By Abimbola Ogunnaike
There was massive celebration on the streets of Umuahia, Abia State capital on Wednesday, 22 March, 2023 after the candidate of the Labour Party(LP), Dr Alex Otti, was declared the winner of the sate governorship election.
Otti scored 175, 465 votes to defeat Ambrose Okey Ahaiwe of Peoples Democratic Party who had 88,529 votes.
Otti was declared the winner by Prof Nnenna Oti, the Returning Officer of INEC for Abia State, after collation of the last LGA, Obingwa.
Otti’s victory did not come easy as his victory was delayed for four days, after the controversial 108,000 votes that came from Obingwa LGA, the home of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu.
But after a trip to Abuja by the top brass of INEC from Abia office, the controversial 108,000 votes from Obingwa were reduced to 20,000 valid votes by INEC with PDP scoring only 9,9 62 while Otti got 3,772.
In his acceptance speech, Dr Alex Otti declared: “We have broken down the gates of hell in Abia State and set the people free.”
He regretted that Abia has been held captive for many years by enemies of the state, including the agents of PDP who recently manipulated votes from Obingwa.
Otti noted that the task of rebuilding Abia is enormous but assured that “we must take back our state.”
The Governor-elect, who extended a hand of sportsmanship to all, pledging not to pursue vendetta against those who wronged him, also promised to pay workers and pensioners promptly while affirming that Abia would witness uncommon infrastructural development.
He assured that all sections of Abia would be developed under his watch as governor of the state, stressing that the era of profligacy is over in Abia as every money belonging to the state would be used in working for the people.
