Why Abia Will Not Join The August 1 Hunger Protest

By Kazie Uko

I am certain that neither the civil servants nor other public and private sector workers, traders and artisans in Abia State will join the march to protest the ravaging hunger in the land across Nigeria.

My certainty is not based on the fact that the citizens and residents of Abia are insulated from the economic hardship that has driven Nigerians to the precipice. No, not at all. The hard effect of hunger and anger occasioned by the continuously rising cost of living is a national phenomenon that knows no tribe, religion or class. Both the rich and the poor, across tribes and faiths,  are in agreement that things have come to a head and something drastic needs to be done to save the country and its citizens from tipping over.

But despite all the anger and outbursts for public demonstrations, which, unfortunately, will lead to unleashing mayhem on public infrastructure and making life much more unbearable for the already suffering citizenry, Abians will rather hold their peace than take to the streets to protest.

One may ask why Abians will choose to be reticent in the face of a call for national outrage to protest hunger. Simple! We have seen the worst of the times and gradually coming out of depression. For the first time in over 25 years, we have reason to hope again. With the still nascent Labour Party government in Abia led by Governor Alex Otti, OFR, Abians are just beginning to restore confidence in political leadership in the state and will want to give peace a chance. This is even more so when the leadership has proved within a short period of one year in office that it can be trusted to deliver on its promise.

As it was common knowledge before the March 18, 2023, governorship election that brought Governor Otti to power, Abia was derisively reputed as the worst-governed state in Nigeria. A lot of the issues that the rest of Nigeria might be seeing as nightmares today were what Abians had had to endure, for the greater part of the last 25 years.

Truth be told, it is still not Eldorado in the streets of Aba and Umuahia, and may not be, just like it can never be in Dubai and some of the other cities in the developed countries that we often use to mismeasure our development. But one thing is certain; Abia, under the leadership of Governor Otti, is today moving in the right direction. Abians and Nigerians have acknowledged it, and the rest of Africa, Europe, America, and Asia have been coming in droves to verify the good news.

While assuming office on May 29, 2023, as the fifth democratically elected Governor of Abia State, Dr. Otti made a firm promise to restore the dignity of the Abia person. He had promised to make Abians wherever they might be proud of their heritage; to make the environment secure and conducive for them to live, work and do business.

To match words with action, Governor Otti folded his sleeves and got to work early with his team. He declared emergencies in the areas of health, education, waste management, security, and road infrastructure while assuring that civil servants and other public sector workers would receive their salaries on or before the 28th of every month and all arrears of outstanding salaries and pensions would be paid.

Thirteen months after assuming office, virtually all outstanding salaries owed civil servants and public sector workers totalling well over N50 billion by the immediate past PDP administration in Abia have been paid by Governor Otti. Recently, the Governor reached an agreement with organised labour in the state on the modalities for the payment of about N17 billion in outstanding salaries due to some departments and agencies of government.

The agreement also saw the government announcing a N45,000 wage award to every worker in the state workforce, to be paid over three months. Also within this period, the Abia State Government under Governor Otti, after due negotiations with the executives of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners, Abia State chapter, paid out over N10 billion to clear all outstanding pension arrears inherited from the previous administration. No less than 12,000 pensioners benefitted from this payment, a major campaign promise by the Governor.

The majority of Abians, indeed Nigerians, believe that Governor Otti has lived true to his promise, unlike those before him and a lot of his contemporaries. Beyond the fact that the welfare of Abia workers and pensioners has been made a priority with regular payment of salaries and pensions, the current administration in Abia has also ensured that the quality of life of the majority of its other citizens improves.

This has been made possible through the developmental efforts of the government in upgrading the road infrastructure, cleaning the environment of all categories of waste, sanitising the revenue generation system, and generally improving the ease of doing business in the state; renovating and retrofitting the facilities in our health-care centres and the educational sector; empowering the youths through training in agriculture and digital technologies; as well as supporting the micro, small, and medium scale entrepreneurs in both urban and rural communities.

The security situation in the state has improved tremendously from what it was before Governor Otti came. Gone are the ugly days of frequent stories of kidnappings and other incidents of violent crimes in Abia as the concerted efforts of the various security agencies coming together under Operation Crush continue to pay off. The police, working with Homeland Security, members of the Nigerian armed forces, and other security agencies, have ensured that the streets of Abia are made safe for the residents and visitors to go about their lawful businesses and activities.

Even before the calls for a national protest against the Federal Government dominated the media space, the Abia State Government had delivered palliatives by way of free Medicare, raw foodstuffs, and interest-free loans to the residents across the state’s 184 wards to cushion the effects of hunger and economic hardship in the land.

The primary targets in the sharing and distribution of these palliatives at all times have been the vulnerable poor and groups in the state—weak, elderly people without family support; lower cadre civil servants, enterprising youths, and others engaged in small-scale agriculture and businesses.

Just a few weeks ago, the state distributed a whopping sum of one billion Naira to 10,000 small-scale businesspersons as interest-free loans to support their businesses. Many of these people live and conduct their trade in rural areas. Each of the beneficiaries in the first batch of this empowerment programme coordinated by the Office of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Cooperatives got N100,000.

While it is lawful and within the fundamental rights of citizens to protest against policies and actions they consider injurious to their welfare and well-being, the Nigerian experience has shown that such mass protests have not always ended well. Some of the time, especially when they were not hinged on specific demands and called by organised bodies like the labour unions, there were tendencies for the protests to be hijacked by criminal elements with totally different agendas. The consequences have always resulted in more hardship for the citizenry, particularly innocent and vulnerable groups. Public infrastructure was often the primary target of such miscalculated protests.

So, for a State like Abia, where the people have been starved of good governance and quality infrastructure, and where the current government is working very hard to remedy the situation and make life more bearable for the citizens with the numerous developmental projects it has embarked upon across the state, it will be ill-advised for anyone to call for any kind of protest, no matter how hungry and angry we might be.