Just a few months back this year, ace Nation newspaper columnist Olatunji Dare had, while disclaiming authorship of the publication’s Hardball column, described its tenor of discourse as ‘irreverent.’ In its Monday, August 24, 2015 edition titled ‘Whimsical Willie’, the column demonstrated that it also has capacity to make misconceived and misleading commentaries.
The supposed subject was a lecture delivered by Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano at the School of Media Communications, Pan Atlantic University, Lagos, on Thursday, August 13, 2015. The lecture, ‘Sustaining the Legacy of Growth and Development in Anambra State, which drew applause from the audience, curiously draws the fury of the commentary.
The first placard against the lecture is introduced with this patronising comment: ‘Governor Willie Obiano was granted a fine platform to show the stuff he is truly made of and showcase his activities in the last one year … but he fluffed the opportunity.’ This statement drips with the sour grapes that the governor was in need of redeeming a lowly image. On what basis could his reputation have needed shoring up? This is a governor who has attracted $2.4 b investments into the state’s economy in sixteen months of assuming office. This is a governor who has put in place a subsidised mass transit scheme for the benefit of the masses. The same Obiano had in less than one year increased worker’s salaries by fifteen percent. This is the same governor currently engaged in massive infrastructural projects all over the state and whose leadership is in accord with civil society.
You are left to wonder the motive behind the decision to talk down on Obiano’s focused leadership. Could it be that the author[s] of the publication was in the dark about the advances Anambra State has recorded in the past seventeen months? But given that these strides are out there in the public domain, it is more probable to say that the writer[s] chose to close their eyes to these developments to suit preconceived positions.
A perceptive leader could not have gone to a public lecture to play to the gallery, pander to any constituency’s subjective interest or massage anybody’s ego. Obviously, Chief Obiano’s purpose at the lecture was not to impress cynics and detractors but to engage in intellectually – enriching discourse on the trajectories of Anambra’s development journey with objective minds.
But riding on the crest of a strange brand of presumptuousness, the column sought to find fault with the contents of the lecture on these terms: ‘It ought to be apparent to even a dummy that this topic is backgrounded and anchored on the activities of Obiano’s immediate predecessor, Mr Peter Obi. Legacy in simple terms suggests a bequeathal, an inheritance. But Obiano the legatee, spoke in total denial of yesterday.’ The first observation on this outburst is to wonder whether the author[s] of the statement actually read the lecture. Why are they in denial of the fact that Obiano acknowledged the contributions of his predecessor in the Anambra narrative? Readers are invited to peruse the lecture in the Sunnewspaper of Friday, August 14, 2015 to see who between Hardball and the Governor of Anambra State is living in denial.
Obiano not only credited Peter Obi in his lecture but in my view did so to the point of exaggeration – and I will expatiate on this shortly. Hear the Governor: ‘I found it hard to contemplate that in our 24 years of existence as a state, things began to fall in place only nine years ago when my predecessor Chief Peter Obi took over the reins of leadership and began to implement the APGA model of governance. Even so, I still shudder with bewilderment when I remember the titanic legal battles he had to fight…’
What the critics of the lecture probably wanted was to see the exercise reduced to a chronology of Obi’s achievements. Perhaps Hardball should hold another lecture on the Peter Obi years to sate its curious desire. At this juncture it seems necessary to mention that in the very second paragraph of his one-year anniversary speech, Governor Obiano said: ‘…we have returned to this place after 365 days with a great harvest and bouquet of new dreams. Now, before I go any further, I would like to acknowledge the good foundation laid by my brother and predecessor, Chief Peter Obi…’ In the face of these recognitions at significant public functions, the accusation of pettiness against Obiano falls flat on its face. Any dispassionate reader of the lecture will be struck by its extensive survey of the Anambra journey from a geo – historical and cultural perspective spanning human resource development; Igbo worldview; politics in Anambra State to the current challenges facing the state. Well thought-out and well written, it is hard to think of a presentation that could have done greater justice to the topic.
Thus, the misconceived demand that a discussion on Anambra’s legacies must be dominated by the Peter Obi experience would make a mockery of the continuum of government. And this is where I slightly differ and think that Governor Obiano’s acknowledgement should have gone further than Obi. Beyond the distinction of the APGA model of development shared only by Obi and Obiano, there were other leaders whose contributions, however meagre, form an integral part of the state’s legacy. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, first civilian governor, operated in dire straits and circumstances. Inaugurated four months after the state’s creation, Ezeife with very little funds managed to provide the structures for the running of government machinery and is on record as having built the first government housing estate in the state. The much criticised Chinwoke Mbadinuju administration initiated the Orient Petroleum venture; the Oba international market project and completed the Iyi – agu housing estate. Though burdened with legitimacy deficit, the Chris Ngige regime is credited with network of durable roads and reduction in violent crime. While agreeing with Obiano’s suggestion that these interventions lacked a coordinated and coherent approach, it would nonetheless amount to inequity to shut out these actors as Hardball slyly canvassed.
The prejudices informing the lecture appraisal becomes clearer with the refusal to credit the present administration for the state’s prevailing economic stability. Consider the sneering that attends the insight into the state’s fiscal merits. ‘We analysed the Nigerian economy and foresaw that oil prices would crash to about $55 per barrel in less than one year. We foresaw that if oil prices crashed, it would bring down our revenue by 50 percent. Having figured that out, we began to work on improving our IGR by restructuring our revenue sources.’ To this profound economic intelligence which has ensured industrial peace in Anambra State at a time many states are in arrears of workers’ salaries and pensions, Hardball rants: ‘One would wager that even organisers of the lecture must have been thoroughly let down as much asHardball.
Many thanks to Hardball, though. By allowing its tantrum free reign, we are able to see who is whimsical after all. Who else but whimsical Hardball could make the asinine statement ‘to think that he [Obiano] has not managed to initiate an original thought so far in the running of the state’ and expect people to see it as sensible?
- Afuba wrote in from Nimo, Anambra State.
