About eight political parties had their candidates present: ADC, APGA, LP, PDP, PRP, NRM, AA, and YPP. To be sure, the centre of attention were the candidates of PDP, APGA and LP. The ADC candidate was the first to address the gathering. His agenda was three-fold: incentivising business, zero hunger and free primary education.
Frank Nweke Jr. of APGA followed. Frank has reputation for oratory, and did not disappoint. He fired the audience into a frenzy by playing up the perennial water crisis in the State; and concluded by promising to hand our schools back to the Mission as well as grant free primary education to Enugu indigenes.
Next was the candidate of Labour Party, Chijioke Edoga. Edoga is not particularly a gifted speaker, and the handicap soon became obvious. He began by reprimanding the organisers, though in a backhanded way, for giving him short notice about the session (the short notice was probably general to all the candidates). He declaimed on what he called the top-bottom and the bottom-top approaches, insecurity, electricity, water and roads.
And then the candidate of PDP, Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, mounted the podium! Apparently, he was the Chief Masquerade of the day as much of the audience hinted they had come to listen to him. The all-round intellectual emerged, simply dressed as always, and without even a piece of paper. The baseline, according to Mbah, is good governance, which is measured by transparency, money traceability, accountability and rule of law. He argued that those were the benchmarks that will make Enugu State the first choice for investment inflow. The audience was captivated!
Mbah moved from the vague to the concrete with what he calls measurable indices. For example, his determination to achieve zero percent rate in poverty head count is measurable since we can look at our economic conditions and prove him right or wrong. He re-affirmed his commitment to do 10,000 kilometres of roads in eight years. Again this is also measurable. In the same way, he reinforced his resolve to grow the economy from 4.5 billion to 30 billion (seven-fold leap), something that is equally measurable.
Peter Ndubuisi Mbah! Even his fellow candidates were staring at him as though he came from another planet. His presentation was just spell-binding. He was not done yet!
He charged forward! He explicated his agenda on Early Child Education, which will pivot on technology as well his blueprint on youth development through agro-allied industrialisation and industrial clusters. He pledged to provide universal health coverage; and break the State into e- commerce etc.
In all fairness, if the presentations were to be judged by innovation and vision Mbah was top-notch. He was simply incomparable.
Some of the candidates actually provided comic relief. For example, the candidate of PRP, though passionate about Enugu people, was full of comedy. A retired teacher and former chairman of Neighbourhood Watch, he promised to utilise the security outfit to root out criminal from the forests. He kept pointing furiously at the audience as if he could see the criminals right there in front of him. What is more, his extravagant boast about gratuity and pensions betrayed lack of deep thinking.
In sum, the session was peaceful, cordial, respectful and focused. The audience had a sprinkling of brilliant minds, who were perceptive enough to ask penetrating questions. For instance, a young lady took on Frank Nweke (APGA) and Chijioke Edoga (LP). She drew the attention of the candidates to the fact that the first nine years of the child’s education in Nigeria is already free, and wondered why that would be a campaign issue.
In particular, the LP candidate, Edoga, was generally judged to be vague and hazy. For example, he mentioned roads that needed attention and free education, but he was completely silent on investment inflow, business and IGR generation. Those are areas, where the PDP candidate, Peter Mbah, is a master coming from the business world, where investment and income generation are pre-eminent issues. A portion of the audience also considered Edoga ill-prepared, and lacking in energy. For one, he could not exhaust the 15 minutes allotted him to talk to the audience, and he was dozing off every now and then.
Even more worrying is that the audience detected something of a copycat in Edoga. His proclamations on bottom-up approach is a poor imitation of Peter Mbah’s blue-print. The PDP candidate, Peter Mbah, alongside his running-mate, Ifeanyi Ossai, inaugurated the idea of visiting the communities to have first-hand experience of the peculiar challenges of the individual communities. In fact, at the time Mbah and Ossai began the tours, Edoga had not secured the LP ticket.
None of the candidates was free of criticism though. Peter Mbah was generally acclaimed to be an amazing chap, but some persons thought his arguments were occasionally beyond the grasp of the audience. So, he should have toned down the intensity of his logic, and moderated himself to align with the audience. At any rate, persons of prodigious intellect are hardly able to dilute their ideas.
In all, Enugu Diocese did a fantastic job in providing a platform, where the candidates were tested out. The ball is now in the court of the electorate. In a country with a battered economy and with a geometrical rise in poverty head count, and where investment inflow is at the lowest ebb, who do we think is best prepared to take over the driving seat of the affairs of our dear Enugu State?
God bless Enugu State!
May God prosper Mbah/Ossai 2023 Project!
Dr Hyginus Eze
