Founder and Chancellor of the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership and former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, will, today, deliver the keynote lecture commemorating the 35th anniversary of the creation of Abia State.
 
The lecture, titled: ‘Abia at 35: The Rise of a New Abia’, forms part of activities marking 35 years since Abia State was created on August  27, 1991.

It follows an inaugural lecture Chidoka delivered on Tuesday for the Abia State Leadership Academy Executive Education Series, where he argued that building physical assets must go hand in hand with building the institutional capacity required to make them work.
 
Speaking on ‘The State and Those Who Make It Work: Public Service, State Capacity and the Abia Opportunity’, Chidoka challenged political appointees and senior public servants to move beyond individual performance and focus on building institutions capable of sustaining good governance beyond the tenure of any governor or appointee.
 
The lecture was attended by the Governor of Abia State, Dr Alex Otti, the Deputy Governor, the Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, members of the State Executive Council, political appointees, and senior public servants.
 
Chidoka argued that state capacity is ultimately “the ability of a government to convert intention into execution,” stressing that there can be no high-capacity state without high-capacity people. Drawing lessons from China, Britain, Singapore and Rwanda, he identified merit and competence, administrative capability, disciplined execution and accountable performance as essential ingredients of effective government.
 
He challenged the conventional Nigerian debate on recurrent expenditure, arguing that governments often invest heavily in visible physical assets while neglecting the less visible operating infrastructure required to keep those assets functioning.
 
“A government may build a police station without the basic materials required to serve citizens, a school without giving inspectors the mobility to supervise it, or a diagnostic laboratory without reliable power. In each case, we have acquired an asset, but not necessarily the capability it was built to provide,” Chidoka said.