Abia Awaits House Of Assembly For LG polls – Otti

Abia State Government awaits the State House of Assembly to put in place some legislative matters before it will conduct local government election.

Governor Alex Otti, who disclosed this in Umuahia, said the time table for local government elections would be out as soon as some legislative matters are put in place by the House of Assembly.

He said his administration was working closely with the leadership of Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to work out modalities for the payment of the new national minimum wage of N70,000.

Otti announced that while the state government team works with the NLC on the modalities, it still awaits further clarifications from the Federal Government on the way forward.

“A committee has already been set up. The government team, together with the Nigeria Labour Congress, is already working. We are not keeping quiet.

We are already making progress,” he said.

He exonerated the former commissioner for Health, Ngozi Okoronkwo, who was earlier suspended and later resigned of any financial impropriety. He said the report of the panel set up to look into the activities of the former commissioner did not indict her of any financial maleficence.

Otti said since the commissioner resigned on her own, the government had no problem in accepting her resignation.

He also said the former commissioner for Science and Technology who recently resigned had no case with him as a governor or the government of Abia State. 

“The commissioner resigned honourably and maintains alignment with the government and the governor. The committee (investigative panel on former health commissioner) turned in its report and there were no financial impropriety found but there were conducts that were not consistent with laid down policies and procedures. I want to repeat that money was not stolen. There were procedures that were abused. And since she offered to resign, the government decided to accept her resignation,” he said.