Andy Ezeani
\nTuesday,June 2, 2026<\/p>\n
It is understandable, in the context of multi-party politics, that an opposition political party will always oppose. That is its raison d\u2019etre.<\/p>\n
Holding the government accountable and providing purposeful counterpoint to its less than convincing policies and actions are the very reason why opposition parties stay awake at night and wake up early in the morning, tracking government pronouncements and policies.<\/p>\n
As it is commonly said, keeping the government on its toes is the first and last duty of the opposition party. Not to do so is to allow the government to dodge bullets that could possibly bring it down, which is the ultimate goal of the opposition.<\/p>\n
There is nothing in the manual for opposition politics, however, that recommends that an opposition party should make a nuisance of itself at all times, by failing, or refusing, to recognize when to keep quiet. Picking quarrels with a government policy that enhances ethical, social or economic wellbeing of the society, or one that is clearly identified with by the people as wholesome to the commonweal is, perhaps, the best way for an opposition party to confirm that it does not get it.<\/p>\n
By its place in the scheme of governance, an opposition party is already disadvantaged. It is double jeopardy, therefore, for an opposition party to manifest incompetence as well or to constitute itself into a nuisance by failing to appropriately read the time and mood of its environment.<\/p>\n
The All Progressives Congress (APC), as the opposition party in Abia State, has found itself in a very unenviable position. Alex Otti, the banker elected in 2023 on the platform of the Labour Party to govern Abia, has gone about his duty in a manner that has left the opposition in the state stranded.<\/p>\n
Every policy and official action of Governor Otti seems to box the opposition to a corner from where they find it difficult to offer a coherent alternative.<\/p>\n
The antecedent of the entities that presently constitute the opposition in Abia state also stands as a star witness against them. It is not only that Governor Otti elected from the onset to chart a different course from the devastating locust-mentality that marked governance in the state in the past, he appears to consistently take on projects which align with the popular desire. This has become the opposition party\u2019s nightmare.<\/p>\n
Nigerians have been maligned, deprived, and outrightly abused over a stretch of years by political leaders purportedly elected to serve the people. Some of the leeches in Nigeria\u2019s prime political offices ended up becoming stupendously rich through expropriating common resources, while those they were to serve sunk deeper into poverty.<\/p>\n
Sadly, the cheated majority across the country remain fragmented.They have never summoned wisdom to raise a united front to break away from the shackles imposed on them by their tormentors.<\/p>\n
Even against this grievous backdrop, it is wrong, contrary to what many politicians appear to believe, that Nigerians have been so deprived and dehumanized to the point that they can not distinguish between trauma and redemption. That is not true.<\/p>\n
The people of Abia, for one, have proved that they know the difference between those who fleeced them and those who serve them. They have experienced both. Obviously, the people are savouring the resuscitation Governor Alex Otti has been administering to them in the last three years.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Abia State governor delivered one more potent point in his impressive stride to imbue Abia with wholesome values, in concrete as in ethos. He named the new modern Umuahia Bus Terminal after Professor Nnenna Oti, the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO).<\/p>\n
By that very act, the governor made a statement about the model of ethical conduct he prescribes for Abia State.<\/p>\n
Why Nnenna Oti? The 67-year-old first class Soil Science graduate and professor, came to political limelight in 2023, when she served as the Returning Officer in the governorship election in Abia state, for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).<\/p>\n
Prof. Oti would have completed her electoral assignment quietly and returned to her FUTO seat, had the exercise gone without the dark engineering that foreshadowed and characterized the 2023 elections.<\/p>\n
Collating the result of the governorship election became a matter of negotiations. The Chairman of INEC called Prof. Oti from the headquarters of the Commission in Abuja and directed her on how to proceed with the task at hand. The votes from the field favoured the candidate of the Labour Party, but the odds were against the party.<\/p>\n
The Returning Officer, by her own account at the thick of the collation, decided that come what may, the will of Abia people would prevail. And it did. She stood her ground and called the election. Thus, did the Labour Party, which had faced a similar emasculation in one or two other states, emerge rightly victorious in Abia State.<\/p>\n
Now, APC Abia state, as the opposition, says it is wrong to honour Professor Oti for “merely” doing an ad hoc electoral job. According to the party, to honour Prof. Oti is \u201cembarrassing\u201d, \u201cprovocative\u201d and \u201cdivisive\u201d. Above all, \u201cit could send a wrong message to future electoral officers posted to Abia State for 2027 elections\u201d.<\/p>\n
In other words, electoral officers sent to Abia state should not be resolute in upholding the will of the people of the state in the polls?<\/p>\n
The opposition party also has issues with Prof. Oti who is not from Abia state being so honoured. It says the bus terminal would have been named \u201cafter an Abia personality\u201d, possibly one of those who have kept Abia on its kneels over the decades.<\/p>\n
Yet again, APC Abia state upbraided Governor Otti for extending such honour to the Ebonyi State born professor instead of those who are \u201cproven builders of the State\u201d. Outright bunkum!<\/p>\n
If Prof. Oti does not qualify as a builder of a better Abia, then the definition of building Abia must be reprehensible. The ethical bearing and the character of standing firmly for what is right, which Prof.Oti exhibited at a critical point in the life of Abia state, deserve to be immortalized. Such is the stuff of historical watersheds.<\/p>\n
Prof. Nnenna Oti must be feeling divinely vindicated by her principled stance on the outcome of the governorship election in Abia State in 2023.<\/p>\n
Those who are picking quarrels with who a modern bus terminal in Abia State is named after can afford to do so now because there is a befitting bus terminal in the first place. Had Prof.Oti buckled in March 2023, there certainly would not be a modern bus terminal to name after anyone. Abia would have continued on its past sorry trajectory, with the cock and bull narrative that Federal allocation to the state is hardly enough to pay salaries.<\/p>\n
The opposition in Abia should search for a more meaningful issue to anchor its opposition on. Prof. Nnenna Oti deserves every inch of that monument to her name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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