Lest We Forget: Governor Otti Kept His Promise, He Did Not Sack Workers, He Exposed Criminal Fraud.

By Ctz. UKOHA, NJOKU UKOHA | Chief Press Secretary to the Executive Governor of Abia State | October 11, 2026.

In 2022 – 2023, during the Governorship campaign, Dr. Alex C. Otti, OFR, made a solemn commitment to Ndi Abia: “I will not sack any civil servant. I will pay all arrears of salaries, pensions, gratuities and other entitlements of Civil and Public Servants.” (Including those designated as Core and Non-Core by the last administration, whatever that means).

As a thoroughbred banker and a numbers person, that pledge was made based on the verified number of workers on the State payroll as at that time.

Governor Otti has kept that promise to the letter. But the peddlers of half-truths, and apostles of the old locust years, are twisting history with the imaginary slogan of “15,000 sacked workers.” Let us remind Abians of what truly happened.

THE 2019 SCRIPT: HOW THEY ROBBED 5,666 TEACHERS: This is not new. It is their modus operandi.
In 2018, towards the 2019 election, the Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu government deceitfully hired 5,666 teachers under the Secondary Education Management Board (SEMB) and thousands more into the civil service and local governments. They assembled them at the Okpara Auditorium to thank the Governor and mandated them to vote and mobilize their families for the PDP.

After they were declared winner in 2019, in 2020 they disengaged all of them under the guise of “unlawful employment without waiver.” The then Executive Secretary of SEMB, Mr. Lawrence Ogbonnaya, who allegedly collected N200,000 to N250,000 per employment letter, was quietly retired without prosecution.

How did people with “unlawful employment” get into the State payroll and receive salaries if it was unlawful? It was rather a Government orchestrated daylight robbery of poor Abians. The same agents of the government that sacked over 500 staff of Abia State Polytechnic without paying their 20 months salary arrears have no moral authority to sermonize over 7,000 of their cronies who were duped and criminally smuggled into the State payroll in the eve of their departure.

THE 2023 REPLAY – THE 7,000 LAST-MINUTE SCAM: Fast forward to March 2023. After the PDP was resoundingly defeated, the outgoing government, in a desperate act of sabotage, hurriedly employed 7,000 cronies, data boys and party loyalists through the backdoor, against civil service procedure, due process, and without financial backing.

To deceive the incoming Government, they criminally and fraudulently backdated the employment letters and records to 2020, 2021 and 2022. A government that could not pay existing workers and pensioners suddenly had the audacity to add 7,000 more burden to her successor at the eve of its exit.

WHAT GOVERNOR OTTI DID – THE TRUTH: Governor Otti did not remove any name from the payroll. He gave a very simple, ingenious directive to expose the fraud: “Pay everyone who was on the State payroll in December 2022 and was receiving salary up to December 2022.”

That one directive exposed everything. Those who were truly employed and were being paid up to December continued to receive their salaries. The 7,000 padded names that were smuggled into the payroll after the March defeat, with backdated letters and manipulated records automatically fell off because they were not on the December payroll.

In essence, the last administration hired and set them up for imminent sacking. Governor Otti only refused to be a victim of their fraud. He did not sack imaginary 15,000 people or even the 7,000 cronies who were deceived by their paymasters. He continued paying every legitimate civil servant the last administration had on the payroll till December 2022.

THE PROMISE KEEPER: What has Governor Otti done in keeping to his campaign promises in the exercise of the mandate freely given to him by Ndi Abia?

1. He is paying salaries on the 28th of every month.
2. He cleared all arrears of salaries owed to ABSUTH, Abia State University, Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic workers and those unfortunately sacked by the PDP Government.
3. He is paying pensions as and when due and had long paid arrears of pensions.
4. He has started paying gratuities from 2001 – 24 years backlog.
5. He is paying leave allowances that were abolished.
6. He is paying entitlements of elected Local Government Councillors from 2001, mostly PDP members.
7. He has gone a step further to give a second chance to those SEMB teachers sacked in 2020 by re-absorbing those who applied and passed through the process of the hiring and recruitment of over 9,450 teachers and over 800 health workers.

The narrative of 15,000 sacked workers is a lie from the pit of hell, manufactured by those who used employment as election bait in 2019 and wanted to repeat it in 2023.

Lest we forget, Abia has moved on from deceit to delivery.