The next few days and weeks are going to be very interesting in Abia State.
For the first time in the annals of the state, a former governor and activities of his administration, will be subjected to scrutiny, an action that may lead to filing of charges and criminal prosecutions.
Considering that all the past administrations usually handed over to their stooges and godsons, no one was ever summoned to give account of anything.
However, the 2023 general elections presented a great opportunity for citizens who were uterly dissatisfied with the crass maladministration, financial malfeasance and manifest rot in the governance system in the state, to dislodge the status quo through protest votes that ushered in the opposition Labour Party.
Immediately he was declared winner of the gubernatorial election, governor Alex Otti vowed to recover public funds that were stolen by successive administrations in the state.
In fulfillment of that promise, governor Otti, has constituted a five-member judicial panel of inquiry to probe the past administrations in the state.
The panel, headed by Justice Florence Duruoha-Igwe, was specifically mandated to trace and recover looted properties and funds belonging to the state.
To effectively trace some of the stashed loot, a retired Director at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mazi Ugochukwu Okoroafor, was included as a member of the panel.
Already, there are indications that a group has approached the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in Abuja, asking it to probe the administration of the immediate past governor of the state, Dr. Ikpeazu, which was accused of squandering billions of dollars the World Bank released for the control of erosion in the state.