Otti Kept His Promise, Did Not Sack Workers, Exposed Criminal Fraud — Abia Govt

Abia State Government has dismissed claims that Governor Alex Otti sacked 15,000 workers, describing the allegation as a “lie from the pit of hell” manufactured by peddlers of half-truths and apostles of the old locust years.

In a statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Ukoha Njoku Ukoha, on October 11, 2026, the government said Governor Otti kept his 2022-2023 campaign promise that “I will not sack any civil servant. I will pay all arrears of salaries, pensions, gratuities and other entitlements of Civil and Public Servants.”

According to the statement, as a thoroughbred banker and numbers person, Otti’s pledge was based on the verified number of workers on the state payroll as at that time, and he has kept it to the letter.

The government recalled that in 2018, towards the 2019 election, the Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu administration deceitfully hired 5,666 teachers under the Secondary Education Management Board (SEMB) and thousands more into the civil service and local governments, assembled them at the Okpara Auditorium to thank the Governor and mandated them to vote and mobilize 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,” the statement said.

Ukoha queried how people with “unlawful employment” got into the state payroll and received salaries, describing it as a government-orchestrated daylight robbery of poor Abians.

The statement said the same pattern was replayed in March 2023 after the PDP was resoundingly defeated, when the outgoing government hurriedly employed 7,000 cronies, data boys and party loyalists through the backdoor, against civil service procedure and without financial backing, and criminally backdated the letters 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,” Ukoha said.

The government explained that Governor Otti did not remove any name from the payroll but gave a simple directive that exposed 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 statement clarified.

Listing achievements in fulfillment of campaign promises, the government said Otti is paying salaries on the 28th of every month, cleared all arrears owed to ABSUTH, Abia State University, Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic workers and those sacked by the PDP government, is paying pensions as and when due and had long paid arrears, has started paying gratuities from 2001 – 24 years backlog, is paying leave allowances that were abolished, and is paying entitlements of elected Local Government Councillors from 2001, mostly PDP members.

It added that the governor has given a second chance to the SEMB teachers sacked in 2020 by re-absorbing those who applied and passed through the process of hiring 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,” the statement concluded.