This week very important issues crowded my mind and each of them deserved treatment on this page. Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna state recently ignited some actions on the crucial education sector. The water has been stirred and as would be expected the bubbles have been released and they are flying aimlessly. There is need to gather them and turn them into a creative force for the benefit of our nation. This is not to say I endorse the approach of el-Rufai in its entirety. Dr Alex Ekwueme, former vice president of our country has just transited in glory to the great beyond. Ekwueme did not die, he just changed life; he was a great man by every standard, and so deserves a special honour from all men of good will. He will certainly have his day here before his burial because he more than deserves it. I have issues with the organization of election debates, death in the Mediterranean and the issue of summits in the middle of the tenure of administrations; all these are in my mind, am hoping that time would allow me to pour my heart out on these important issues.
The topic today is very important; the problem of our country is vision and leadership. Please take note, I didn’t say leadership and vision and that is because you can have leadership, very competent men and women, but if there is no vision they are likely to work at cross purposes and in the end everything would turn out bad and the workmen would be more confused than when they started the task. In some instances such scenarios would instigate internecine conflicts and strain in social relations leading to bloody wars. That is the trouble with our country. We have capable personnel and leaders, I want to say this and it is very important, none of our leaders plan to go to power and fail but they ascend power and fail because of one factor: absence of a national vision. Vision does not necessarily have to be individualistic, it can also be collective and it is the latter that we require more than the former to build the nation of our dream. Let me explain a little: the nations we refer today as developed began their journey on a platform of a well defined vision which can also be called ideology. This is why when America demands that Russia or China amend some of their ways, they laugh because they know that their strength lies in the collective vision and that even America would never be coerced in any form to forgo capitalism and individualism by any inch.
America can tolerate a maverick like Trump because they know he knows the danger of walking far from core national values. This is what is lacking in our country and at the bottom of it is the lack or absence of a credible and transparent leadership recruitment process. We subscribe to democracy and the motivating factor has been that it could help us sanitize the individuals as well as the process of leadership selection and endorsement, unfortunately our expectation has been met more in the breach and disappointment than on improvement and successes. The nations we celebrate did not get to the height that they attained by sudden flight. The effort took years quite alright, but the difference between both experiences is that those other nations at their points of learning celebrated even small successes and frowned at deliberate mistakes and subversions and whenever such happened sanctions were prescribed with new ones legislated if need be and not just applied but seen to have been applied. In our case we celebrate evil and bad behavior and take it to a very ridiculous end by going to church or mosque for “thanksgiving” after successfully rigging ourselves into public offices. This is why we have so many who are occupying offices far above their level of competence.
You can see the context from which I celebrate our President, Muhammadu Buhari, on the effective and professional conduct of the just concluded Anambra governorship election. The election in Anambra was magnificent, some say it was over policed and my response is, it ought to be so given the level of known threat, it is good to be proactive. It would have amounted to abdication of responsibility if having heard clear threats to disrupt the elections, government and security agencies folded their arms and took no precautionary measures. For sure the government would have been on the discredit if any negative development had happened. It would have been a different matter if there were evidences of interference by the security forces. The complaints we have heard are not along that line, so the security agencies deserve commendation for being professional once again after a very long time. The Buhari administration has not been very lucky with the conduct of elections, when they got it wrong it was so terrible that the word “inconclusive” became so popular. We all wrote and laughed in derision and now they have got it right, we must acknowledge and commend, the same way we encourage them to work towards perfection. From my end I say kudos to the President, Independent National Electoral Commission, Police and other security agencies as well as others organisations that contributed in one way or the other. We must also commend the political class, they conducted themselves well.
The circumstances favoured the incumbent, Governor Willie Obiano, to win. Igbo nationalism was thick in the air given recent developments, some of them provoked by the South-East governors. Obiano would have been a victim but his platform foreclosed the search for alternative and when the chips were down, the quality of the candidates, godfatherism, past experience, achievements and of course resources became the issue. I want to admit that godfatherism and resources created heavier damages in addition to Igbo nationalism, which I mentioned earlier. In this election there are clear winners and losers. Am sure Obiano was resurrected and re-baptized, I see him becoming one of the best governors this country has ever produced because the baptism of fire has made it possible for a hitherto fidgeting Obiano to know what it means for a leader to post a legacy and have himself ingrained in the minds of the people. APGA escaped extinction and that is a golden truth. Nationalism or not people hardly go to parties that can’t fund minor activities. The Igbo nation is happy and rightly so. I don’t think the godfathers are happy, if the truth be told, they were too visible for comfort. For Peter Obi it was a terrible miscalculation and misadventure with costly political repercussion. The APGA triumph is a sure catalyst, it would influence political activities around the party nationally and with a governor political aspirants would see the party as an instrument for political actualization. The effect of this victory will be more pronounced in the South-East much more than it has ever been. Contrary to what outsiders believe, APGA has always had a very strong presence in the South-East, in fact if the electoral processes were very credible and there is a regulation clearly baring political office holders from defecting with their offices and if the party has enough men of great standing, APGA, since 1999 would have been in control of at least three states in the region. Peter Obi neglected the growth of the party and Obiano, his successor followed the same pattern and this is the challenge before Obiano among other things.
How much the APGA victory would influence events in the South-East is difficult to say with exactitude. What is sure is that APGA as a party would be a strong contender in the general election in 2019. What would count include performance, personality of the candidate, platform, zoning and of course resources. If the process is as credible and fair as what we saw in Anambra, then there would upsets and the mighty would go down and the fall would be terrible. I want to take liberty to state this, South-East states have never been PDP states, impunity made it so. This is a subject we would explore in subsequent outings using statistics to prove that assertion. Once again kudos to Mr. President!