The growing noise about Governor Alex Otti and a possible return to the APC is not emerging from fantasy. It is not the product of idle rumour. It is the predictable consequence of a long pattern of political signals, public postures, and actions within Abia State that are injuriously incompatible with the Labour Party movement he rode into power.
For those paying attention, the question is not whether Otti is joining the APC. The deeper question is whether he ever truly left its political instinct behind. Many Abians are beginning to understand that Otti is the ultimate political chameleon, a System Auditor who didn’t join the revolution to lead it, but to manage its risks for the establishment.
To fully understand Otti, one must look past the Labour Party logo and into his political marrow. APC is not just his past; it’s in his DNA.
In Nigerian politics, party labels change easily. Political DNA rarely does. Nigerian politics has always been defined by carpet crossing, but Otti’s manoeuvres are something more surgical. He embodies the Machiavellian principle that the end justifies the means. His signature may be Labour, but his thumbprint is APC.
It is no secret that Otti’s political journey did not begin as an ideological child of the Labour Party. His roots and alliances have always hovered around the APC orbit. Labour became the vehicle, not necessarily the destination.
Those shocked by the speculation may be forgetting what Nigerian history has repeatedly taught us: many politicians do not enter movements to build them, but to use them, control them, and eventually destroy them.
A few weeks ago, Governor Otti stated that he was in the Labour Party before Peter Obi and that he did not need the Obidient movement to win elections. That was not just a harmless statement; it was an insult and indirect mockery, suggesting that he does not need Peter Obi.
He told the world that his victory in becoming Abia State governor had nothing to do with Peter Obi’s wave, and that he doesn’t need his integrity to secure re election.
When a sitting governor appears to mock or downplay the very force that contributed to his national momentum, people are right to ask what loyalty truly exists beneath the surface.
Otti’s recent rhetoric reveals a man dangerously positioned to burn down the bridge that carried him across and then charge a toll for anyone else attempting to cross it. His recent statements sound less like partnership and more like contempt.
I have learnt that in politics, what a leader refuses to condemn can be as revealing as what he condemns loudly.
During his Arise TV interview with Rufai Oseni, Governor Otti praised Tinubu and sought to exonerate him from direct responsibility for Nigeria’s economic hardship and insecurity, insisting that Tinubu merely inherited the problems.
While Peter Obi was busy attacking the fundamental failures of the Renewed Hope agenda, Otti was labeling the painful subsidy removal a “courageous scam buster.” The contrast is striking.
Otti is not part of the Obidient movement, nor does he have any genuine relationship with Peter Obi.
At a time when opposition governors were vocal against the emergency rule controversy in Rivers State, a neighbouring state, Otti chose caution and silence.
While the South South and South East groaned under the weight of federal interference in Rivers State, Otti, who ought to be the voice of the Labour Party as an opposition party, indirectly endorsed the invasion and occupation of the Rivers State Government House.
He was not neutral; he sided with injustice and warned that he had no business with Rivers State, yet Rivers State is the nearest neighbour of Abia State in the South South outside Akwa Ibom State.
While Peter Obi obviously remained at the forefront of national criticism, Otti remained carefully restrained to protect his interests. Nigeria is seeing a man so cunning, slippery, and deceitful.
Since the beginning of the protest for real time electronic transmission of election results, has anybody heard Otti lend his voice to support the agitation?
While Nigerians were protesting, Otti was in Tinubu’s office singing, On your mandate we stand.
Today, the National Assembly has passed the bill on electoral act amendment, and shockingly, real time transmission of results was completely ruled out.
At the same time, Otti is holding meetings with the enemies of the country.
From Peter Obi’s recent wailings and his subsequent exit from the party, he may not be on the ballot in 2027, as Otti has been given the task of convincing Peter Obi to lay down his ambition.
It is also in the public space that Otti has been holding meetings with key APC figures. First was Hope Uzodimma of Imo State, then with prominent APC Abuja power brokers.
His contact with individuals close to Tinubu’s inner circle has only deepened the suspicion that he is keeping one foot in Labour and one foot at the gate of the APC.
In isolation, meetings may be dismissed as governance. But in context, repeated alignments begin to look like preparation.
When Dr. Uche Sampson Ogah praised Otti and described his governance as excellent, I knew something was wrong. Dr. Uche Ogah is a prominent member of the APC and a one time Minister of State for Solid Minerals under Buhari.
When an APC stalwart suggests his only ambition is to support Tinubu and Otti simultaneously, the distinction between the two parties in Abia effectively vanishes.
Perhaps the most disturbing element is not even the national optics, but the internal reality within Abia.
In Abia State today, Otti has acted vigorously to ensure that the Labour Party structure must remain permanently under his personal control or be permanently destroyed.
He ensured that Abia State was exempted from the national congress held in December last year.
He has projected an attitude that Labour as a party must revolve around him, rather than survive beyond him.
Otti is playing party capture, and it is beginning to look like Tinubu paid him to hijack the party.
At the national level, Otti is the brain and financial vault behind the violent and illegal takeover of the national secretariat, a development that is part of a broader struggle to hijack the Labour Party from within.
The question Nigerians must ask is simple: who benefits from a fractured Labour Party? Certainly not the opposition, but the APC.
From Rome’s Brutus to Africa’s countless post independence betrayals, the most dangerous political enemy is not the one who declares war openly, but the one who smiles publicly while negotiating privately.
Otti represents that familiar archetype: the cruel strategist, the slippery actor, the double faced ally.
Governor Otti may deny any intention of defecting. But politics is not judged by denial. It is judged by trajectory.
When actions consistently point in one direction, the public is entitled to draw conclusions.
Abia will not become a bargaining chip.
Labour must not be reduced to a ladder for personal ambition.
The Labour Party will not be hijacked.
Some are only passing through, looking for the next political door to reopen.
