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Poor infrastructure: Abia women give Gov Ikpeazu 100 days ultimatum

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  • Repair Aba roads, pay workers’ salaries or we will lock up the Government House, they warn

 

BY JOEL OGBU

Anger, occasioned by decades of bad governance and corruption, is beginning to boil over in Abia State. And once again, like they did 90 years ago, with the historic Aba Women’s Riot, the women are standing up to be counted.

Barely 24 hours after the main advocate for good governance in Abia State, Dr Alex Otti of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), called on the elders and well-meaning citizens of Abia to speak up and hold Governor Okezie Ikpeazu and his government to account, groups of Abia women from Aba South and Aba North local government areas, Tuesday poured into the streets, to protest the infrastructural decay in the state.

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But while the women embarked on their revolutionary march, Gov Ikpeazu and his cabinet locked themselves up in Umuahia with a group of media people, in a press conference they had called to deny Otti’s statement that the government of Abia State was planning to obtain an ill-conceived $200 million foreign loan.

Otti had alerted the citizens of Abia, particularly elderly statesmen from the state, of Ikpeazu’s clandestine move to obtain a $200 million loan from the African Development Bank (ADB) and warned that if such was allowed to go through, it would amount to mortgaging the future of generations of Abia people, born and unborn, to perpetual indebtedness.

Besides, Otti, a former top banker, disclosed that Abia was already deeply enmeshed in debt from previous loans taken by both the past and present governments of the state, without any meaningful infrastructural development to show for the loans.

So far, according to him, Abia’s total debt is in excess of N100 billion, rising from N35 billion in 2015, when Okezie Ikpeazu became governor.

The protesting Abia women, clad in blue coloured wrapper and white blouse, marched the streets chanting angry song and displaying placards communicating their disgust at the government of the state.

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They gathered in front of the Aba South Local Government gate where one of their leaders addressed the public on the essence of their peaceful protest.

“The women of Abia are angry,” she started.

 

“Women want the government of Abia State to build roads for us. Eziukwu Road is not motorable; Port Harcourt Road is not motorable; Ngwa Road is not motorable; Ohanku Road, Omuma roads are not accessible and passable,” she lamented.

Continuing, she fired: “Workers are being owed with impunity.

“We are calling on the government of Abia State, starting from this local government (Aba South), we are giving you 100 days, if you don’t do the needful, Abia women will lock up all the local governments in the state.

“Enough is enough. We have here with us women from Aba South and Aba North. Next time we’re going to have women from Obingwa and all the other 17 local governments across the state.

“We are telling the government of Okezie Ikpeazu to build roads for us. The next time we will go on protest, we will be locking up the Government House.”

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