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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, has reacted to a media report accusing him of abandoning the newly built multi-billion naira Government House in Umuahia, the state capital, since his assumption of office six months ago.
A newspaper had on Sunday published how Otti was running the government from his country home outside of Umuahia, after abandoning both the new Government House and Old Government House complexes.
According to the medium, the governor’s decision to operate from his private residence in his village has placed a financial burden on the Abia State Government with about N2 million spent monthly on fueling vehicles of state officials who travel to the village for meetings.
Addressing reporters through his Chief Press Secretary, Kazie Uko, on Tuesday, Otti said he preferred operating from his private residence to save cost instead of “lavishing public funds to renovate the Governor’s Lodge within the old Government House.”
Otti noted that both the old and the new government houses were in bad condition, adding that they “require serious funds to be put in order.”
The governor claimed that he decided to sacrifice his personal comfort so as to be able to attend to the “urgent needs of the state with positive impacts on the masses.”
He also claimed that the new governor’s lodge commissioned by the administration of the former governor of the state, Okezie Ikpeazu, on the eve of his tenure, was yet to be completed.
Otti claimed that the new Government House building was “hurriedly commissioned by Ikpeazu’s administration without completion, with cables dangling everywhere and without power supply.”
“This is the multi-billion Abia New Government House they said Governor Otti abandoned. You have seen the inside. It’s like a carpentry workshop and a showroom.
“You see how part of the parapet is beginning to peel off. Part of the fence has already collapsed and you saw workers rebuilding it.
“Some contractors were bringing quotations that ran into hundreds of millions, and some close to N1 billion just to renovate the Government House. And the governor said it was not a priority when Abia pensioners were being owed, civil servants not paid and our hospitals in ruins,” he said.
The governor was, however, silent on the financial burden the running or his administration from a private residence outside the state capital is placing on the state.