No one left the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs auditorium on Thursday, April 23, 2026, unclear about Governor Alex Otti’s message at the 2026 TheNiche Annual Lecture.
Speaking on “Governing the Economy: Choices, Trade-offs, and National Priorities,” the Abia State Governor was blunt: “Elections have consequences.”
In a political climate where leaders often speak in coded language, Otti’s 4,875-word address stood out for its clarity. “There is no silver bullet for solving Nigeria’s myriads of economic challenges because economics is about cold, hard facts, not vanities,” he said. “With high levels of unemployment, especially amongst the youth, rising poverty and growing helplessness, it would be uncharitable to wish these unsettling realities away.”
Otti, a former bank executive, refused to call Nigeria’s situation hopeless. “I refuse to submit to the position of cynics who insist that our situation is entirely hopeless because it is not… Our country has a great destiny and its future will certainly remain bright.”
Yet he warned that the world will not wait forever. “Quietly, it has moved on, hoping that someday, our country may catch up but whether that day would be in this decade or in the coming century, or perhaps never, will depend largely on what we do in the days and years that follow.”
Otti argued that six decades of frustration prove a direct link between political choices and daily life. “A good leadership system… one that understands the dynamic laws of economics and the intersection of political behaviour and public welfare, would certainly go a long way in taking us closer to our dream Nigeria.”
He drew a hard line: “It is impossible to separate incompetent political leadership from the manifestations of economic decline such as drastic tanking of GDP, widespread unemployment, reduced investment… that ultimately lead to high poverty levels and endemic anxiety.”
“In a political system driven by mercantilism, desperation for power and corruption… things are bound to go from bad to worse because no system has endless supply of resources to feed the bottomless greed of political actors, including voters who see votes as wares for sale to the highest bidder.”
Otti added that “strong and resilient institutions cannot be built on the back of a corrupt political culture, one that favours just about anyone with a deep wallet to buy voters, electoral officials, media practitioners and the instruments of violence.”
While Otti’s view echoes the saying that “every nation gets the government it deserves,” the author notes that Nigeria’s reality is more complex. Many Nigerians reject vote-buying, and others boycott elections because they believe votes won’t count.
Otti himself won the 2015 Abia governorship election but was denied victory until 2023, when Professor Nnenna Oti’s insistence on electoral integrity made the difference. “In other states where there were no Nnenna Otis, the crooked system denied the people their choices,” the article states.
So, can citizens be blamed when their choices are overturned? Otti noted that “majority of our compatriots are increasingly shying away from participation at the ballots.” But the piece argues that abstention is rational when votes don’t determine outcomes. “Voting for the sake of it when, at the end of the day the votes don’t count, will be an exercise in futility.”
Otti said poverty and prosperity, employment and joblessness, security and anxiety, prudence and rascality will all be on the ballot in 2027. “They ought to be.”
But the author warns of a drift toward “coronation rather than election” by the current regime. Unlike former President Goodluck Jonathan, who said his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian, “those on the saddle today have left no one in doubt that their political ambitions, if need be, may well be worth the blood of a million Nigerians. That is what the ‘Tinubu is not Jonathan’ mantra is all about — an ominous signalling
The column concludes: “The fact that leadership misfits are straddling the corridors of power in Nigeria is not necessarily because the people made wrong choices. If anything, Nigerian voters made the right choice in 2023. It was criminally aborted. How to ensure that the political marauders are stopped in their tracks in 2027, no matter what it takes, will be the real test of this pseudo-democracy
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