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HOIST BY HIS OWN PETARD — WHEN THE CHICKEN CAME HOME TO ROOST: HOW APC’s UCHE AGUORU’s PROPAGANDA ON UMUAHIA-IKOT EKPENE ROAD BLEW UP IN HIS FACE
The recent statement credited to the Abia State Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Uche Aguoru, regarding the reconstruction of the Umuahia–Ikwuano–Ikot Ekpene Road is a classic example of how political desperation can drive individuals into public self-embarrassment.
What was clearly intended to be a political attack on the administration of Governor Dr. Alex Chioma Otti has instead exposed a disturbing willingness by the Abia APC to distort facts, mislead the public, and attempt to rewrite the history of a project whose documented record is already in the custody of the Federal Ministry of Works.
Unfortunately for Mr. Aguoru and his party, official federal documents have now surfaced and they completely dismantle the misleading narrative he tried to construct. The facts are simple, clear, and devastating to the propaganda.
Official correspondence dated July 3, 2025, from the Federal Ministry of Works and signed by the Honourable Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, shows that the Federal Government formally wrote to the Abia State Government inviting it to take over the completion of the remaining sections of the Umuahia–Ikot Ekpene Road project. This was not political speculation. It was a formal request from the Federal Government.
The documents further reveal that the road project, which covers 48.92 kilometres, had suffered years of stagnation, with only 13.74 kilometres completed while a staggering 35.181 kilometres remained unfinished. This is the reality that Mr. Aguoru conveniently refused to tell the public.
The road that the APC now desperately claims credit for had been largely abandoned in practical terms, crawling through years of bureaucratic delays, contractor setbacks, and painfully slow execution.
If the project had been progressing as efficiently as the APC now claims, the obvious question becomes unavoidable: why did the Federal Government have to invite the Abia State Government to intervene and complete the project?
Mr. Aguoru’s statement attempts to attribute the reconstruction of the road to the former federal lawmaker Hon. Sam Onuigbo, citing motions allegedly moved in the House of Representatives as the basis for the project. But governance is not measured by motions and press releases. Infrastructure is measured by completed projects. And the brutal truth is that throughout the eight years Hon. Sam Onuigbo represented the constituency in the National Assembly, the road remained largely incomplete.
For nearly a decade, Abians endured the suffering of navigating that dangerous corridor while the project crawled forward at a painfully slow pace.
By the time the Federal Ministry of Works reviewed the project in 2025, the numbers told the whole story: only 13.74 kilometres out of 48.92 kilometres had been completed. That record cannot be erased by press statements. It cannot be rewritten by partisan propaganda. It is documented.
Ironically, the very statement issued by the APC in Abia State ended up exposing the weakness of its own argument.
In the same breath that Mr. Aguoru attempted to deny the role of the Abia State Government, he admitted that the state government intervened under the Federal Government’s “Build and We Will Reimburse” policy. That admission alone destroys the foundation of the propaganda he attempted to spread. Because the policy exists precisely for situations where federal projects are stalled, delayed, or in need of accelerated completion. The policy allows state governments to step in, complete the work, and recover their investment after certification by the Federal Ministry of Works.
In other words, the Abia State Government did not hijack any project. It responded to a formal invitation from the Federal Government to rescue a strategic road project that had remained unfinished for years. Rather than acknowledge this cooperation between the Federal Government and the Abia State Government, the APC publicity machinery chose the path of political distortion. Even more troubling is the attempt to mislead the public into believing that the current reconstruction effort is the direct outcome of legislative lobbying. If that claim were true, the road would have been completed long before now.
Instead, the project languished through years of slow progress, abandoned sections, and repeated delays. It took a decisive intervention by the Abia State Government under Governor Alex Otti to inject new momentum into the reconstruction effort. This is the uncomfortable truth that the Abia APC appears unable to accept.
What Mr. Aguoru perhaps failed to realize before rushing to issue his politically motivated statement is that public communication in the era of documentation and digital records requires more than political enthusiasm. It requires facts. And facts are precisely what have exposed the hollowness of the APC’s narrative.
The Umuahia–Ikot Ekpene Road is not just any road. It is a strategic economic corridor linking Abia State with Akwa Ibom State, serving thousands of traders, farmers, transporters, and businesses across the South-East and South-South regions. For years, commuters along that corridor endured hardship, accidents, and economic losses due to the poor state of the road.
Today, progress is finally being made toward completing the project. Instead of celebrating that progress, the APC in Abia State appears more interested in engaging in a reckless political contest over who should claim credit. But no amount of propaganda can change the reality contained in official federal documents. Those documents clearly show that the Federal Government invited the Abia State Government to intervene and complete the outstanding sections of the project. That intervention marked the turning point.
What Abians are witnessing today is therefore not the product of political noise or media theatrics. It is the result of a pragmatic decision to ensure that a long-neglected road is finally completed.
In the end, the ill-conceived statement issued by Mr. Uche Aguoru has achieved the exact opposite of its intended purpose. Rather than discredit the Abia State Government, it has exposed the intellectual poverty of a propaganda strategy built on selective storytelling and political desperation.
And in politics, nothing collapses faster than a narrative that cannot survive the test of documented facts.
I a
m @TheKELVINATOR
(THE EYES OPENER)