All Nigerians can attest that times are hard and critically uncertain. Economic security and development can no longer continue to be in the hands of mindlessly unthinking street-boys without ideas. Our environment is an example of human depression, squalor and neglect. We have neither potable water nor good roads. Ignorance and poverty are the twin evils over here while diseases and deaths lurk permanently on everyone’s doorstep.
Infant mortality rate in this part of Nigeria is about 300 per 1000 live births thereby reflecting the lowest socio-economic trend imaginable in the world. Health services by government are inexistent and where scarcely available suffers lack of essential drugs.
We have a population density that is outrageous and lends credence to high urban unemployment and underdevelopment, armed robbery and exponential crime rate. The houses and the entire living conditions are below internationally acceptable living standards as refuse heaps have taken over our communities and localities hence the endemicity of typhoid fever, cholera and assorted ailments.
However, Dr. Alex Otti holds our dreams of solution in absolutely understandable terms from his deep feelings and commitment. He has the will power and the integrity but we need to supply him our unshakable support and attention. The total implication is that a concrete plan of action must be put in place to serve as a road-map to exit this very ugly era which benefits only a criminal few. Success is achievable anyway.
Of course these things itemized, cannot be achieved without developing an educational system that is well focused towards raising a formidable human resource to cater for new and improved ideas and their implementation. This is because technological development simply means the ability of state or nation to locate and transform available scarce resources and put them to utmost economic and productive use at every point in time in the course of societal growth. All the above listed will remain impossible and a mirage without a sizeable body of men and women trained in the relevant sciences and technologies.
Dr. Otti has promised in utmost good faith to design a comprehensive master plan which will enable Abia State to optimize its economic potentials and prepare it as a major economic power in the Nigerian nation and in other emerging international markets, without relegating to the backgrounds the issues of ecological and environmental protection. The lack of control of the tide of heavy external borrowing in Abia is very disturbing indeed due to the fact that such funds are never put to good use except being siphoned in the processes of cronyism, favouritism and godfatherism. A decent government will put a stop to such idiocy and set the state in a perpetual path of growth and development, stemming the tide of official negligence prevalent in a trend where a population which is largely agrarian and vulnerably illiterate still has high numbers of young children who do not have access to schools due to poverty upon the additional fact that other young people from the rural areas are migrating to the urban centres in search of non-existent white collar jobs further complicating the problem on hand. Considering the far-reaching implications of the above stated situation, Abians and other well-meaning Nigerians must not miss out in this grand opportunity to collectively rally round Dr. Alex Otti’s campaign and help in actualizing the new face of Igboland which obviously has its nucleus in the state in general and Aba the elephant city in particular. As the best opportunities are in cities where infrastructure spending remain highest, with its concentration of consumers and returning diaspora citizens. Reason why almost our present productive output is for domestic consumption and not adequate for export.
Elimination of the atrocious economic management pattern of the present government will be evident in the presence of cranes, new buildings, thriving malls and new business billboards jostling for space on the skyline as the ease of doing business will clearly improve, creating profitable new markets for both local and transnational firms giving Abia’s estimated population of over 5 million people plenty of promise as there will be money flowing clearly while everyone will be negotiating and haggling with cash, agreeing on prices and striking deals. Target being to transform Aba into the likes of China’s electronics factories and Bangladesh’s textile sweat shops by providing electricity which Otti started funding during his days in Diamond Bank with Prof. Bath Nnaji through Geometric Power Company Aba and also increasing the mileage of paved roads in the state.
Dr. Otti’s well planned intended collaboration with other governors of the South Eastern and South Southern states of Nigeria will Obviously give rise to new ports, roads, railways and power stations springing up across these geo-political zones engendering the acquisition of new assets which will generate new sources of growth, further attracting diaspora citizens of these zones and other Nigerians to invest the money the earned overseas homewards with its attendant economic and social multiplier effects.
Since the spree of the gross mismanagement of Abia State economic resources commenced decades ago by past and present political leadership, the desire for change has been evident. The challenge of the next decade is whether government with pressure from the electorate can live up to those hopes, and the injury time to rectify that grave anormally is now as the 2023 governorship election in Abia draws nearer bearing in mind that with this set of political leaders our resources and our collective lives gets leaner by the hour. A really ticking time-bomb indeed since this clueless people in power have serially refused to acknowledge that they have systemically mismanaged our collective economy having failed to convince anybody by evidence that the future is bright after several opportunities to lead the state and its people.
Dr. Charles Chinekezi is a Chartered Professor of Management (C.M.P) of the Nigerian Institute of Management, Lagos, Nigeria.