Again, Otti Joins Abia Governorship Race

A financial expert and former bank chief, Mr. Alex Otti has declared that he is still very much involved in the struggle to liberate Abia State from the stranglehold of bad leaders and has once again offered himself to contest for the governorship seat in 2023.

He made this known while declaring his interest to join the increasing number of governorship aspirants jostling for tickets of various political parties in Abia, saying that he is in the 2023 governorship race “for the love of Abia”.

Otti started the quest to become the chief executive of Abia in 2014 after  giving up his top post as the Group Managing Director/CEO of Diamond Bank(now Access Bank) and joined politics in full swing and emerged a governorship candidate.

He led the opposition All Progressives Grand Alliance(APGA) to record a stunning electoral success in 2015 and was at the verge of coasting home to victory in the governorship poll when the magical Obingwa votes were used to stop him.

He described his foray into the “murky politics of Abia” as “the story of a struggle motivated by sacrifice and sustained by tenacity. It’s a struggle inspired by conviction and advanced by courage”

He said: “The problems which informed my decision to respond to the call of our people in 2014 for their liberation has now taken a new and a frightening dimension – complete breakdown of infrastructure, increase in inequality, non-payment of wages of workers, high rate of unemployment, weak economy, corruption, abject poverty and poor healthcare and educational facilities.”

According to him, the Abia sad story of failed governance has persisted because of “the wrong leadership choices we had made as a state, elder statesmen and citizens”, adding that Abians should be ready to get it right in 2023.

In what has become an Easter declaration, Otti assured that Abia would surely resurrect from dead if the people of the state would throw away the yoke of the bad governance which the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has perpetrated in the state.

He said that time has come for things to be done differently in Abia in order to get a different and better result that would satisfy the yearnings of Abians for development and prosperity.

Alluding to his choice of APC for the 2023 race, Otti stated that the only way to extricate Abia from the stranglehold of the PDP, “is to launch an attack from the opposition”, adding that APC represents a platform “for us to have a unified opposition.”

“We have worked very hard to put up formidable structures from the polling units to wards, local governments and at the state level to take back our state,” he said.

The former banker assured his supporters that though he has changed political platform “our vision and mission have not changed We have resolved once again to bring change to Abia State and have the plan to do things differently.”

“We plan to pursue economic policies for shared prosperity and immediate attention on youth employment. We plan to create quality education for development, modernization and social mobility.

“We plan to ensure the modernisation of agriculture and its value chains to take millions out of poverty and ensure food security in the state,” he said.

Otti further promised that he would “deploy modern infrastructure to aid ease of doing business, particularly in Aba, the commercial nerve centre of Abia and put the state on a pedestal where it would no longer be a laughing stock in the comity of Nigerian states.