By Victor Nwachukwu

Every epoch begets its defining hour. It is that singular moment when a people cease to drift and demand direction, when they declare, in unison, that the time has come to advance progressively beyond rhetoric and the facade of propaganda. For Abia, 2027 is that hour.

At the heart of this unfolding chapter stands a man whose name has become a byword for service, philanthropy, selflessness, and firm conviction that Abia must be redeemed from economic and political stranglehold.

The Man

He is no stranger to the burdens borne by Abia’s sons and daughters. He has equally witnessed the consequences of unpaid pensions, the scourge of unemployment, the indignity of impassable roads, the desolation of health institutions bereft of care, and the quiet despair of graduates without prospects. This understanding was not acquired from podiums, but tempered in the crucible of experience, through years of traversing Abia’s hinterlands, engaging communities, and heeding the narratives that pierce the conscience. Not as a politician in pursuit of votes, but as a son of the soil who refused to avert his gaze from his people’s plight.

His reputation rests not on rhetoric, but on constancy of purpose. While others recede between electoral cycles, he endured, present in the villages, accessible in the remotest quarters, even long before 2027 became a clarion call.

Philanthropic/Humanitarian Footprints

His mission commenced through his renowned Foundation well before 2027 entered public discourse. From his community down to the local government, and indeed across Abia, the testament to his philanthropy is made manifest in healthcare delivery, education, empowerment, and infrastructure.

In healthcare, his Foundation has delivered free medical services through sustained missions, deploying physicians, essential medicines, and diagnostics to underserved communities. During the COVID19 pandemic, it supplied and distributed critical medical provisions to vulnerable households. In 2015, he constructed the Obo-ogu Mbubo Civic Hall at a cost so huge. Within its walls operates a community hospital that has served Mbubo and environs for over six years.
For him, the vitality of the citizenry is the foundation of any enduring prosperity.

In education, he proceeds from an immutable premise, that a state cannot ascend where minds remain unilluminated. Consequently, he has funded scholarships for Mbubo sons and daughters and extended such philanthropic gestures beyond Nsulu to indigent students across Isiala Ngwa. He has sponsored over 20 persons in the Universities from start to finish. Most recently, he transformed the derelict Mbubo Secondary School into a modern smart institution, equipped with solar power and computers, ensuring that learning proceeds unhindered by darkness or obsolescence.

On empowerment and infrastructure, he has extended capital grants and working implements to market women, farmers, and young artisans. His philosophy transcends alms. He invests in capacity, training, and access, believing that dignity may be constructed, not borrowed. Where governance faltered, he graded rural thoroughfares, opened over 30 new rural roads, installed solar powered street lights evident along Ururuka highway in Isialangwa and sank boreholes, not for commendation, but because neglect had become intolerable.

The pattern is unequivocal. Remarkably, he served without the imprimatur of political office, but on personal sweat. It is this antecedent that confers moral authority upon his 2027 mission for Abia.

The Mission: The Redemption of Abia in 2027

His aspiration for 2027 is not the acquisition of power for its own sake. It is a summons to redemption, anchored basically on the restoration of public trust, the judicious stewardship of resources, and the reclamation of Abia’s prodigious potential.

His mission rests on three cardinal pillars: Governance Rooted in Integrity, Economic Reawakening, and Investment in Human Capital. Upon his victory in 2027, he will entrench integrity in governance, eradicate waste, ensure the prompt remuneration of workers and pensioners, and re-establish accountability between government and the governed.

The enhancement of infrastructure, the cultivation of small and medium enterprises, and the creation of an enabling milieu for commerce and industry shall be his watchword, from Aba to Umuahia and every local government area. Aba, the commercial epicenter of the Southeast will then transcend its reputation as a trading emporium and emerge as a manufacturing colossus, better than it is at the moment. Out of experience, this is his forte.

He has also pledged a deliberate and sustained commitment to education, healthcare, and the skills of the youth. Of course, this can be taken to the bank. If he could see many through the university as a private citizen, on his own sweat, imagine the lot he will do with the people’s mandate.

A Call to Unity

His candidacy brooks no equivocation. It proceeds from conviction, tested experience, and firm devotion to Abia’s destiny. He regards the people’s mandate not as an entitlement, and concedes that the triumph of 2027 cannot be secured by one man alone.

Consequently, he extends a humble entreaty to every Abian, the trader and the technocrat, the student and the elder, the artisan and the professional. To the members of his party especially those who ran unsuccessfully at the recent primaries, he makes a special appeal, that transcend divisions, subordinate personal ambitions, urging them to coalesce around his noble mission, convinced that only through unity of purpose shall Abia attain the redemption she so richly deserves.

The Path Forward

No doubt, undertakings of this magnitude invariably elicit both hope and hostility. Yet the man and his mission for Abia in 2027 are not predicated upon slogans. They rather rest upon an observable record of service and an abiding conviction that Abia merits better.

The year, 2027 therefore presents a choice. It is either the perpetuation of the status quo, or a deliberate course correction toward renewal. To those Abians who have observed him, the man has already revealed his character in seasons when no audience was present. Now, he seeks the mandate to extend across the entire state the same diligent service he has rendered in quietude for years.

This man is Chief Eric Opah, the 2027 Gubernatorial Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Abia State, CEO and Founder of Fortune Global Shipping and Logistics Limited, Board Member of the Nigeria, America Chamber of Commerce, Associate Member of the Institute of Directors of Nigeria, President of the Eric Opah Foundation, and The Sun Entrepreneur of the Year, 2025.

Last line:

The mission is clear. The man is well known across Abia, but 2027 holds the ace. It shall determine whether Abia and her people are prepared to assume their rightful place in the politics of Nigeria to enhance her economic and infrastructural fortunes, or remain in the hands of one man who applauds and condemns simultaneously.

*Nwachukwu, a public affairs analyst writes from FCT, Abuja