Dr. Alex Otti who has been declared by the Court of Appeal as the winner of last April governorship election in Abia State told NIYI BELLO in this interview, why credible Nigerians should come out to save the country from the current economic crisis. He also talked about his plans for Abia, the election and subsequent litigation.

These are difficult times for Nigeria

This is the time for creative people to come into governance, people who have the commitment to deliver. It is not going to be a tea party. I know that and I have come to face the challenge. I was reading an article yesterday where somebody said she was supporting me because I can read balance sheet. People who cannot read a balance sheet should not aspire to lead a state or even assume any position of leadership. This is a challenging time and creative people who have something to offer should come forth, people who have skills and know what to do without necessarily going to Abuja, cap in hand, waiting for federal allocation to bring back and share among loyalists. This is the time for people like us to come in because I am aware of the enormity of the challenges. I did a study on Abia and it took the consultant that I hired, eight months to do it. When the results came out I was shocked about the level of rot and infrastructural decay and the lack of direction that has been the lot of the state in the last 16 years. Hospitals are in very terrible shapes. Aba is gone completely. Umuahia is a glorified village. No feeling for the people at all and when the politicians that came to rule were going, they install their houseboys or drivers to succeed them so that they can continue being in charge. And if you have read a little bit about me, you will know that I thrive in circumstances like this. I am blessed to create something out of nothing.

I know how bad the situation is, about falling oil prices and all that and how the federal allocation has gone down. But I also do know that our people are very creative. All they need from you is the enabling environment for their industries to thrive and they will pay you once you are able to give them good roads, water, electricity, security, good hospitals and ensure that the quality and quantity of educational facilities are in top shape. The place will do well but it required well-skilled, well-exposed and committed leadership. It is no longer a tea party.

On the election

All what the PDP did was to ensure that there was maximum violence. They would come to a polling unit, shoot into the air, carry away voting materials and wait for the collation to start. At 14 of the 17 local councils, I was leading with about 60,500 votes and they wanted to overtake with votes from 3 local councils. The results from Osisioma, Obingwa and Isiala Ngwa North local councils were fake results written from Government House with active connivance with PDP bigwigs. The Returning Officer, acting on information that there were no elections in those councils, announced the cancellation of those results.

Now PDP, with its impunity, stormed the collation centre in a brazen manner, took the Returning Officer and the Resident Electoral Commissioner upstairs and stayed with them for about 45 minutes with a retinue of policemen and all kinds of people, intimidating them. By the time they came back, they were panicky and the Returning Officer grabbed the microphone, reversed himself and collated the results he had earlier cancelled. That is what happened in Abia State.

They didn’t win and people should ask them if they won the election. Election is for people to exercise their will and if you don’t win, the right thing to do is to congratulate the winner instead of using all sorts of tactics. With all these atrocities, I went to Court but at the lower tribunal, the judges misunderstood the case and gave a judgment in PDP’s favour but we pressed on. We didn’t call people to the streets. We have more people than the PDP. In Abia State, 80 percent of the people are with us. The people wanted to protest but I called them and said nobody should protest. We went to the Court of Appeal where we get positive judgment.

What a democrat should do is to proceed to the Supreme Court rather than calling some elders out to protest and block the roads. That is the height of impunity. Some people told me that they were in traffic for almost a whole day in Aba because some people have taken over the streets. That is a shame. Abia is probably the only state in Nigeria where some people that called themselves elders would pour out into the streets because a court had given judgment. Of course it has been established that they are protecting their source of livelihood.

Now there are about 230,000 voters in the 3 local councils that represent less than 14 percent of the voting population of Abia State. If PDP had allowed the cancellation to stand, I believe there would have been a rerun but because they were in power, they stormed the collation centre and forced a reversal of the decision of the Returning Officer. Today they are asking for rerun. They lost that opportunity when, with impunity, they forced the Returning Officer to reverse himself.

Arguments against the Appeal panel

I saw a petition that they wrote. It came barely 24 hours before the panel sat. Quite frankly, I don’t know how panels are set up. I understand it is the President of the Court of Appeal that sets up panels. But the reality is that the panel was properly constituted. If you follow a case that Governor Nyesom Wike filed that went up to the Supreme Court, the Apex Court said irrespective of where it sits, whether in Abuja, Port Harcourt or Lagos, it is their prerogative. My reaction to this is that PDP, unfortunately, is not in a position to determine the membership of the panel, neither am I in a position to do it. We too can also start talking about things that we have heard but we don’t have proof of them. Some of the things we heard was that they tried to penetrate the learned judges but were rebuffed and they decided to write petition. I don’t know whether it is true or not since I don’t speculate, but the point remains that the constitution of the panel is not faulty. They know they stole. They know that the mandate they are exercising is stolen and they would like to hold on to anything to make a point. I am sure that they found out that they may not be able to do any wrong thing with the panel and that is why they started what they did.

When I read the petition, I thought they were only trying to play some games. I thought it was a ploy to waste time because when you come within one or two days before the panel sat and you want them to be disbanded and a new panel set up to start reading the files and collating facts all over again, there is bound to be delays. Of course, the panel judges said they were justices of the Court of Appeal and that they were going to hear the case.

Threats on my life

There have been threats on my life but I don’t have to fear because I am a child of God and my Bible says, ‘touch not my anointed and do my prophet no harm” there have been attempts to eliminate me but those attempts have failed and they would continue to fail. I am sure you must have known about the one that happened in Abuja. I was there for 3 days and on the fourth day God told me to move away from there and relocate to another place. So on the night of the fourth day, over ten men stormed my residence, killed my Mobile Policeman and turned the whole place upside down. I don’t have any fear because I have God and my Bible says, “If God does not watch over a city, the watchers do so in vain.”