Human rights lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has rebuked former governors of Abia State over their sustained attacks on Governor Alex Otti.
Ejiofor described the campaign as the last gasp of a discredited political class struggling to reclaim lost relevance.
According to him, the critics are former custodians of Abia’s commonwealth who presided over years of stagnation and plunder.
The lead counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) said the former leaders have now illusionarily regrouped to challenge a performing incumbent whose record has fundamentally altered the state’s political landscape.
Ejiofor called their strategy hollow, desperate, and fatally disconnected from the current reality on ground.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the senior lawyer declared that Abians are, for the first time in decades, experiencing democracy not as empty rhetoric but as lived reality.
Critics need medical examination
He warned that anyone scheming to reverse the gains recorded under Governor Otti’s administration should “submit himself to medical, if not moral, examination.”
Ejiofor argued that if an election were held today, Governor Otti would effectively be running against himself, given what he described as a credibility vacuum among the opposition.
Many of those now attacking the governor, he said, are failed leaders whose public records would, in a just society, earn them court appearances rather than political platforms.
He cautioned Abians against allowing former governors, some of whom defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in an attempt to dodge accountability and possible imprisonment, to sabotage the rebuilding process currently underway in the state.
He drew parallels with Anambra State, Ejiofor recalled predicting the outcome of the Anambra governorship election.
The human right lawyer noted that Governor Chukwuma Soludo campaigned on visible performance rather than promises, turning the election into a referendum on governance.
“The same logic applies in Abia today,” he said. “Having tasted deliverance, Abians will not return to Egypt. They have moved on.”
Chequered political history
According to him, only a stranger to Abia or a willful amnesiac would be unfamiliar with the state’s chequered political history.
For decades, he noted, Abia, ironically known as God’s Own State, was governed more like a private estate, carved up by successive administrations whose legacies were defined by looting rather than development.
Ejiofor recalled how the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), repeatedly invited officials from past administrations.
He said Nigerians are perplexed at the scale of the alleged looting and the audacity with which many of those involved still parade themselves in public spaces and even secure elective offices.
“That such figures now question an administration openly acknowledged, even by the President, as exceptional in delivering democratic dividends, is either misplaced courage or raw desperation.”
He painted a grim picture of Abia’s past: collapsed infrastructure, unpaid salaries and pensions, decayed hospitals and schools, and an economy on the brink of collapse.
In contrast, he said, the Otti administration has sparked a renaissance so striking that observers jokingly refer to Abia as the “Dubai of the South-East.”
“Roads long abandoned have been reconstructed, Aba has been reclaimed as the commercial heartbeat of the region, economic confidence has surged, security has improved, and civil servants now receive salaries promptly.
“Contractors are held to standards rather than sentiments, marking a clear break from the past.
Posers to critics
Ejiofor questioned the governor’s critics: “Is Dr. Alex Otti achieving what his predecessors swore was impossible?
“The answer, he said, is simple but inconvenient—prudence, transparency, discipline, and vision.
He listed key achievements of the administration to include massive road reconstruction across Aba and Umuahia, restoration of Aba as an industrial hub, and prompt payment of salaries and pensions.
Others include , transparent budgeting, revitalised healthcare and schools, improved security architecture, renewed investor confidence, and zero tolerance for fiscal recklessness.
Calling on Abians to remain vigilant, Ejiofor urged the public to continue resisting corruption and rejecting political charlatans. “Abia has found its feet,” he declared. “Progress has found a governor. There shall be no retreat.”
