Labour Party governorship candidate in Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti, has stated that the passion to impact lives positively made him abandon his banking career for politics.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Otti, a former managing director with a bank promised to turn the state to a modern state, a place that would attract solid investments and people if elected governor in 20203.
You were doing well in your career as a banker. Why did you leave such a flourishing career to jump into Nigeria’s dirty politics?
At a point in your life, you start asking yourself certain important questions. You’ve made a success of your career. You can afford the life you want. But you look at where you’re coming from — your state of origin — and realise that millions couldn’t even afford the basic necessities of life. You asked further questions: “There have been governments in this state for 16 years from 1999. Sixteen years of democracy, of civilian rule. Why are the people not better for it? Why is there still large scale poverty? Then it was 16 years, now it’s getting to 24 years.”
You then asked even further questions: “Knowing that you’re privileged, would you want to just live for yourself and family alone when you can actually live for more people and help improve their lives?” There’s a limit to how far your personal resources can go. Since successive administrations in the state were unable to improve the lives of our people, I decided to go do that myself. This was why I got into politics —to carry out one of the basic functions of government, which is the welfare of the people.
Did you ever consider that your reputation could be tarnished because of the way Nigerian politics go?
Yes, I did. Of course, I’ve always known that politicians try to taint their opponents. Although, I must confess, I didn’t know that some of them had no boundaries. Nothing is sacred to the ones I’ve dealt with in the last eight years. But I joined politics in spite of my knowledge of what politicians do to people’s names, mostly because, for me, there’s nothing to hide. And I’m sure you must have noticed that they really have nothing tangible to say about me. Everything has just been what they created in their heads or out of thin air or inconsequential matters.
This is your third attempt at becoming the governor of Abia State. What’s so attractive about the position?
I’m not attempting to be governor because of any attraction it holds. I’m contesting because the first reason for which I started the journey — improving the welfare of our people on a large scale — hasn’t been resolved. I won the election in 2015, and they stole the mandate. But, unfortunately, the beneficiaries of that electoral heist have been clueless for over seven years now. Maybe it’s God’s way of enforcing that biblical law: “Thou shalt not steal”. No form of governance is going on in the state as we speak. Even basic salary payment is not paid for years. So it is, for me, about starting out on a journey. We haven’t reached our destination yet, and we will continue on the journey until we get to our destination. Interestingly, we’re closer now than when we first started.
At the first attempt, everybody wanted you. But somehow you lost it. A lot of people thought you compromised by not protecting the votes given to you. Tell us what happened?
Accusing me of compromise is akin to blaming a victim of robbery for his ordeal instead of apprehending the robbers. I did everything I was expected to do within the ambits of the law. On the day of the election in 2015, I was leading massively when chieftains of the ruling party then pushed in fake results from two local governments. The returning officer cancelled those results, knowing they were not real. The leaders of the party criminally invaded the collation centre with hundreds of security men and forced the returning officer to reverse himself and reinstate the written results. The poor man panicked and reversed himself. I pursued the mandate Ndi Abia gave me from the election tribunal up to the Supreme Court. At the tribunal, the panel said we were unable to prove that we won. We went to the Appeal Court and challenged that decision. The Appeal Court established that we actually won, which was why I was declared the governor on the last day of 2015. The Supreme Court, however, insisted that the ground upon which the Appeal Court gave its judgment, which was INEC’s use of card readers, was not in the Electoral Act. That decision was perverse, but there was nothing else we could do. That law has changed now, which is why we are reminding Ndi Abia to give us the same mandate they gave us in 2015. I was part of those who pushed hard for the electoral law to be amended, and, today, we are happy it has been done. I did everything to retrieve our mandate.
Now see it this way: our party’s presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, also pursued his own stolen mandate up to the Supreme Court. But it was under a different electoral regime. It took him three years to recover his mandate. By the time it was my turn, the law had already changed. We had only six months to prove to the tribunal that we won. You no longer had that much time to submit evidence.
I mentioned this, because, at the tribunal stage, when the court ordered that we should go to Obingwa LGA to recount the ballot, which PDP relied on to allot 82,000 votes to themselves, they organised their arsonists and set the Obingwa INEC office ablaze just a day before the count was to start, thereby destroying evidence. The INEC office was supposed to be under the protection of security agents. Where were these security agents when people were burning down the building? I am the chief victim of electoral theft. Of course, all Abians of good conscience are, and it will be unfair to blame me who pursued it up to the Supreme Court, spending time and money to ensure our mandate was returned. The word ‘compromise’ should not even be used in your question, as it simply makes no sense.
Was there any time the ruling PDP government offered you money to back down? Tell us your own story?
Of course, they made entreaties. They sent certain traditional rulers and elders to urge me to back down while we were in court. They promised me some huge money as compensation for what I’d spent during the election and in court.
But, for me, money wasn’t the issue. If money were my problem, I wouldn’t have left the bank. I still had an unexpired five years within which to remain as bank CEO before I voluntarily resigned. It is beyond money, and I told them this. You can’t run the entire place aground, impoverish everyone and then believe we would clap for you for endangering the lives of our parents and the future of our children. I rejected their offer, and it was the right thing to do.
You had so much faith in APC when you dumped APGA for the party. Suddenly, we heard there was this imposition of an unpopular candidate on the rest. At what point did you notice that the game has changed?
I left APGA upon realising that its leadership had departed from the shared vision of the party at that time. We have evidence of the state leadership hobnobbing with the PDP governor a few days after the 2019 election. That was a reminder of where the party was before I joined it in 2014. It used to be an arm of the state PDP. They had career candidates who they sponsored every four years to come pick tickets and ‘contest’. Once they did, they would go to sleep. The plan had been to ensure no serious opposition got the party’s ticket. But we changed that when we joined the party, and, in 2019, sadly, Abia PDP managed to buy over APGA party leadership. At that point, it became clear to me that we no longer shared the same vision. For instance, while we were in the tribunal after the 2019 election, APGA leadership hired a lawyer to withdraw the party from our matter. That is how low the party descended. I decided, therefore, to join the APC. But, as you rightly mentioned, APC decided to impose an unpopular candidate on the party in Abia. While I was still there, other stakeholders and I pleaded with the party leadership to allow us to go for direct primaries so that the most popular candidate would emerge. But, strangely, the party stuck to its guns. They preferred someone who would not win even his own ward in the general election to those who can win them the state. It was at that point that I bid them farewell.
You just said the Labour Party is people centred, and you’re right. It is people centred in most parts of the country, especially in the South and Middle Belt regions. I also agree with you that most of our rural voters may not have known the Labour Party logo. Our job, therefore, is to sensitise the voters and tell them what differentiates the Labour Party logo from those of other parties, and that we are set to do in the course of the campaign. Interestingly, the symbol of Labour —three people — is easy to identify and relate with.
What is your vision for Abia State?
To offer proper governance where the welfare of the people is taken seriously. Our people wallow in poverty mostly as a result of actions of the government. It is the duty of the government to lift people out of poverty through deliberate policies and programmes that target productivity and employment. We will build and empower our human capital in Abia. We will empower a mass of our youths to stand economically and contribute hugely to the state’s GDP.
Of course, we will also build physical infrastructure to support our industrialisation drive. The vision, in summary, is to eradicate poverty completely in Abia and build a modern state that will attract solid investments and people.
What strategy do you have in place to transform the state?
I’ve told you the vision already. The next is to assemble the right team to help implement this vision. The third is to read them the riot act. We are out to work for the Abians, not for personal enrichment. The fourth is to lead by example as the head of the government. If the head doesn’t corruptly enrich himself, his team members will be scared to attempt to corruptly enrich themselves. On this matter, we already have a template from Peter Obi, our presidential candidate. The fifth is to run a cost-benefit analysis of every project we will embark on. How does that project tie into the overall vision of poverty eradication, business growth for the ens and infrastructural development for the state? We are holding the deeper aspects of our strategy close to our chests.
You had issues while saying you were exposing the ineptitude of the state government. Do you think that effort yielded anything?
Unfortunately, it did not yield much, but the outcome would have been more disastrous if we had kept quiet. The governor’s case is sad in two ways. Firstly, he’s incapable of performing, even if he wanted to. You know, you can’t give what you don’t have. He has no experience in high-level leadership. He also, based on evidence of seven years plus, doesn’t seem to have the aptitude for learning on the job. Secondly, he also never really had the will to perform. You know, where there is a will, there will be a way. I say this because I took the pain to offer his government informed pieces of advice on how to go about the task of governance: pay salaries and pensions; reduce profligacy; pay attention to details. All my interventions are in the public domain. It was not a secret. What he did was to assemble his aides to insult me. But it didn’t bother me. You can insult me all you want, but solve the problems for which you became a governor. Well, we have seen where his unseriousness has brought the state.
The governor has an anointed candidate. Knowing Nigerian politics, he will do everything to install him, too. Don’t you see this as a threat to your ambition?
Threat? I don’t think so. Abians also know exactly what you’re talking about. They will not vote for the governor’s lackey. Abia people are not dunces. They are very smart people. So, in that sense, Abia PDP is no threat. Note also that rigging has become extremely difficult now. The new Electoral Law, as I mentioned while answering your questions earlier, can’t permit them to rig like they’ve always done. The governor and his candidate will be roundly defeated. We will defeat them.