“Every community is as good as its citadel of learning. Let us come together and bring back the intellectual community back to ABSU as it was at the formative stages of the institution”
Governor Alex Otti’s sudden and unannounced visit to Abia State University, Uturu on the 23rd of March, 2025 can best be described as good and responsible governance in action and a right step in the right direction.
ABSU soundbites and optics for close to 20 years has been anything but complimentary. The Abia citadel of learning over the years became notorious for rot, filth, degeneracy, environmental degradation, intellectual degeneration, structural deconstruction, and academic downfall from once an Olympian height.
Considering that every great society is reflective of its citadel of learning, it is not lost on critical analysts why Abia State remained in the dark ages for most of the last 20 years. Our downfall started from Uturu ostensibly judging from the viewpoint of rational and strategic prognosis.
Around the month of April 2022, I took members of Abia Infrastructure Mandate on a voluntary and Infrastructure visit of ABSU to create awareness to the government of Okezie Ikpeazu on the state of infrastructural decay in the institution. We came back from that visit very dejected about what we saw as our citadel of learning which looked to us as rather citadel of ruins.
ABSU then was like a ruins left behind by a Babylonian all conquering military campaign. And to see students busy trying to meet up with rigorous academic work in such dilapidated environment made us shed tears. Someone had to think rightly and thank God that Alex Otti has come to the rescue.
Our meeting with the institution’s top management then led by the Deputy Vice Chancellor revealed a total government neglect whose officials were only then interested in horse trading and hustling for academic awards. Every government official under Okezie Ikpeazu was merchandising for Phd degree awards but never cared about the state of the academic society. It was indeed a big shame.
We thereafter wrote letters to Okezie Ikpeazu to urgently intervene in ABSU to save our face as a people from shame and the indignity of the poor state of Infrastructure in that University. From paltry or almost non existent power supply to water scarcity, there was hostel provision for less than 10 percent of students population, unkempt toilet facilities leading to students open defecation in surrounding bushes, there was lack of internet facilities to aid students learning in the campus, internal road network were dilapidated etc.
We were even conducted to see how a 2000 sit capacity auditorium donated to the University by Dr. Uche Samson Ogah was deliberately debased, disused and blocked from public view under the instruction of Okezie Ikpeazu who’s only interested was playing to partisan politics. It was the lowest level of our visitation exercise because with that brainless behavior from Ikpeazu, how can future endowments be realized to build up the University to world class standards.
There is everything to gain by the sudden and unannounced visit made by Dr. Alex Otti to ABSU. The Alex Otti that we know will find the situation in ABSU totally unacceptable and an affront to decency. Seeing ABSU like this when his foundation had donated hostels to several institutions in the western part of the country even before aspiring to be governor in 2015 will make him weak. He can afford to rebuild ABSU from scratch to lift the image of our state. With an education budget of over 20 percent of the total outlay, there will be no excuses to rebuilding ABSU to at least national standards even if he has to raise the education vote further up.
Every community is as good as its citadel of learning. Let us come together and bring back the intellectual community back to ABSU as it was at the formative stages of the institution when the best academics were plucked from around the world to build the institution as the best state University in Nigeria.
Edited for use by Njoku SaintJerry A
