LAST, Monday, I laid the foundation for today’s entry in an article entitled “Willie Obiano is working”. The first call I received over the analysis was from a schoolmate from Anambra State who disparaged me for taking such a laudatory stance. He even questioned my authority on issues pertaining to “his state”!
This enraged and ill-informed chap declared that there was no single caterpillar in his Awka Etiti community and, according to him, in most other parts of the state there was no zonal uplift or urban renewal. I asked him the last time he visited home being a long-time ‘Lagos boy’. He retorted he was calling me from his hamlet. He ended his vituperation by ludicrously asserting that I must have been induced to misrepresent realities!
My subscription to Oscar Wilde’s incontrovertible affirmation that the poor think most about money than any other group in the society has just been reaffirmed by that impoverished intervention. Must everything about our existential humanism be lucre-based? There is also this inexplicable stupidity that you must come from a particular place before you could access information about it or comment on its administration. With new technologies, media illimitability and globalization, it is strange that some ignoramuses still think like stone-age kindergartners with regard to borderless geopolitical awareness vis-à-vis informational dynamics. As a Nigerian or an international observer, do you need to come from Abia State to know that it was the worst state in human history in terms of social infrastructure and human capital mismanagement between 2007 and 2015?
Any critical columnist like me should be used to such bovine allegations of gratification for whatever position I take. It is indeed the asininity of this rash suspicion and hasty conclusion that fuels my nonchalance to such wild insinuations. For me, I cannot be deterred by any scurrility on my three-decade-plus robust professionalism that enjoys profundity of national recognition and global acclaim.
Back to the second-term inalienability of the Chief Sheriff and Economic Liberator in Anambra State, Governor Willie Obiano, whose encore is waiting on a platter because of about three years of leadership quintessence, acknowledged even by detractors. If Gov. Obiano wasn’t doing creditably, a highly-respected Nigerian from Anambra State like Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary-General, will not publicly appreciate Gov. Obiano’s diligence and transformative ethos. Former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme, former governors, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife/Dr. Chris Ngige; and Dr. Dozie Ikedife, among eminent others, are on the same page with Chief Anyaoku. Beyond inevitable voter ratification in next year’s governorship poll, which other endorsement does this “Alert Governor” who unprecedentedly increases salaries because of digitalized IGR require?
Let us go to specifics that guarantee a second term for Chief Obiano. As we do this, we must equally accommodate disgruntled forces who will fault whoever is in power doing well or not. Even if the papacy comes to govern Anambra after the current governor’s eight-year tenure of irrevocability, there would still be obstreperous hypercritics. The vanishing tribe of inconsequential critics of Gov. Obiano should perforce realize that there is no perfection anywhere. As a fresher in UNILAG approximately three decades ago, professorial philosophers salaciously and blasphemously proved to us almost beyond doubt that God is not perfect!
Chief Obiano carries on with the optimal institutionalization of good governance in the state as if there had been no administrators or governors in Anambra before his divine emergence. Yet, there had been nine predecessors in the Government House, Awka! The catalytic projects and programmes of his administration tend to suggest that most past leaders of this state were either clueless or simply overwhelmed by the peculiar challenges in the state.
It is this realization that drove Gov. Obiano into personally coming up with a roadmap encapsulated in the state’s vision and mission statements to wit: “To be the first choice investment destination and most preferred location to site new industries.”  And this: “To create a socially stable, business-friendly environment that will attract both indigenes and foreigners to seek wealth-creating opportunities in Anambra State.” This blueprint has really made Gov. Obiano to drive the state close to developmental satiation. The governor’s professional background and occupational trajectory have also contributed immeasurably to the comprehensive re-engineering of Anambra.
More reasons, in nugget form, Gov. Obiano deserves a second term from my own perspective which should not be different from the thinking of well-meaning Ndi-Anambra: extermination of crime and criminalities in the state through multi-pronged synergies with the armed forces and vigilance groups; agricultural revolution via partnership with Coscharis Farms (Anaku) and other entrepreneurs resulting in near-self-sufficiency in rice production awaiting export presently; establishment of Anambra Small Business Agency, among copious others; pooling of resources with Orient Oils for oil and gas exploration; and massive boost to educational pursuits culminating in the winning of competitive local and international awards.
The second-term justification elongates: public-private coalition in ensuring quality health for Anambrarians, rehabilitation of hospitals, inauguration of pharmaceutical drug centres across the state, provision of ambulances; construction of flyovers at Amawbia, Kwata and Aroma, including of course the ones in Awka, Umuleri-Aguleri Otu bridge; multifarious  environment and transport interventions; and Mrs. Ebelechukwu Obiano’s Caring Family Enhancement Initiative and other projects by Her Excellency whose pulchritude is delectably indescribable!
Chief Obiano’s social contract with Anambra people has translated into the evolution of an economically viable state and an investor –friendly environment amid counterpart funding and equity regime that guarantees stakeholder/community satisfaction based on involvement/feedback. It is obvious this strategist came to power with a blueprint unlike most of his peers who gladiate power without any notion of their new circumstance and expectations from the electorate.
The most interesting aspects of Gov. Obiano’s economic policies are the creation of wealth, enthronement of skilled and unskilled job opportunities and overall empowerment of youth. This alone will inerasably leave the governor’s imprints till rapture.
Suddenly, economic and social activities that had virtually become extinct before this messianic Adonis  came on aboard have now returned astronomically—a development that has been attributed to the flourishing safety of life and property following the routing of all manner of bandits and kidnappers who had before now terrorized the entire spectrum of the state. Indeed, Anambra’s security architecture evolved by Gov. Obiano has become a template for other states.
The widely-acclaimed icons that will additionally guarantee a second term for this godsend governor are: emphatic security, transformation of Awka, mechanized agro-revolution, industrialization, renewed focus on trade and commerce as well as oil and gas, partnership with local and foreign investors, rehabilitation of schools, superlative track record in road reconstruction, completion of abandoned projects by previous administrations and building of novel ones, electricity mediation with Orient Petrochemicals, health innovations, environment uplift, gradual management of 960 erosion sites, and science and technology emphasis, et al.
Above all, Gov. Obiano’s financial acumen, management wizardry, passion for service and probity, majorly, are testamentary to his inevitable return for a second term in office shortly. His highly cerebral and consummate team of commissioners, SSAs and committee chairmen are all the foot soldiers he needs in conjunction with APGA, indispensably, for the actualization of another mandate already in his court! If Willie has incredulously performed creditably within just three years, imagine what the consolidation scenario would be in the next FIVE years! Ceteris paribus, victory is certain by God’s grace.

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