Strategic Repositioning

Being the Text of an Address Presented by Governor Alex C. Otti, OFR, at the Formal Reopening of Obiora Street for Public use on Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Protocols

1. I am pleased to welcome you to the formal reopening of Obiora Street for public use after months of road rehabilitation and restoration by the civil engineering team at the State Ministry of Works. I want to thank the engineers and other members of the technical team from the Ministry for their commitment to our public infrastructure development agenda. The excellent job they have done here has further strengthened the conviction that our people have all it takes to compete and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best anywhere. Let me specially appreciate the Honourable Commissioner for Works, Engr. Don Otumchere Oti, for instilling self-belief in the team and giving them all the support they need to contribute effectively to the New Abia Project. This gathering is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the can-do spirit of Ndi Abia and congratulate ourselves for the giant leap we have made on several development fronts over the past 18 months.
2. As I mentioned last week during the reopening of Dozie Way in Umuahia, we will be very busy with project commissioning and flag offs in all parts of the State till the end of the first quarter of 2025. Each of the projects cutting across different development frontiers including road infrastructure, education and health, support infrastructure for the State judiciary, transportation and urban renewal, hospitality, entertainment and tourism, are all structured to accelerate the socioeconomic transformation of the State, create jobs and further strengthen the strategic position of Abia as a prime investment destination in the country. As I have always said, every community, every street and clan in the State is critical to our agenda. We shall therefore be very deliberate in dismantling all the tiny and giant barriers that held down the productive energy of our very hardworking population for several years. What we are doing with these investments in public infrastructure is to give our people the wings to fly and conquer the world because if so much was achieved in a very difficult operating environment, I am certain that we can do a lot more when the obstacles are dismantled.
3. Aba as you know is at the heart of our agenda because this City is not just the economic heartbeat of the State; it is equally a major industrial and commercial hub in West Africa. My position has always been that if we get it right in Aba, we can export the gains to other parts of the State by deploying the revenue generated from this place to supercharge the development of the connecting towns and communities which ultimately will be every community in the State. We have carefully focused our energy on creating value for the business community and residents in Aba through the restoration of long abandoned infrastructure, improved urban sanitation, restoration of order at public places including markets and motor parks, and increased investments in security operations as the first foundation of prosperity. The revenue to be generated as government’s share of the prosperity it helped to create shall eventually be channelled to the development of our agrarian communities to guarantee abundant food supplies, and also bridge the development gap between major towns like Aba and Umuahia and the rural areas.

4. We are working to create a development benchmark for the State such that wherever you live, you will be guaranteed access to basic social amenities including good roads, good water supply, functional health facilities and access to the telephone and internet services. The Government understands its limitations but what we must do is to create the enabling environment for private sector operators to move in and offer their services at market-driven rates. Without making a spectacle of it, we are waging a determined war against poverty and other limitations that impoverish our people and rob them of their dignity. As I had repeatedly said, we want to build the largest community of healthy, wealthy and very enlightened citizens in the region. We are therefore very deliberate in activating the enablers that would support the attainment of the lofty objectives we have set for ourselves. This Road project, and several others like it, already completed, at the verge of completion or just about to take off, are all set up to make for ease of access to our places of work and residence, social centres and hubs, and the regular places where we interact as members of one community. In a few years from now, it would be very difficult to find a bad stretch of road in any part of the State because we are not just constructing and rehabilitating, we are equally focused on maintenance and repairs.
5. This Road project will not just bring a boom in the level of economic activities around here but will also improve the value of commercial and residential property in this area, increasing access to capital for those who wish to access funds to inject into their individual enterprises. We expect you to become active partners in the New Abia Project through prompt payment of taxes and other statutory revenues to the State Government. We have simplified the tax payment process for individuals and businesses using digital technology platforms and systems.
6. What we have achieved with these is that all channels of revenue leakage are closed in order to build confidence in the system. Even then, we also know that several taxable entities are still not in the tax net so our focus going forward will be to aggressively bring these entities into the tax net as that is the only way to find the resources we need to achieve our holistic development agenda. What I can, however, assure is that there will be no room for extortion or other forms of abuses in the tax system; whatever is generated shall be fully accounted for, and prudently utilised.
7. I am proud to say that prudence in the use of public resources has enabled us to limit our exposure to local and foreign creditors. You may have also read in the news that Abia is one of the few States in the country with zero indebtedness to contractors. Recall also that during my last media engagement, I announced that we have drastically cut down the State’s debt profile and effectively limited our exposure to new debt to almost zero. This is the clearest indication that we are running a disciplined government, one that is committed to nothing else but the welfare of the general population. The construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of thousands of kilometres of different roads across urban and rural locations, rehabilitation of health institutions and schools, rehabilitation and erection of public buildings, prompt payment of salaries and pensions and financial support to thousands of micro and small business owners are proof that your tax is working.
8. Thank you for listening and may God bless you all.

Dr Alex C. Otti, OFR,