Professor Kenneth Kalu, the Secretary to the Abia State Government, has noted that before the coming of Dr. Alex Otti, people were feeling sorry for individuals from the state, as Abia had become a very bad case.
"If you say you are from Abia State elsewhere, they would be like, ‘Oh, sorry.’ It got that bad. At one time somebody was using Abia to give an example of a bad case on the floor of the national assembly," Kalu said in an interview with Business Hallmark Newspaper published on Monday.
Asked why the Otti administration chose to depart from what was obtained in the past, Kalu said, "I think the question is fairly simple. Many Abians were very disappointed with what was going on in the state in terms of infrastructure development and, indeed, everything about governance in the state. People were almost losing hope."
According to the SSG, "For every normal person, who is from Abia, it should be a concern because it was almost like making a comment on the quality of people from Abia State. Mediocrity does not represent Abia State. Go to Aba, you will see our enterprising young men and women, who are doing great things. We have so many intellectuals; educated people playing big roles in various positions. But unfortunately, at that point, the main actors in the political space had a different orientation; a different philosophy that was painting Abia bad. But I think everything that has a beginning has an ending. By the grace of God, somebody like Dr. Alex Otti came on board and said we are all ashamed by what is happening, let us change direction of the state. And as you would expect, many like-minded individuals like all of us rallied around, because if somebody like Alex Otti can leave behind his good life as in the private sector to try to serve the people, what would be our excuse.
"I think he also understood that success in personal life is different from success in public life, because your success as a person is different from the way your state or your society looks like. So, you can be successful as a person, but the state you came from; the environment you came from is not succeeding, if you are somebody who has good conscience, despite your own personal successes, you would still feel unhappy, because you want everybody else around you to also succeed.
"So, he came out and rallied some of us, and those us who came out and said, let’s give it a trial. Today, by the grace of God we are witnessing changes. That motivation is part of the reason I would say that we have performed the way we have performed. We had seen it all in the last 24 years of retrogression, and we understood that we could not toe that path. So, the government is driven by a desire to really change the narrative for good; a desire to use governance as a machinery or a tool to create the prosperity that the people of Abia deserve. That is the philosophy of this administration."
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