Abia PDP has said it's very delighted that the leadership of the Labour Party in the state has finally woken from its deep slumber. But, Unfortunately, like a man who is half asleep and half awake, LP, as usual, erroneously decided to take on the PDP that has stood up for the masses of Abia in the last year that the Labour Party sent them to the abyss. The Labour Party should rather clear up the humongous mess it has made of Abia State in the past 12 months."
Abia PDP, through the Publicity Secretary, Elder Abraham Amah, said it will not take the liberty to respond to the Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party for the obvious fact that he is still learning the ropes, and joining issues with him will serve their diversionary purpose. The media arm of the PDP is too sophisticated to descend to responding to such infantile vituperations hurled at it by the said Publicity Secretary. Abia PDP will continue to engage with Alex Otti constructively without resorting to name-calling and scapegoating, as they have done in the midst of the confusion of the past 12 months.
"What the Abia PDP will do is put out the facts of the matter as they are and allow both the discerning members of the LP, if there are any, and the well-meaning people of Abia to be their own good judges. The PDP insists on its earlier position that the national leader of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, should be disappointed as well as ashamed of what his protege, Alex Otti, has reduced Abia State to, instead of living the exemplary life Peter Obi lived as the governor of Anambra that received national and global acclaim."
PDP challenged the Labour Party to offer explanations, and put the following issues to rest by telling Abians the truth:
1. What is the position of the Labour Party about the fact that Alex Otti spent about N11.5b to run the governor’s office on feeding alone from his home in the past year, excluding expenditure headings like vehicles, security votes, and travel expenses? Yet he is unable to give Abia workers just a one-month wage award, as other states have done.
2. The unilateral sack of permanent secretaries and 15,000 civil servants of different cadres from the state civil service without due process, and the fact that he is surreptitiously bringing them back through the back door as consultants, having seen that the sack was a bad policy that has messed up not only the Abia civil service but the entire governance structure of Abia State.
3. What explanation can the Labour Party give about the conning of Abia pensioners to sign off their arrears as a premise for them to continually receive their monthly pension and the fact that the governor went to the faraway United States to say that he has cleared nine years or 10 years of salary arrears, even when the National Union of Pensioners, NUP, said that they were not owed nine years of arrears and therefore could not have been paid nine-year pension arrears?
4. Abia PDP wants the Labour Party to explain why its governor has not been following due process and the Abia Public Procurement Act in the award of contracts. Till today, Abians do not know the costs of the roads Alex Otti is re-asphalting, and the only one he was pressured to reveal, the Port Harcourt Road in Aba, turned out to be a controversy between his aides because, in one sitting and on national TV, both Aides could not agree whether it was N30b or N32b, a disconnect that laid bare their confusion and insincerity.
5. Why won't Peter Obi be ashamed of Abia State since his party men running the state have become serial liars whose words are not worth any salt, having lied at every given opportunity, even when the truth is whiter than snow white? From Abia’s 3.5% investment in the Geometric Power Plant, which they lied about even with written and confirmed evidence from the promoters, through the N3.49b the previous administration left in the coffers, which they denied but made evident by the financial process review they ordered and dubiously turned it into a spectacle of forensic audit to maliciously target and destroy some individuals when the review found nothing incriminating on the previous government, to the purported clearance of salaries of Abia State University workers, which the academic staff union of the institution refuted with anger and vehemence.
6. Why is the Labour Party comfortable with the fact that Governor Alex Atti and the Speaker of the State Assembly, Emmanuel Emeruwa, who is obviously under his thumb, have turned themselves into accusers, judges, and juries in their own cases by refusing to inaugurate Hon. Aaron Uzosike, the PDP member representing Aba North State constituency, even when the Appeal Court has restored his mandate and removed the Labour Party candidates? Is that not an obvious effort to destroy our hard-earned democracy, which rests on the pillars of rule of law, freedom, justice, and fair play?
7. Why would the Labour Party continue to present itself as an opposition party and fail to hold its governor responsible for the increasing level of insecurity in Abia State while they watch their leader politicize insecurity? At last count, about seven gallant officers of Nigeria’s security agencies have been mowed down in broad daylight in Abia while the governor abdicates his responsibility by scapegoating others. Can he reconcile the humongous amount of money he signs off as a security vote every month with the increasing cases of insecurity that pervade the state today, especially in the Aba area, which has become a flashpoint of insecurity?
8. The Labour Party should prevail upon Alex Otti to implement the financial palliative for the Abia work force to cushion the effects of the hard times and the inflation that has almost taken away the take-home of Abia workers. Last month, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC named Abia State as one of the few states that has not been paying the N30,000 minimum wage, even when Alex Otti proposed a minimum wage of N60,000 when he was campaigning to become governor of Abia State.
9. Earlier this week, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS factsheet named Abia State as one of the states that has not attracted any Foreign Direct Investment, FDI in the last year, even when the governor has been globe-trotting with Abia funds, in excess of N1bn in the last year, all in the name of looking for foreign investors. Every day, news about investors who came into Abia floods social media, but the recent NBS fact sheet has punctured all the lies.
The best thing the Labour Party should do is deliver on the promises it made to Abians during the elections. The Labour Party should stop seeing the PDP as the problem in Abia State because the LP knows where the holes are leaking and should fix them.
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