propaganda for progress.
At the Ministry of Works, I saw the transparency theater – project dashboards glowing in a hall lined with framed budgets. A clerk whispered: “We are expected to post everything now. Even what we eat.” It felt performative, yet radical. Nearby, a mural quoted Otti: “Every kilometer is a runway for economic lift-off.” I thought of Chidinma’s daughter, of Ifeanyi’s code dreams, of Uche’s Italian machines.
As I left Abia, rain began to fall. At Owerrinta just before I crossed into Imo State, workers scrambled to cover geotextiles with tarpaulin. “Timing!” Emeka had warned. “If the rain hits before we seal…” But the sun broke through, painting rainbows on diesel puddles. A metaphor? Maybe. Or just Abia’s luck – a land where progress and chaos waltz, forever on the edge of drowning, forever refusing to sink.
In the end, Governor Alex Otti’s interview did more than ignite debates – it held up a mirror to Abia’s fractured soul. What it reflected wasn’t the failings of Ikpeazu or the Orji Kalu era, but the stark economics of power in a state long treated as a private estate. For decades, governance here operated on a brutal calculus: roads were paved not to connect markets, but to funnel votes; projects were commissioned not to serve the people, but to inflate egos. The “economics of existence” for the average Abian? A daily tax of time – hours lost navigating potholes, years wasted waiting for water, lifetimes stunted by leaders who mistook motion for progress.
Otti’s much talked about Port Harcourt Road repairs, however, introduces a new arithmetic. Its value isn’t measured in kilometers laid, but in minutes reclaimed. A trader who once spent hours crawling from Cemetery Market to Ariaria now delivers goods in 20 minutes. A schoolgirl no longer misses classes due to floods. Julius Berger’s hiring of local security guards and graders for school roads? These aren’t charity – they’re microeconomic stimuli, injecting dignity into households. Banks scrambling for real estate along the revived corridor? That’s investor confidence, a currency past administrations bankrupted.
Yet the true revelation lies in the economics of reality. Ikpeazu’s defenders boast of roads built, but where’s the ROI [Return on Investment] for the mother who still buys sachet water at 10 times the price of pipe-borne? What’s the GDP impact of a Government House with a marble lobby and roofless floors? Otti’s critics harp on his N36 billion road cost, but ignore the cost saved: the mental toll of despair, the generational erosion of trust, the silent exodus of Abia’s brightest [including the loudest of Otti’s critics] to cities where infrastructure isn’t a punchline.
This is the pivot Otti embodies – a shift from “political economics” (where projects serve tenures) to “human economics” (where infrastructure serves lifetimes). His reforms are fewer but fractal: each road repaired, each hospital upgraded, each school desk donated sends ripples through the economy. A teacher at National High School, once demoralized by leaking classrooms, now invests her “timely” salary in a side hustle, knowing her paycheck won’t vanish into ghost worker lists. A welder near Ohabiam Market secures a loan, trusting the new road will keep clients coming.
John Okiyi Kalu’s vehement defenses of Ikpeazu’s era only deepen the irony. By clinging to legacy metrics – “we built X numbers of roads!” – he overlooks the existential algebra Abians now demand: How does this reduce my pain? How does this amplify my hope? Otti’s unimaginable euphoria from the streets springs not from perfection, but from the visceral sense that someone finally sees them. The road’s asphalt is merely the canvas; the real masterpiece is the restored belief that leaders can be stewards, not predators.
Yet the challenge ahead is steep. Abia’s redemption can’t rest on one road or one governor. It demands institutionalizing the economics of accountability – where every naira spent is audited, every contractor tracked, and every leader knows their reign will be judged not by ribbon-cuttings, but by ripple effects. Otti’s greatest legacy may yet be this: making Abians allergic to the old lies, teaching them to measure progress not in concrete, but in reclaimed hours, resurrected businesses, and the audacity to demand more.
In the end, history won’t remember Ikpeazu’s marble floors or Otti’s asphalt. It will remember how they made Abia people feel – enslaved by neglect, or empowered by possibility. For the first time in generations, Abia’s ledger isn’t written in red ink and regret. The balance sheet is changing, one honest kilometer, one transparent contract, one tear of gratitude at a time. The rest is commentary.
So yes, Governor Otti, laugh with Rufai. But hear Chioma’s unspoken pleas. See the darkness in Abiriba and several other communities. Keep planting those flowers. The road ahead is still long – but for the first time in decades, Abia is moving. And sometimes, movement is the most radical truth of all.
Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma (AI-KO)
Essayist. Public Speaker. Historian.
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