Gov. Alex Otti of Abia State
By Alphonsus Okoroigwe
When Governor Alex Otti mounted the podium at Umuahia Township Stadium to mark three years in office, he spoke numbers that differed from usual politics.
According to the scorecard at that event on May 29, 2026, his administration had completed 414 road projects covering 864 kilometres across Abia’s 17 local government areas, with 82 more roads covering over 212 kilometres at various stages of construction. There’s evidential impact from the reconstruction of the long-abandoned Port Harcourt Road in Aba to the completion of the new six-lane Aguiyi Ironsi Boulevard in Umuahia and the Umuahia-Uzuakoli-Abiriba-Ohafia Road. And the Otti story is much-celebrated across Abia State.
Aside from driving massive physical infrastructure, another significant achievement of the Otti administration is fiscal discipline. At a time when most states are seeking fresh borrowing, Governor Otti has reduced Abia’s inherited debt burden by over 70 percent since March 2026, sustaining one of the highest capital expenditure profiles in Nigeria at 80 percent. This probably explains the state’s leap from 36th in 2024 to Nigeria’s second highest performing state in the revised 2026 Phillips Consulting Index.
The administration’s free and compulsory basic education policy has boosted the number of children in public schools from 117,000 to over 300,000, massively increasing the figure to about 183,000 new students. Similarly, it recruited 5,394 teachers in 2025 and 4,075 in August 2026, and built two smart schools at Ubakala and Umuomaiukwu, restoring full accreditation and re-accreditation for several key disciplines at Abia State University.
Dedicating 15 percent of the state’s annual budget to healthcare, it remodeled 200 primary healthcare facilities across the state, recruited 821 health personnel, and enrolled over 270,000 residents under the Abia State Health Insurance Scheme.
Just for ease of doing business, it has digitised about four million land documents, and signed about 4,707 Certificates of Occupancy, surpassing the total figure issued between 1999 and 2003. It also acquired and launched 40 electric buses for the Abia Green Shuttle Bus Scheme that has reportedly conveyed over 226,000 passengers, and built an administrative complex for the Nigerian Air Force Administrative in Umuahia; among other notable strides.
Taken together, all the achievements of the Otti administration suggest a state being systematically rebuilt. Yet, the scale of inherited decay implies that while he has laid a solid foundation for the progress and development of Abia State, consolidation is imperative.
Alphonsus Okoroigwe is an international multimedia journalist
