An Honest Response To General Manager Of Abia State Oil-Producing Areas Development Commission, Ven. Dr Joshua Ogadinma Onyeike.
By Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP
Monday (Nkwo) 19-01-2026.
A good number of Social Media participants have helped in copying, pasting and circulating a write-up by the General Manager of Abia State Oil-Producing Areas Development Commission, ASOPADEC, Ven. Dr Joshua Ogadinma Onyeike, titled, ‘Making Mountains Out Of Molehill, The Unsubstantiated Claims Of Lack Of Infrastructure In Ukwa West LGA by Chief Don Ubani-ASOPADEC Dimension and Rebutal’ dated January 16, 2026.
For a start, I would like to make it clear that the General Manager has his constitutional right to express his opinion on any matter that he considers to be of concern to his interest. But surely, he does not have the right to concoct spurious imaginations and defamatory allegations against me. For him to allege, among other things, that ‘I am bent on seeking relevance in my new Party, hence I am determined to do and say anything against the present administration and the Governor in order to attract attention’ is not only preposterous and unfounded but defamatory.
By that posture, the General Manager has tried to protray me as an opportunist. I doubt if the General Manager has any justification to project me in the light he has, for reasons only known to him, chosen. The vituperations contained in his write-up mark the second time he has attacked my person.
It is true that I served in the Administrations of Governors; Orji Uzor Kalu, T. A. Orji, and Okezie Ikpeazu. It is also true that throughout my services in the Government of Abia State, that I never took, by hook or crook, any Government kobo or property that was not officially meant for me. If I had any skeleton in my cupboard as an appointee of Government, be it at the Sub-national or National level, I would naturally have advised myself against playing the role of a Prominent Opposition Political Leader. It may be very difficult to have up to 10% of individuals who had served in Government show willingness to play Politics of Opposition the way I am doing it. The implications are obvious.
I do not think the General Manager knows me to a very reasonable extent. If he knew me, he would not make such fabrications against me that have no substance. If he actually knew me, he would have known that I am not like a character who could selfishly and heartlessly disown, sack and abandon my wife for years despite all efforts made by family relations from both sides, Bishops and Clerics to effect reconciliation, only for me to run with the speed of light, desperately on my knees, to beg for forgiveness from my wife just because she had become exceptionally wealthy and could buy more than twenty plots of land for me in my village and erect a magnificent duplex thereon.
For all intents and purposes, I am neither greedy nor opportunistic. I am a grateful heart that is always thankful to Almighty God for all He has done for me. Whoever that knows me, from the perspective of sincere assessment, knows that I am a very contented, humble and, probably, proud person. I have never nursed any ambition that could be inordinate in nature. I know that this life is vanity upon vanity and that we come to this world empty and will certainly go back empty.
On the crux of the matter, I was on Channels Television’s discussion programme, Morning Brief, on Wednesday (Afor) 14th January, 2026, to discuss governance in Abia State, under Governor Alexander Otti, though the General Manager falsely stated that it was on Thursday 14th January, 2026. He, probably, does not know that in 2026 Calendar there is no date like ‘Thursday 14, 2026. This error is unfortunate and depicts administrative insufficiency, inaccuracy and incompetence. May be, he does not know that such a little thing matters.
It is important to reiterate that I am a clean vibrant prominent Opposition Politician in the State. Opposition is vital for the growth and sustenance of democracy the world over.
Charity begins at home, and I opened up with my lamentations on Governor Otti’s open deceit and discrimination against my people of Ukwa-West, the Asa People. I made the following observations;
(1) During his campaign tour of Ukwa-West in 2022, he, out of his own volution, promised to relocate Headquarters of ASOPADEC from Umuahia to Ukwa-West within six months after his oath of office, in appreciation of the incontrovertible fact that Ukwa-West is the only Oil-Producing Local Government Area of Abia State. I went further to put it in clear terms that my People of Asa have severally requested the Governor to fulfill his promise but on each occasion they had done that, the Governor had ‘looked at them with a red eye’, signifying annoyance being so reminded. Yet, his Administration is already two years and eight months.
(2) I drew the attention of the listening audience to the truth that the Government of Abia State deliberately discriminates against my People of Ukwa-West, to the extent that while he has done about twenty roads in his ancestral Local Government Area of Arochukwu, he has done none in the only Oil-Producing Area of the State, which is Ukwa-West.
(3) Further more, I was unequivocal in my complaint that the Government of Abia State under Otti has not been fair to the Third Tier Administration in the State as Funds meant for the Local Government Councils are not made accessible to them. I stated that in my Local Government Area of Ukwa-West that the situation was so bad and painful that the Council does not have the fund to carry out an assignment as minor as clearing the High Court premises at Obehie, as a result of which Officials of the High Court now justifiably threaten to ask for relocation to Aba.
(4) I refused to hide my dissatisfaction that the State Government had appointed Twenty-four Permanent-Secretaries without any one from Ukwa-West, and had subsequently appointed another set of Thirteen Permanent-Secretaries, making a total of Thirty-Seven, without including any of the four brilliant Senior Directors from Ukwa-West who had participated in the required formalities, despite all objections to that open discrimination against the People of Ukwa-West, even as it had gone ahead to appoint a retired Director from a different Local Government Area who did not even participate in the so-called qualifying examination.
(5) I expressed disgust that a Government would publish on its Website that it had expended about N60b on construction of 51 Smart Schools in the State, including Obuzor Central School in Ukwa-West Local Government Area, when in truth there was none in the State.
(6) Information And Communication Technology Hub the Government claimed to have been established at the cost of N2.5b is nowhere to be seen yet.
(7) Painfully, I was constrained to point out that Abians are still waiting to be shown where the State Government located the N6.5b Recreation Centre it claimed to have constructed.
(8) As an experienced Politician in the State, I was emphatic that democratic Governments are a continuum and, so, it was unfair for any Governor to describe his predecessors and Politicians who had served previously as ‘rogues’.
Because the programme was billed for a short time, I did not have time to mention that;
(1) 32% of 13% Oil Derivation Fund meant for ASOPADEC for the development of the Oil-Producing Local Government Area of the State is not transparently managed.
(2) The razzmatazz that characterized the flag off of Abia Industrial Park, AIIP, in Ukwa-West in September 2023 was a deceitful ploy by the Abia State Government to dispossese the People of Ukwa-West, where the so-called Park was said would be located, of their land. After deceitfully taking the lands, the State Government has, as was originally intended, abandoned the project. A viral video of the abandonment of the verse area of land has been on since today, Monday (Nkwo) 19-01-2026.
(3) Present Abia State Government knows that there is evidence to show that the most appropriate place to construct a Seaport in Abia State is at Obuaku-Ndoki but it deceitfully sold a dummy to the People of Ukwa-West that it would construct a Seaport at Owaza. Today, the Government pretends to have forgotten such a calamitous deceit.
(4) The Administration, in order to take the People’s land, had promised to build a Modular Refinery at Owaza, which up till now, no body talks of it again.
It is sadly regrettable that the General Manager of Abia State Oil-Producing Areas Development Commission, ASOPADEC, like the Local Government Councils’ Chairmen, not Mayors as that is a constitutional aberration, who must have been coarsed by the State Government to hurriedly file out after my appearance on Channels Television to falsely state that they receive allocations meant for the Councils, has been forced to throw his hat into the ring.
Before proceeding further, the Seventeen Council Chairmen that stated that they have been receiving allocations meant for their Councils should not forget that they have openly accepted the burden of transparency and accountability. There should be no shifting of responsibility when the time, which must come, comes.
Back to the General Manager of ASOPADEC, it would be necessary to remind you, should there be any challenge arising from amnesia, the following;
(1) That ASOPADEC, under you, did not construct Umuokomiri Road at Obehie-Asa, it only did a 20 or, highest, 25% completion work on the Road. The facts are glaring.
(2) That Asa Civic Centre was started by Asa Improvement Union in 1982 , under the leadership of late Prince Godfrey Akanwa, followed by Ukwa-West Local Government Council differently under the chairmanship of late Chief Emmanuel Ogbuji, and Chief Felix Ebere, was deroofed as a bungalow and decked by Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC. Your Commission did only a complementary job on the Civic Centre. Even at that, at what cost did you carry out the complementary exercise? We need to know because it has to do with Public Finances, Tax Payers’ Money, and there is need for Transparency and Accountability. There is also need for you to let us know how much our 32% of 13% Oil Derivation has amounted to since you became General Manager of ASOPADEC. From the grapevine, it is strongly rumoured that allocations meant for ASOPADEC are hardly released to your Commission by the State Government.
For that, I do not need to go into your claims on digging of boreholes, renovation of markets, and so on. The fundamental questions I am asking are;
(1) How much is ASOPADEC Money and how much has the Governor allowed to be accessed by you?
(2) To Governor Otti, what have you done for the People of Ukwa-West out of the remaining 68% of the 13% Oil Derivation Fund which is courtesy of Ukwa-West being in Abia State and single handedly making the State an Oil-Producing State?
(3) If you could treat the People of Ukwa-West with this level of reckless abandon, what would have been their fate if they had no Oil and Gas?
As for Barr Onyebuchi Ememanka whose only interest in the whole episode was to try and instigate animosity in H. E., The Distinguished Senator Orji Uzor Kalu against me based on my previous write-ups, and the Media Adviser to Governor Alexander Otti, Mr Ferdinand Ekeoma, who could not remember how much the Government he works for has spent on Smart Schools it claims to have built in Abia State, I assure you it is not yet uhuru.
Sir Don Ubani is a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Abia State, Publisher of Equity Global Reporters Ltd, and President-General of CAC Incorporated Asa Improvement Association, Asa.
