[OPINION]: Alex Otti’s 100 Days of What?

By Michael Nwabueze

Last week, the Governor of Abia State, Mr Alex Otti joined some of his counterparts in other states to mark his first 100 Days in office. Since then, diverse reactions have trailed the milestone in Abia.

Ordinarily, 100 Days in office should be a pointer to the direction an administration is headed, at least, that was what was used to judge the strides of former president of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt who started the tradition of marking 100 Days in office in June 1933 after being elected and sworn in as President on March 4, 1933.

Remarkably, Roosevelt became President when the United States was going through the period of The Great Depression. Never for once did he blame his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, for pushing the country into the Depression four years earlier starting from September 1929 when major stock prices fell to a historical low thereby sending economic shock waves around the world.

Roosevelt was rather focused on the job of ameliorating the hardship Americans were passing through then. He did truly hit the ground running with several administrative, legislative, and regulatory actions that brought immediate succour to the citizens within just 100 days in office. Such actions included declaring a bank holiday, which stopped the disastrous run on the banks, took America off the gold standard, passed groundbreaking legislation for farmers, homeowners and the unemployed.

The positive impact was so significant and immediate that the citizens erupted in jubilation and held “beer parties” all over the country to celebrate Roosevelt’s 100 Days in office.

But somewhere in Abia State Southeast Nigeria, rather than enjoy “beer parties”, the people are enduring “tear parties” of worry, wailing and weeping because the governor has refused to emulate the examples of great leaders like Roosevelt.

Unlike Roosevelt, Alex Otti has spent his first 100 days in office lamenting about the previous administration, blaming his immediate predecessor and officials of his government for everything inconceivable, when he should be focused on fulfilling his campaign promises to the people.

He has spent his first 100 days in office being unnecessarily vindictive and pursuing vendetta, the thieves of his time. Sadly, these actions of his did not stop with officials of the immediate past administration. The citizens have also been bearing the brunt of his gross incompetence.

Rather than create jobs, Alex Otti has sacked about 10,000 state workers with no excuse other than that they were employed by his predecessor. In one fell swoop, he rendered thousands of Abians jobless and subjected numerous households to hunger and suffering, not considering the hardship the nation’s economy has already brought upon the people.

Worse still, he has manufactured one reason or the other not to pay workers of some sections of the state civil service and even pensioners contrary to his promises. These and more are the reasons pensioners and workers have embarked on protests in Otti’s first 100 days in office including the one on the day the State was supposed to be celebrating her anniversary, another on the day Otti was supposed to be marking his milestone of 100 days.

That the protests by Abia workers held on such days speak volume of how Otti has eroded the people’s love for their dear state that on days they were supposed to be having “beer parties” they were subjected to parties of tears.

Although Alex Otti has tried his best possible to paper the cracks in his administration’s gross incompetence and maladministration by procuring a section of the media and social media influencers to launder his already battered image, the fact that he has no single project to his name in the period under review unlike his predecessor who he loves to loathe, in the same period, and the fact that weeks after other governors have deployed the palliatives shared to states by the federal government to cushion the effects of removal of fuel subsidy on their people, Abians are yet to see any palliative not to talk of feel one. Rather, allegations have it that the funds may have been looted by government officials, hence, no activity around the palliatives.

No matter the media hype and propaganda, Abians are truly in pain, and only positive actions by government can relieve them of such pains, and not media fabrications.

That has been the lot of the people since Otti’s era, and never in the history of the state has the people wished so quickly that a 100-day old government should be changed urgently.

-Michael Nwabueze writes from Aba