Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Kalu, a member of the APC-led federal government, has vowed before members of his party in Abia State that Governor Alex Otti’s Labour Party-led government shall be democratically removed through the ballot in 2027, while President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be returned/re-elected.
He made this vow while addressing a rally of party members held on Sunday evening at the Abia Hotel premises in Umuahia, the state capital, stating that the rally—which saw a mammoth crowd arriving in over 100 buses from the 17 LGAs of the state—was to prepare for the 29th December 2025 grand rally.
He described the event as one that would pave the way for the larger rally on 29th December 2025, where Abians would formally be informed that the APC is coming to take over the state and to show where the president will be from 29th May 2027.
Announcing that something significant would happen on that day, he told party members: “Let’s know in advance what you need to get ready for this December rally.”
During President Tinubu’s failed Friday schedule to visit the state’s commissioned completed projects, for which he delegated the Works Minister, Engineer David Umahi, it was announced that the president has again scheduled to visit Abia in December. Rumours suggest that his failed visit was deliberate, in preference to the December APC rally.
Hon. Kalu said: “We have now come to take over, and there is no going back. APC will take over Abia State, so that what comes from Abuja will be more impactful. We will use the rally to show the world how strong the APC is in Abia. Today’s rally is to mobilise our people to register to vote and populate the Voters Register.”
While stating that the president was watching the rally live and was pleased to see the mammoth gathering of his supporters, Kalu urged everyone in attendance to ensure they were captured on video for identification when the time of reckoning comes.
On why he is pushing to remove the Otti administration, which is widely acclaimed to be high-performing, Hon. Kalu insisted that an APC-led Abia State and federal government would be desirable and positively impactful.
“President Tinubu has been empowering South East state governors to work for their people by distributing the proceeds of the oil subsidy removal. Abia has done well, but not enough, as it needs to do more with its N38–N40 billion monthly allocation. As an opposition leader in the state, I must speak for the masses. Otti has not done enough with the money being released to the state,” he stated.
Hon. Kalu opined that with the N3–N4 billion that Governor Otti’s predecessors, Senator Theodore Orji and Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, received, they achieved more than Otti has done with the billions.
Governor Otti’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Ferdinand Ekeoma, in a press release titled “Governance in Abia: Benjamin Kalu Needs Tutorial More Than He Needs a Microphone,” described some of Hon. Kalu’s allegations regarding the performance of the Alex Otti government as spurious, as well as his infantile comparison between the governor and his two immediate predecessors.
Ekeoma stated that Abia’s 2025 year-to-date FAAC allocation (eight months), including LGA, stands at N125 billion, arguing that if Kalu’s false claim of a monthly sum of N38 billion were accurate, the total would have stood at N304 billion.
“As of April 2023, a few days before Governor Alex Otti assumed office, the exchange rate stood at N460 to the dollar, whereas with the present rate of N1,500 to the dollar, N3.2 billion today is equivalent to N1 billion in 2023. Given that Nigeria is import-dependent, the devaluation has seen states gain in nominal terms, but very little in real terms, because key projects are executed with items and equipment whose components are acquired in foreign currency. This is why a road project that was built with N1 billion in 2022 would cost close to N4 billion today. If inflation is factored in at an average rate of 20% per annum, the situation would further exacerbate,” Ekeoma explained.
The Special Adviser further recalled that prior to Governor Otti’s assumption of office, the minimum wage being paid in Abia was N30,000, and this applied only to those classified as core civil servants. Today, the minimum wage stands between N70,000 and N74,000.
According to Ekeoma, prior to Governor Otti’s emergence, the number of Abia civil servants stood at 31,000, according to then-Governor Ikpeazu. Today, the total number of verified Abia workers stands at over 67,000, excluding the 5,349 newly recruited teachers.
“What this implies is that tens of thousands of Abia workers who have now been brought onto the state payroll were hitherto oppressed, isolated, and abandoned under the guise that they were non-core civil servants.”
The Otti adviser consequently queried Hon. Kalu for not raising a word when this injustice was meted to Abians.
