By  Peter Ekwueme

FOR an administration that is struggling  to convince the electorate to return it to power, it is not totally surprising that the Willie Obiano administration in Anambra State  is now telling sweet stories  to realise its dream.

Since last year, the operatives of the government including its chief anchor, that is the governor, have sought to make  claims of achievements in agriculture, Foreign Direct Investment and generous cash transfer to the communities.

The governor, at an assembly of prominent Anambarians in Abuja in July 2016, had reported that the state was now exporting vegetables and that the first export of $5 million worth of ugu and ogbonu leaves was done in January of that year.

He had said: “in January this year, Anambra made headlines when it became the first state in Nigeria to export vegetables (Ugu and Onugbu) valued at $5million to Europe. At the same time, our locally produced brand of rice known as Anambra Rice recently emerged the Best Rice in Africa at an African Products Forum in Lagos. Anambra Rice was adjudged better and more wholesome than other competing brands from South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Namibia and Cameroon.”

The governor has since then been challenged on some of these claims. It is not as if exporting $5 million worth of vegetables is not good, but  the people need to be convinced  beyond soapbox rhetoric. Hardworking farmers across the state definitely need more than these claims to be more productive.This is not unusual with a governments seeking re-election. And that is the beauty of democracy.

The latter claim of transferring N20 million to the communities is one of the things the people are obviously not excited about. The governor’s team has now gone further to raise the propaganga to new heights.   Obiano warriors are going to great lengths to sell propaganda to our people.

Tales of Dr. Nwoye being a cultist as a result of his election as national president of the National Association of Nigerian Students, (NANS) are being sold by the APGA campaigners and some other threatened rival political parties. It is a sorry state of the regard with which APGA holds our youths for the campaigners to sell the theory that every students’ union leader is a cultist! On the contrary, Dr. Nwoye’s exploits in fighting cultism in the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus have been well recounted both by the school authorities and the students.

The late Prof. Ginigeme Mbanefoh, who was vice-chancellor at that time, paid special recognition to Dr. Nwoye’s efforts in curbing cultism.

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The vice-chancellor supported the anti-cultism campaign spearheaded by Nwoye, which involved the recruitment of spies who were used to identify cultists in the school. Identified cultists were marked by the Nwoye group and seriously warned that if anything happened, that they would be held personally responsible.

It was in the light of his successes in that regard that Nwoye was invited to lead a similar campaign in the Benue State University, Makurdi, by the then governor of the state, now Senator George Akume.

It is as such remarkable that the salutary role played by Nwoye is now being subjected to negative revision by political charlatans.   Our youths must not be taken in by these claims and should boldly rise up to challenge the merchants of such fables as the enemies of the youths.

The youths, just like Nwoye who is 43 years old, have much more to lose if the state is in wrong hands.

That is why the youths must take their chance with Dr. Nwoye irrespective of assertions of youthfulness that the older rivals are now using to campaign against him.

Does it not look reactionary for the older candidates in the contest to say that the youth should be excused from the race? Barack Obama was 47 years old when he was elected president of the United States, John F. Kennedy was 43 when he was elected to the same office, and most recently, Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France at the age of 39.

Ndi Anambra have had enough of the endless story of incompetence in governance. What they want are projects.

Dr. Ekwueme is the Secretary General of the Enugu State branch of the Nigerian Medical Associaiton (NMA).