Abia State Governor Alex Otti has said he will neither anoint his successor nor operate as a political godfather after leaving office in 2031, insisting that whoever takes over from him should emerge through a collective process and be chosen by the people of the state.
The governor made the declaration on Thursday at the Labour Party state secretariat in Umuahia, where he formally received Ngozika Gladys Johnson-Chukwunenye, the Social Democratic Party’s governorship candidate in the 2023 election, into the Labour Party alongside her supporters.
According to Otti, the most valuable thing a leader can offer citizens is good governance, and once people experience it they become difficult to take backwards. He argued that the person who succeeds him would be better equipped to serve the state than he is.
“What I can assure you is that by the time I am done, the person that will succeed me will be better than me. I don’t want to be a godfather,” he said. “I don’t tolerate godfathers.”
Otti said the choice of the next governor would rest on merit rather than personal loyalty. He described a process in which party stakeholders would assess prospective candidates, agree on the most suitable person, campaign for that individual and then step aside once the person is elected.
This is not the first time the governor has taken that position. He made a similar statement in January 2026, when he said his eventual successor would be better than him and that his administration was laying a foundation on which a future government could build. The repetition suggests a settled stance rather than an off the cuff remark, though it remains a statement of intent and its test will only come as 2031 approaches.
The governor also ruled out seeking any further elective office once his second term ends, including a seat in the Senate, saying he intends to retire from politics. He framed the decision as part of a wider push to open space for younger people, whom he described as often better trained and better equipped than the current generation of leaders.
Otti pointed to the Abia Leadership Academy as one of the vehicles his administration is using to prepare that next generation. He said more than 1,080 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 had recently graduated from the programme, presenting it as evidence that the state was actively grooming future leaders rather than merely talking about succession.
The remarks carry added weight given the political context in which they were made. Otti won the 2023 governorship election on the Labour Party platform, and he has spent much of the period since fielding speculation that he would defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress, as several opposition governors have done. He publicly dismissed those reports in February 2026, saying he remained in the Labour Party while adding that “nobody knows tomorrow”, and he has since maintained that he intends to stay and help resolve the party’s internal difficulties.
His reception of Johnson-Chukwunenye is consistent with that posture. Her defection from the SDP adds a prominent figure to the Labour Party in Abia at a time when the party has faced a national leadership crisis and a wave of departures elsewhere. She said she decided to support Otti’s second term bid because she believed his administration’s policies aligned with her vision of a government that remembers the poor and promotes equity.
Johnson-Chukwunenye cited the settlement of outstanding salary arrears, regular payment of workers, attention to pensioners and road rehabilitation in Umuahia and Aba as some of the reasons for her move. She also called for legislation on continuity and completion, to ensure that incoming administrations complete projects inherited from their predecessors rather than abandoning them.
Speaking at the event, the Labour Party’s National Vice Chairman for the South East, Ishmael Onuoha, said the party was committed to the masses and represented hope for Nigerians. The party’s Abia chairman, Peter Azubuike, attributed the growing support for the party to Otti’s governance record and said the party was ready for the 2027 elections, urging members to prepare for polling unit based mobilisation.
Otti defended his administration’s record on infrastructure in the face of criticism, arguing that development could not be delivered in a single day. He said the government had prioritised restoring Aba and Umuahia before extending its interventions to other parts of the state, and that the work would continue into the hinterlands.
For now, the governor’s pledge remains a promise about conduct several years away. Whether the collective, merit based succession he describes materialises, and whether he in fact steps back from Abia politics after 2031, are questions that will only be answered nearer the end of his tenure.