Nothing pains the Former Abia State Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Obinna Oriaku more than being reminded that he supervised over the questionable expenditure of a whopping sum of 22 billion naira given to Abia State as Paris Club Refund under the Okezie Ikpeazu led-government. After receiving the 22 Billion Naira Paris Club Refund and the 14.150 billion bailout fund, Mr. Oriaku set up several questionable committees for the payment of Salary and Pension arrears incurred by the same government, yet, nothing was paid as they left tens of billions of naira in arrears.
Last year, Governor Otti approved over 17 billion naira for the payment of salary arrears alone, and spent almost ten billion to offset part of the pension arrears left behind by the same government. Oriaku hates to be reminded that their inability to utilise the funds they received to clear the arrears they recklessly incurred, caused the death of several innocent civil servants and pensioners.
Yesterday, I shared a video of the ongoing Massive Erosion work at Ovom Street in Aba, and reminded Abians that the state received several billions in Ecological Funds when Mr. Oriaku was Commissioner for Finance, sadly, Mr. Oriaku and others used those funds to dance Azonto while the lives and properties of innocent residents were being destroyed. These are some of the atrocities haunting him and forcing him to see his act of telling lies against the government as the right strategy to divert the attention of Abians.
To express his anger and frustration over the verifiable truth we spoke , Mr. Oriaku launched a childish media attack this morning in their Community WhatsApp Group. While his desire was to mislead the public through falsehood, yet, he didn’t want to post his puerile post on Facebook so that we would not see it and respond accordingly.
Mr. Oriaku alleged that the 200 Primary Healthcare Centres, codenamed (Project Ekwueme) being executed by the Alex Otti led-government is a World Bank Sponsored project. He further alleged that the claim by the Governor that his government is building the 200 Primary Healthcare Centres was to enable his government divert the 10 billion naira earmarked for the project. Is anyone shocked by this despicable allegation? No one should be shocked, because it came from a man who must have been used to audacious theft of public funds.
Mr. Oriaku has become so notorious in fabricating falsehood to blackmail the government and smear the image of the Governor to the point that if one is not intelligent, smart and discerning enough, you might fall for his tricks, the same tricks he used to bamboozle his Former Boss when he set up useless committees for the payment of salary and pension arrears owed by them, and ended up paying no one.
For the records, the 200 Primary Healthcare Centres (Project Ekwueme) are being executed by Abia State Government led by Governor Alex Otti. It has absolutely nothing to do with World Bank. The project commenced in December 2024.
Just a few weeks ago, Abia State government got an approval like some other states of the federation for the reconstruction of 67 Primary Healthcare Centres under the World Bank Impact Project, which is done through Counterpart Funding arrangement. This project is just starting and has absolutely nothing to do with the 200 Primary Healthcare Centres. Obviously, Oriaku got wind of this and decided to use it as a basis to lie and hoodwink the public on the status of the 200 PHCs.
Oriaku should know that Yahoo Yahoo-kind of opposition is both irresponsible and medieval, especially when it is targeted at defaming the character of a performing Governor and misleading a people who are both sensible, civilised and proud of their Governor.
Now that Obinna Oriaku has resorted to hiding in community WhatsApp groups to disseminate his anger-induced cheap lies against the government, Abians in such WhatsApp groups are enjoined to carefully crosscheck everything that emanates from him before attaching relevance to it, because a man who could support a policy of nonpayment of salary and pension to innocent workers and retirees and still lie against them, wouldn’t have a problem blackmailing and lying against the man that ended his hope of coming back to Government House to further his anti people actions.
Ferdinand Ekeoma
Special Adviser to the Governor
(Media and Publicity)
