By Ikechukwu Iroha
I have just confirmed the receipt of N7bn this morning by Abia State Government being money paid into its Account from the Federal Government as infrastructure grant to the state.
This is to alert Abians considering the fact that the Government of Mr Alex Otti will likely not reveal this to them since it categorizes every financial dealing in the State as a top secret.
This money should therefore be used to deliver verifiable infrastructure while the more than N40bn earlier received is deployed to pay pensions and wages of staff of state-owned parastatals without any further excuse. The policy of keeping the state’s finances as “Top Secret” is against the fiscal transparency Mr Alex Otti promised us during the campaigns.
The target infrastructure must therefore be built to help improve small and medium scale businesses in our state as people are really suffering across board. We also deserve to know how much is spent on each project.
Like I promised, I will continue to reveal to Abians any inflow into the state’s accounts to avoid underhand dealings by government officials except the ones Mr Alex, in collaboration with his cronies, conceals. Such financial dealings, including award of contracts and the sums involved, especially in the patchy works they claim to be embarking upon in Aba, will always be revealed to Abians who deserve to know about how their commonwealth is being expended.
It is unfortunate that within a space of 2 months, Mr Otti has failed in his promises of being transparent and accountable to Abians in that no Abian outside his circle of friends he brought into government can comfortably point to any government plan, cost of projects as well as State revenues which formed the fulcrum of his campaign.
Many state governors are discussing and marshalling out ways to ameliorate the sufferings aggravated by fuel subsidy removal but Otti is increasing the suffering of Abians through arbitrary suspension and sacking of workers, demotion and other undemocratic measures aimed at pushing Abians further into hardship.
The threat to free speech is also increasingly growing daily in Abia even when the same Otti and his hirelings criticized Ikpeazu so freely while they were playing opposition without anyone attempting to muzzle them.
We will continue to inform the people and wait for their press releases and threats of billion dollar lawsuits. Abia belongs to all Abians and nobody can intimidate me in this state that we jointly own.
