Opposition’s Mockery Of Dr Alex Otti: The Forgotten Perspective

Some months ago, certain comments aimed at Dr Alex Otti were made by opposition leaders and those comments seemed to plant a burden in my heart, a burden that stimulated my innate academic and scholarly approach to viewing critical issues. Commuting from Aba to Umuahia frequently, I begin to wonder the inspiration behind the comments made by opposition leaders; Calling Dr Alex Otti a painter isn’t merely a political miscalculation but an indication of a bigger problem that isn’t just political but psychological.    

“Alex the painter” is an insinuation that was simple: this is cosmetic, superficial, unserious. Real governance, the argument implied, happens somewhere beneath the surface; in policy documents and budget lines and not in how a place looks. It is worth pausing on that argument, because it collapses under the slightest scrutiny. And in collapsing, it exposes something more troubling than a failed insult, it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding, on the part of the opposition, of what governance is actually for.

The Abia Backdrop: Decades of Learned Neglect

In other for us to grasp the entirety of this matter, we need to reflect on the social decade that plagued Abia state since the introduction of democracy in 1999. Many key indicators of public infrastructure and service delivery deteriorated significantly during much of the period between 1999 and 2023; From an engineering perspective, one could hypothesize that “the cumulative development index of Abia State between 1999 and 2023 exhibited a negative gradient with respect to time under the successive administrations of Sen. Orji Uzor Kalu, Sen. Theodore Orji, and Dr. Okezie Ikpeazụ”.

This was not simply an aesthetic failure. A crumbling public building tells citizens: no one here is watching. No one here cares. Standards do not apply. And once citizens absorb that message, it changes behavior not just of vandals and criminals, but of everyone. Civil servants stop showing up on time. Businesses stop investing. Young people stop believing a future is possible where they are.

The theory of “Broken Windows” developed by criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling explains this process very well. They believed that visible disorder; for example, a broken window that was not repaired, graffiti that was not removed, and litter that was not removed signals the disintegration of society; the display of visible disorder invites further disorder. Broken windows do not actually create crime, but broken windows indicate that they are unprotected, which lowers people’s psychological barriers to disturbing them or breaking the law. Conversely, if a broken window is repaired promptly, it demonstrates that someone is watching and that people are beginning to set standards again.

Although Broken Windows Theory remains controversial, especially surrounding topics like police tactics. However, its psychological premise is that the physical environment can dictate how well people function mentally and how they conduct themselves within society, which is a concept used in many areas of psychology as it pertains to the environment.

In the built environment, research continues to show that clean and well-maintained areas or visually clear and aesthetically pleasing areas will correlate with decreased levels of stress and increased mood levels and will build greater levels of trust within the community. In contrast, areas that display signs of decay can result in a form of “learned helplessness” at the community level, where people do not feel like it is worth the effort to improve their condition or that their condition will improve.

Urban planners have begun to refer to “Aesthetic Governance” in relation to this growing body of research. They are now treating investments on behalf of government in the visual appearance of a space i.e. parks, lighting, clean transit systems, maintained building fronts as an essential component of government and an important psychological factor on how much someone engages with their own community and government.

The Opposition’s Blind Spot

People rarely discuss how “The Painter” is less about whether or not Otti has painted a state than about how his critics treat “painting” as a disqualification for leadership instead of as a credential. To refer to beautification as “just a painting” means that governance is defined solely by things that take place in ministries and on budget sheets, while disregarding the lived experience and environment of everyday Abians as being significant factors in determining what makes a good leader. This signifies a technocratic blind spot masquerading as political sophistication.

Nigeria’s history of failed leadership is littered with individuals who have held this mentality; who have justified visible neglect through the lens of an excel spreadsheet number or by ensuring that a preferred contractor is paid. This has created the Nigeria familiar to all of the citizens that have grown up here; a place where the condition of the public space reflects that no one is taking care of the property. Opposition leaders who cast aspersions on the reversal of that situation are not highlighting the current government’s weakness; they are guilty of mischaracterizing the previous norm as comfortable. And they are guilty of not understanding how strongly ordinary people will react to a visible difference in their environment which raise legitimate questions about whether these critics fully appreciate the psychological dimension of governance. 

If anything, the mockery should worry Abians for a different reason than intended: not because their governor is “merely” painting the state, but because those criticizing him seem not to understand that a government which begins by restoring dignity to its physical environment is signaling something the state has lacked for decades that someone, finally, is paying attention.

That is not painting. That is the first, indispensable brushstroke of leadership itself.

-Kalu Nnaemeka Okoro writes from Umuahia. He can be reached via email at kalunnaemekaokoro@gmail.com