Titus Eleweke, South East Editor
AWKA, Anambra – Renowned Nigerian human rights lawyer and lead counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has strongly condemned recent attacks on Abia State Governor, Dr. Alex Chioma Otti, by former governors of the state, describing their actions as the desperate manoeuvres of a failed political class and a strategy dead on arrival.
Ejiofor described the critics as a coalition of former devourers of Abia’s common patrimony, illusionarily assembled in a bid to wrest power from a performing incumbent.
According to him, their campaign is not only hollow but fundamentally disconnected from the political reality in Abia State.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Ejiofor declared that Abians are, for the first time in decades, tasting the true sweetness of democracy not as rhetoric, but as a live reality.
He warned that anyone plotting to reverse the gains recorded under Governor Otti’s administration should “submit himself to medical, if not moral, examination.”
The human rights lawyer stated that if Dr. Alex Otti were to contest an election today even as an independent candidate he would still be running against no one but himself, given the vacuum of credibility on the opposing side.
According to Ejiofor, many of those attacking Governor Otti are failed leaders whose records, in a just society, would place them behind bars rather than on political podiums.
He further warned Abians not to allow former governors,some of whom defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in a bid to dodge accountability and imprisonment to derail the good work currently underway in the state.
“I recall predicting, with clinical precision, the outcome of the Anambra State gubernatorial election, noting that Governor Chukwuma Soludo campaigned not on promises but on visible performance. That election was, in effect, a referendum. The same logic applies in Abia today.
Having tasted deliverance, Abians will not return to Egypt. They have moved on.” he added.
Ejiofor said it would take either a complete stranger to Abia State or a wilful amnesiac to be unfamiliar with the state’s chequered and regrettable political history in the not-too-distant past.
For decades, he noted, Abia,aptly called God’s Own State was governed less as a commonwealth and more as a private estate, carved up among successive administrations whose legacies were defined not by development, but by plunder.
According to him, a disturbing pattern emerged,officials who served under successive PDP administrations,many of whom later sought ideological refuge in the APC for political oxygen and judicial soft-landing were repeatedly hauled before Nigeria’s most relentless anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
What continues to perplex Nigerians, and Abians in particular, he said, is not merely the monumental scale of the looting, but the astonishing audacity with which many of these individuals still roam freely, strutting through public spaces as though immunity were a birthright.
Even more troubling is their ability to secure elective offices, where flamboyance often substitutes for accountability.
Even more perplexing, Ejiofor argued, is the brazenness with which these same political relics now challenge an administration whose performance has been openly acknowledged even by the President and Commander-in-Chief as exceptional in the delivery of democratic dividends.
“One is compelled to ask: is this courage, or simply the desperation of men whose political pensions and relevance are under existential threat?” he asked.
Ejiofor recalled that under previous administrations, Abia consistently ranked among the worst-performing states in the federation, collapsed infrastructure, unpaid salaries and pensions, decayed healthcare systems, moribund educational institutions, and an economy hovering near rigor mortis.
Today, however, under the leadership of Dr. Alex Chioma Otti, Abia State is witnessing what Ejiofor described as a renaissance so profound that observers have half-jokingly referred to it as the Dubai of the South-East.
Roads long abandoned, he said, have been resurrected, Aba,the commercial heartbeat of the South-East has been reclaimed, re-engineered, and restored to productive life.
“Economic confidence has surged. Security has improved measurably. Civil servants now receive their salaries promptly. Contractors are held to standards, not sentiments. For the first time in a long while, Abians are witnessing governance at its peak.
Ejiofor posed a simple but troubling question for critics:“Is Dr. Alex Otti achieving what his predecessors swore was impossible?” he stated.
According to him, the answer though inconvenient for detractors is straightforward,prudence, transparency, discipline, and vision.
Yet, in what he described as a tragicomic twist, a handful of political fossils men whose public records read like draft charge sheets have summoned the audacity to threaten this progress.
They forget, he noted, that Nigeria’s current President has repeatedly affirmed that development is non-negotiable, regardless of party affiliation, with Anambra State standing as living proof.
Ejiofor lamented that today, political hirelings and charlatans,individuals who ought, by every moral and judicial reckoning, to be answering sterner questions have rediscovered their voices, chanting the hollow chorus of “change” as though Abians suffer from collective amnesia.
To imagine, he said, that the people of Abia will quietly surrender their reclaimed future to predators who once mortgaged it is not only insulting but delusional.
As the Igbo wisely say:“Ihe eji n’aka ejighi ugegbe enyo ya.”
Ejiofor asked pointedly:“On what platform, with what record, and by what moral authority do these former governors seek a ‘change’ in the status quo, after plunging Abia into suffocating debt and institutional decay?”
He listed some of the unprecedented achievements recorded under Governor Alex Chioma Otti’s administration to include:Massive road reconstruction across Aba, Umuahia, and major arterial routes,
Restoration of Aba as a functional industrial and commercial hub,Prompt and consistent payment of workers’ salaries and pensions,
Transparent budgeting and strict fiscal discipline,Revitalisation of healthcare facilities and public schools,
Improved security architecture and community-based policing
Renewed investor confidence and private-sector participation,
Zero tolerance for fiscal recklessness and opaque governance.
“The list is long,” Ejiofor said, “and it is visible for all Abians to see.”
He called on Abians and the Nigerian public to continue to rise against corruption, speak against it, and condemn it wherever it appears and whoever wears its mask.
According to him, those who once served Abia and failed it together with their fellow travellers,must understand one thing clearly, the era of impunity is over.
“Progress has found a governor.
Abia has found its feet. There shall be no retreat.” he added .
