In a no-holds-barred interview with ARISE News, Governor Alex Otti of Abia State offered a sweeping defense of his administration’s reform efforts while delivering a scathing critique of his predecessor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, accusing him of deception and fiscal irresponsibility.
Central to Governor Otti’s revelations was what he called a “fraudulent commissioning” of an uncompleted Government House by Ikpeazu’s administration. According to Otti, the former governor unveiled only the finished ground floor of the new Government House on May 28, 2023, while leaving the upper floors in a raw, unplastered state.
“What happened was that my predecessor commissioned an uncompleted building… He completed the ground floor, finished it very well, put Italian furniture in the place, painted it, and commissioned it,” Otti explained. “But as I went to the first and second floor, they were not even plastered. No sanitary fittings, nothing. So that’s fraud.”
Despite the mounting revelations, Otti ruled out launching a formal probe into Ikpeazu’s tenure, saying it would be a distraction from more urgent responsibilities. “You have only four years. And when you get into some of these distractive things, you lose focus. I have too much work to do,” he said, while referencing a specific financial irregularity.
“We called in KPMG… they looked at one of the accounts. And they found that some 10 billion Naira was drawn for a non-existent airport. So that’s the only one that we are saying, bring back our money or give us the airport.”
Since taking office, Otti emphasized that his administration has remained fiscally disciplined. “We have not borrowed one dime,” he said, despite inheriting what he described as a tangled web of liabilities. While the Debt Management Office (DMO) recorded Abia’s debt profile at ₦138 billion in 2023, Otti insists the actual debt left behind was closer to ₦192 billion.
“DMO didn’t include pension arrears, which we cleared off. They didn’t include salary arrears, which we also paid. They didn’t include all the parastatals that were being owed,” he noted, listing Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic and medical institutions among the affected bodies.
One of the administration’s early wins, Otti said, was the clearance of pension backlogs dating as far back as 45 to 56 months. “We sat down with the pensioners… and by Easter last year, we paid a total of about ₦10 billion to pensioners to clear all the arrears,” he said.
Turning to the health sector, Otti addressed claims that his government had abandoned the much-touted multi-specialist hospital in Aba. “The specialist hospital was not abandoned. It’s actually working,” he clarified, adding that the facility had been repurposed as a general hospital to avoid redundancy, given the presence of the Abia State University Teaching Hospital in the same city.
He pointed out that the teaching hospital, which lost accreditation in 2021 due to neglect under the previous administration, has since regained its standing. “In December 2023… the accreditation was restored,” Otti said. “Everything that you require in the teaching hospital is there right now.”
Looking ahead, Otti outlined his ambition to ensure equitable healthcare across the state: “The idea is to have specialist hospitals in every senatorial zone.”
The governor reiterated his dedication to the people of Abia: “Nobody is more important to me than Abia people and God.”
