Voting completed, and the counting started. All attention then massed around Attahiru Jega and Abuja Situation room. The country hung in the balance. Niger Delta stood on a tip-toe, young men and women primed for trouble, and waiting for signal. Just one wrong move, and the country would tip into chaos. A few days later, I was sitting in a bar along Sani Abacha Expressway Yenagoa when Goodluck Jonathan made that fateful call. And then the balloon deflated. Jonathan had lived up to his mantra: that his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian.
Jonathan gave us the largest economy in Africa, he gave us freedom of expression, he gave us food, among other things, but how did we pay him back? We declared him clueless, and branded him a moron. We became hyenas baying for his blood, and traumatised him with his mock coffin displayed on the street. A sitting President! Today, many of us will give anything just to cast our eyes on him. May God give us the spirit of discernment to recognise great leaders when they are thrown up among us.
Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is about to bid us farewell! Shakespeare told us that the world is a stage. It is indeed so!
From May 29, 2015 till date, the attacks on Ugwuanyi have continued unabated. The punches are merciless, and castigations unremitting. The attack dogs have never allowed him a moment of peace. His best intentions are negativised, and his kindest gestures uglified. But he was never demoralised. He kept grinding away at his work.
While some out-going Governors even in States that are designated Oil producing with 13% derivation are leaving a backlog of salaries, arrears, and promotions, Ugwuanyi is not passing such burden to the succeeding Administration. He has faithfully lived up to his promise that Enugu workers will never go hungry under his watch. In a country that was battered with recessions twice, I hear that salary payment is not achievement. I agree it is not! But why are other Governors with more revenues and allocations owing?
I will not bother to catalogue the achievements of Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi in eight years, but let me quickly say this: in Basic Education Ugwuanyi completed 1, 437 classroom blocks, more than the number completed by the two Administrations that preceded him, but they say he did not perform; in Post-Primary Education the result is not different, with computers and modern science laboratories, to boot, yet they say he did not perform.
In Tertiary Education, he is leaving a legacy of architectural masterpieces in IMT, ESCET, and IWOLLO; he wrestled down a Federal Polytechnic to Ohodo in Igbo-Etiti at a time when his party was not in power, and then the Summa Cum Laude of his accomplishments – the State University of Medicine and Applied Sciences, Igbo-Eno (SUMAS) – the first of its kind in the entire South-East. One man! One Administration! Haba! This is in the area of public education alone! Am I saying Ugwuanyi that Ugwuanyi performed? Of course, no! I am simply asking that someone should show me a past a Governor, who accomplished a similar feat in one area of public service delivery.
Yet in all this, he has been rewarded with nothing but vitriols, attacks and abuses. In five days Ugwuanyi would have completed solid eight years in power. In all those years nobody, no matter how vicious, has ever been attacked back at his instigation. He has always held out the olive branch to all and sundry.
On Friday last week, I drove over a vulcaniser’s spanner, and a ten year old boy, who was standing by called me onye iberibe. Me? Onye iberibe? Why? For what? Frankly speaking, if I had even a civil defence officer with me, I would have asked him to go after the boy. But while I was fulminating, I remembered Ugwuanyi, an Executive Governor, who has ready-made access to all the State security apparatuses, but would never deploy them against anyone even when obvious injustice is done to him. In my estimation, that is what it means to have a large heart – the kind of heart that can contain abuses, side-step slander, wave off incriminations, and sustain focus on public service.
How many of us have noticed that Ugwuanyi’s attackers, including the online ones have doubled their energy, and become more vicious in the build up to the Inauguration? It is as though they are racing against time. Indeed they are! Their quarry is about to leave the arena. They are now churning out lies, fake figures, and preposterous statistics just to make him look bad. Ignore them; they are merchant of lies and counterfeit stories.
Life has intelligence: what we measure out to others will lie in ambush for us somewhere and some day. By all standards Ugwuanyi is a victor. He endured intensive screening for eight years, and emerged unstained and unsullied; he parried missiles, and never fought back. Thank you Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for eight solid years of self-effacement, self-immolation and political martyrdom. We are grateful.
How many of us still consider Goodluck Jonathan clueless? Or moronic? How many? History will always vindicate the just.
Ugwuanyi is the kind of person who will leave Office, and will join us the next day at Okpara Square to jog. Ovations are better and lasts longer when they come after Office. Of all the lessons of Ugwuanyi Administration, the most outstanding are the lessons on honour, discipline and management of power.
Bravo Udulekenyi 1 of Orba! Farewell Man of Peace! God’s grace to you, sir!
Dr Hyginus Eze
