WHEN A MAN BREAKS THE HEDGE: THE FALL OF GRATITUDE :
There was once a king in Judah named Asa, who rose from obscurity to greatness by the help of God and the loyalty of faithful men who stood by him when hope was nearly lost. In his humility, he sought the Lord with all his heart and tore down every false altar in the land. The scripture records that the kingdom was quiet before him, and the land had rest for ten years. His reign was marked by peace, progress, and prosperity because the heavens smiled upon him.
But in the season of success, hubris crept into his heart. Asa forgot the divine structure that enthroned him and began to lean on the arm of flesh.
King Asa turned to a treacherous political alliance against the very structure that made him relevant. He despised the counsels of the leaders that supported him; instead of showing gratitude, he oppressed them. Then the same heaven that once gave him peace withdrew it. Wars rose against his borders, his heart grew restless, and even his health failed him. Asa, who once walked in divine favour and commanded loyalty, died fighting avoidable battles he couldn’t win.
This is the eternal truth of leadership: when a man breaks the hedge of gratitude, the serpent of pride will strike.
Every throne built on divine favour must remain humble to sustain its peace and relevance. As the Roman philosopher Cicero warned centuries ago, “A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue but the parent of all the others.”
Dr. Alex Chioma Otti’s rise to power was nothing short of dramatic and divine. At a time when political oxygen seemed scarce, the Labour Party, under the leadership of Barr. Julius Abure, offered him a platform that rescued him from political irrelevance and carried him to victory in 2023. For a while, the atmosphere in Abia State felt renewed: new hope, new vision, new energy. The nation watched, expecting a fresh dawn.
But as months rolled by, Otti, like King Asa, instead of gratitude, began to plot the assassination of his own political saviour, the Labour Party. The man rescued from the dustbin of political history began to despise the authority of the very structure that carried him. Friction, fuelled by arrogance, emerged between him and the state leadership and structure of the Labour Party. He didn’t just disagree with Hon. Ceekay Igara’s led executive; he was actively moving to dismantle and destroy its very presence in Abia, seeking to purge the party of those who built the foundation of his ascendancy. Who does that!
This betrayal further led to open disagreements with the party’s national chairman, Barr. Julius Abure, a man on whose back he rode to power. Otti wanted nothing but to hijack the national structure of the Labour Party to further massage his insatiable ego, using the throne he was given to try and seize control of the very hands that placed him there. But he met an iron resistance.
His visible, unhidden alignment with the mercenary faction of Ms. Nenadi Usman is a clear act of treason against the authority that birthed his victory. Otti is not a peacemaker; he is instrumental to the crisis rocking the Labour Party. He has since sponsored and supervised various court assaults on the party to get Abure out. Nature abhors ingratitude, and politics punishes treachery.
The universal axiom stands true: never bite the hand that feeds you, for when your own strength fails, those hands will be the first to withdraw their support, leaving you exposed and vulnerable. Otti’s actions are a loud, arrogant declaration of self-sufficiency that mocks the grace that elevated him.
In response, the party leadership announced his indefinite suspension. He was stripped of his status as the highest elected political officer in the party and lost the authority to represent its interests in any capacity. This political earthquake is a direct consequence of his self-inflicted isolation.
Beyond the political drama lies a deeper lesson about loyalty and the terminal cost of self-imposed isolation. Leadership, no matter how visionary, becomes vulnerable when it cuts the umbilical cord to the structures that birthed it.
Gov. Alex Chioma Otti was carried away by pride, like King Asa of old. He forgot it was grace, not genius, that raised him. His political life is a cautionary tale of a man trading the solid foundation of loyalty for the shifting sands of arrogance.
Since Otti lost the divine peace in governance, he has been consumed by self-deceit to bewitch Ndi Abia with his false projects and carefully crafted falsehoods. Deception may travel far and fast, covering long distances with impressive speed, but one day, inevitably, the truth will catch up with it.
Naturally, the world is inclined to believe lies because lies often dress themselves in the garment of truth, while truth remains naked and unadorned. Dr. Alex Chioma Otti has perfected this art of deception; he has elevated it to a new height entirely. Sadly, many innocent Abians believe they have found a saviour, but what they have instead is a master of duplicity, a political illusionist.
Before, anyone who dared to question or criticize Otti risked being metaphorically stoned. He began to operate as a modern-day Absalom who, through cunning and sweet words, stole the hearts of his people, but his political sorcery has expired.
When Otti assumed office as governor, he inherited a well-furnished Government House and a fully equipped Governor’s Lodge. Yet, he deliberately chose not to use them. Instead, he allowed those facilities to rot and be vandalized, all to justify new expenditures and looting. Now, he operates from his personal residence, which he has transformed into a state office with public funds.
The maintenance of this private facility is now officially captured in the Abia State budget. Recently, he completed a helipad on the same property and constructed a road leading directly to his country home, all funded by taxpayers’ money, a clear violation of public trust!
Worse still, Governor Otti spends more of his working hours in Abuja than in Umuahia, running the state remotely while collecting salaries as a full-time resident governor. The maintenance of the Abia State Governor’s Lodge in Abuja consumes huge sums of state funds, yet he often prefers to lodge in expensive hotels, further straining the state’s finances. He treats the state treasury as his personal expense account.
Today, Otti’s government is facing internal dissent, growing criticism, and public scrutiny over issues of governance and transparency.
Then entered Otti’s latest brutal adversity, the Honourable Deputy Speaker, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Kalu, boldly challenging Governor Alex Otti to embrace transparency and accountability. The governor’s entire political support structure in Abia State has been thrown into disarray. Rather than provide verifiable evidence of prudent spending, Governor Otti has gone on a desperate image-laundering campaign, deploying social media influencers and mercenaries to flood the digital space with falsehoods while simultaneously forcing loyalists to issue press releases attacking every dissenting voice.
One thing that Governor Otti dreads most is the truth. He has tried to be smart, a political charlatan who sees the treasury as his personal ATM and governance as a tragicomic skit for social-media validation. His frantic antics are failing. As the great statesman Edmund Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Ndi Abia people are no longer doing nothing.
Evidence ends argument. Where is the evidence of the projects executed with the over ₦1 trillion received from the Federation Account in just two years? The staggering sum is enough to revolutionize the state, yet the reality on the ground remains one of decaying infrastructure and palpable neglect.
Propaganda cannot replace performance. Otti may continue deceiving his gullible supporters, but discerning Abians will keep asking.
Naturally, one should have ignored the deceitful document being circulated by one Ukoha Njoku Ukoha, as it is clear he is still deeply entangled in falsehood even when caught red-handed. But silence is no longer golden; Abians are getting wiser by the day.
We all agree on the FAAC figures published by the government. However, the key issue here is the total monthly revenue of the state. The facts support it, that there are other inflows that go into the same FAAC account. These include LNG dividends, federal interventions, and loans, all of which constitute part of the total revenue of the state, alongside the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
So the critical question remains: into which Abia State Government account did the Federal Government pay the CNG Bus intervention funds and other palliatives shared among the 36 states? Otti’s aide admitted on Flow FM Umuahia during a live radio programme that Abia received these interventions. Where is the corresponding entry in the public financial records?
The state’s Financial and SEFTS report for April to June 2025 clearly shows FAAC receipts of ₦101 billion and IGR of ₦13.3 billion, figures officially published by the Abia State Government itself.
To worsen the deceit, the government recently reported to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that Abia generated ₦40 billion in IGR for 2024, an average of about ₦3.3 billion monthly. Up until July last year, Abia’s IGR averaged around ₦1.8 billion monthly. It only rose when TSA was implemented and all school fees and health institution revenues were added to artificially inflate the numbers.
Now, to impress the gullible, they boast of ₦40 billion IGR performance, but when called to show corresponding development, they deny their own report. The same Q2 (April–June 2025) financial publication shows Abia received ₦38 billion in FAAC, and we now await the Q3 report (July–September 2025).
The government has been caught red-handed, and no amount of propaganda will erase the truth.
For clarity, all total receivables, inflows, and loans form part of a state’s total revenue, not just FAAC. Anyone denying this either lacks understanding of public finance or is intentionally misleading Ndi Abia. This deceit and manipulation of Abia’s financial data must stop. The people deserve transparency, not theatre. We cannot continue to worship falsehood and call it governance.
Governor Otti has dismissed this controversy, yet his administration’s own budget performance reports expose the lie: a ₦54 billion expenditure on schools that remain dilapidated monuments to fraud! This figure is not a budgetary estimate; it’s a reported cash outflow in late 2024 that could have rebuilt every school in Abia, giving every child a fighting chance. Instead, the money has vanished into a budgetary black hole, leaving a trail of unpainted, unequipped, and unfinished structures.
Governor, stop the semantics and publish the list of renovated schools and the contractors, or confess that the money is gone!
Where is the ₦6.7 billion recreational facility that was budgeted for and monies written off? Who is relaxing on such opulence while Abians suffer?
Where are the ₦4.3 billion ICT centres whose funds were expended in 2024? These were supposed to be hubs of innovation; instead, they are ghost projects, existing only in budget line items.
For Governor Otti and his headless online mob, governance has been reduced to a frantic scramble for social-media applause. Today, Otti sponsors crowds with colourful attires and drums to cheer him up in public, a pitiful display of rented loyalty. But the smoke and mirrors have evaporated, leaving behind only the stench of unfulfilled ambition. The people are not asking. The people are demanding a forensic audit!
Otti had everything going well for him until iniquity was found in him. Otti has been derobed already and will not return as the governor of Abia State for a second tenure.
Just as Prophet Samuel was instructed to stop weeping for Saul because he had been rejected and his kingdom given to another, Barr. Julius Abure, the National Chairman of the Labour Party, has filled his horn with oil to replace Otti.
Abians must now rise and ask hard questions. The truth may walk slowly, but when it finally arrives, no lie, no matter how decorated, will stand before it.
Weep not for Otti, for the judgment is not just political; it is moral. Ichabod! Otti’s glory has departed.
By Meche Oswald.
Soldier of the Labour Dream.
Comrade in the Fight.
