Let me apologise upfront to readers that the title of the piece here last week was meant to be “Dangote: Alas, our deus ex machina!” This was the intention of yours truly. But alas, what you got was “deus ex machine!” what a calamity! My machine was too forward in correcting my spelling. Once again, accept my apologies.
This week, we shall revisit one of the heroes of this column, Mr. Peter Obi, former governor of Anambra State. He finally got Nigerians to notice him after his speech on October 1st at The Platform, an event of the Covenant Christian Centre. Ironically, he only repeated what he had been saying and doing in the last decade or so when he forced himself unto Nigeria’s abominable political scene; yet Nigeria’s media space is bursting with adulation as if Obi just dropped from Mars; so much for the attentiveness of the populace.
Expresso had done four full length articles on Obi. The first is: “Gov. Peter Obi’s agonistes”, (July 22, 2011); “The Peter paradigm”, (March 14, 2014); “Troubled governors and Peter Principle”, (June 19, 2015) and “Crisis in the states: Buhari will need Peter Obi”, (October 30, 2015).
Having reported the Nigerian story and her major dramatis personae for nearly three decades (and in fact having worked with one governor), I make bold to say that the Obi story is truly phenomenal and his tenure as governor was exceptional.
Even out of office in the last two years, he has comported himself better than most of his contemporaries. He gave his successor a wide berth, improved himself at some of the best graduate schools in the world and remained single-minded in his charity to missionary schools. Of course he is nowhere near sainthood nor is he without fault, but our mired nation will sure need a clear head and solid mind like his.
Reproduced below is “The Peter Paradigm”, first published here on March 14, 2014:
The Peter paradigm
Though I had attended Obi’s valedictory service in Awka, Anambra State, last Saturday and listened to the outpouring of encomium, I had long made up my mind about the governor, his tenure and temperament. The Awka show only served to reinforce what I believed. If his emergence in Anambra politics was turbulent, his time in office turned out rather paradigmatic, but not for the reasons most people thought.
History will remember Peter Obi glowingly not because he troubled the red earth of Anambra so much or that he let loose a pantheon of brick and mortar over that yet rambling and shambolic entity. Peter is no big dreamer. His essence was his ability to put a leash on power and put it into sedation for all of eight years. Remember the famous words of Lord Acton, the British historian that, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men… There is no worse heresy than that office sanctifies the holder of it”. It was the reverse for Obi and Prof Pat Utomi writing in The Punch last Wednesday made the point clearer. “How does a conference of this nature discuss the simple life in political office? Yet in truth, office holders squander a great part of the commonwealth in living power”.
To make it more picturesque, Obi is like the matador who killed the raging bull of power. He got to Anambra when the state was disheveled and dysfunctional and her people had lost every faith in government. In fact, civic and political consciousness was a long forgotten past time. Before he came, it was an environment of each to himself and God for all. The little palliatives that was wrought by his immediate predecessor, Dr. Chris Ngige, was undone by his godfathers who tried to yank him off the seat of power violently, touching state landmarks and government offices in the process.
Obi came to a state infested by a crop of wild, ruling party godfathers and uncouth money bags. That he, a political neophyte, could defeat them in a popular election says something about him and when they stole his mandate; that he could trail them through our mouldy law courts until he reclaimed his victory and ruled for eight years would make for a refreshing case study in postgraduate political science classes. Not to mention his patience and tenacity, but the legal precedents he has bequeathed Nigeria’s jurisprudence.
Having killed the ogre of power and buried it, Obi set about running the state with so much commonsense, civility and frugality. Government business across the country today (except perhaps, Gov. Fashola’s example in Lagos State) is about 90 per cent frivolity and barely 10 per cent work; he managed to reverse that by cutting most of the frills and shunning endless ceremonies and red tapes. Example: On a bright day in Awka, the state capital, you would encounter over a dozen convoys with fleet longer than the governor’s blazing noisily through the awkward city. It was reported that Governor Obi would often give them right of way until most of them came to learn the lesson in humility and public etiquette he was trying to teach them ever so gently.
The enlightened trader and businessman in him must have made him frugal to the point that his party members almost raised placards against him at a point. But he was headstrong: he wound down governor’s lodges and guest houses littered all over the country and put them to rent. He abhorred entourages large or small; he contained revelry, including champagne quaffing, in the Government House. He simply cut those excesses that are signposts of federal and most state governments across the land. This must explain the phenomenal feat of not taking a dime of loan for eight years in an era almost every state is on a reckless borrowing binge; and to think that the state got only an average of N3 billion monthly in federal allocation in Obi’s tenure. Not only did he not borrow, he left $150 million in cash and an investment in bonds worth about N30 billion. This is unprecedented in today’s Nigeria.
Obi will also be remembered for his uncommon dedication to the Igbo. Being a product of a weak and fractured political party, it was wise and pragmatic to align with a centre that is benign and conciliatory. It is a strategy that worked for him.
Though he had an integrated development policy through which his government made some impact in education, health and road infrastructure, he was obviously stumped by the local government system which can be said to be non-existent during his tenure. There still is no replacement for well-structured LGAs and LCDAs for a holistic development of a state. There must be something in the Nigerian system that has killed the third tier of government. Obi was also stymied by party politics, as he was unable to grow his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA. The party in eight years remains as stunted as he met it. Lastly, he was unable to expand the scope of the state’s economy, living mainly off the monthly federal allocation. One example; Nigeria imports palm oil massively today, yet the economy of the entire Southeast can run largely on this commodity. (But he eventually brought SABmillers, among others, to Anambra State.)
