On
a balmy evening in late October last year, I ran into the former governor of
Cross River State, Donald Duke as he was stepping out of the Governor’s Lodge
in Amawbia, Anambra State.
He had just rounded off a meeting with his friend,
Governor Willie Obiano and was heading to his car. A brief exchange ensued. I
had been a huge fan for so long and it was a gift to finally meet him, I said. A sunny smile lit up his face as
he said, “I have just told your principal what he must know. I told him that
unless Anambra gets it right, the rest of your Igbo brothers will continue to
search for a direction. I made him realize that this is his cross to bear.”
After this comment, he quickly hopped into the open door of a black Toyota Jeep
and slid noiselessly away into the gathering dusk, leaving me with a sinking
awakening.
Now,
it may be difficult to explain it but it would seem that Governor Willie Obiano
of Anambra State has finally got the message of the time. It just might be that
ApkokuedikeNdigbo has risen to the call of history and begun to speak the
language of the ages. Donald Duke’s didactic comment above offers a ray of
light into Governor Obiano’s new awakening. Indeed, if Ndigbo have ever agreed
on anything, it is on the incontestable leadership of the Igbo nation by
Anambra State. No Igbo in his right mind would raise a voice in dispute against
this truism. However, many Igbo would deign to observe that in the recent past,
Anambra had struggled to produce a leader that could impose himself in a
comprehensive and awesome way as NnamdiAzikiwe did, as
ChukwuemekaOdumegwuOjukwu did and as his father, sir Louis did in commerce. Although
Innocent Chukwumaof Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing, CosmasMaduka of Coscharis
Group, Prince Engineer Arthur Eze of Atlas Oronto Petroleum and a handful of
other entrepreneurs have shown a great deal of promise, the inconvenient truth
is that, as a geo-ethnic group, Ndigbohave had an impressive flowering of a
thousand success stories but not a single group triumph. And it all boils down
to political leadership and what we do with it.
It
is against this seeming void that we have started to see the beginnings of a
fascinating story of leadership; the story of someone who had all along looked
very unlikely to provide Ndigbo with a purposeful and focused leadership that
will finally herald their return to reckoning in Nigeria …the story of Governor
Willie Obiano, who at this moment in time, looks like the round peg we have all
been looking out for to fill the round hole in Igbo leadership. And this is
why…
History
has shown that leaders who leave a mark on human memory have always done two
things – they either create the circumstances that define them or define the
circumstances that create them. Willie Obiano, to my mind, belongs to the
latter. Thrown into the vortex of a leadership dilemma indexed by high
insecurity, plummeting morale and utter lack of group vision and aspiration,
Willie Obiano is increasingly beginning to show that his reading of the
socio-cultural temperature of Igboland is right. He is also gradually moving in
to fill this void. Apart from his already acclaimed handling of the security
challenge in Anambra, two things signpost his gradual ascension to the seat of
Igbo leadership.
The
first is Last Monday’s formal burial of Ndigbo who lost their lives in the
Biafran war, the two world wars and the countless gales of violence that have
repeatedly shaken the foundations of Nigerian unity. It was one event that nebulously
connected Ndigbo across diverse geographies with one frail hope of unity and a
rare sense of community. It was the first time in a long while that Ndigbo
would come together for the purpose of our shared experience. Sensing the call
of history, Obiano brilliantly rose to the occasion with a speech entitled Ozoemezina – Memory and the Quest for Igbo Renaissance, in which he delivered
the following punch line to buttress the near lack of common grounds amongst the
Igbos unless there is a threat ofimminent extinction facing them –“We shall
continue our bold efforts to ensure that we are not only united in times of
adversity and grief but in times of victories and peace.”
Interestingly,
unlike the Great Zik, Awo or even Nkrumah who overcame the challenge of leading
their peoples out of the iron grip of ignorance and colonialism or even Winston
Churchill who ensured that Britain never lost the psychological battle of the 2nd
World War, Willie Obiano is facing a totally different challenge – the battle
to return self-belief to his people, to invoke the once famous can-do spirit of
Ndigbo that says (onyekwe, chi yaekwe) and ignite the fire for the pursuit of
group excellence. It is a known fact that since the smoke drifted off the last
weapon in the Biafran War, Ndigbo have demonstrated mastery of individual
success. Sadly, as an ethnic block in search of a vigorous voice in Nigerian
leadership, failure has stared us in the face. While some people have sought
explanation for this from the fierce struggle that ensued after every Igboman
was reduced to a miserly 20 Pounds note at the end of the war, others believe
that the famed Igbo unity that once saw town unions and associations awarding
scholarships to promising youngsters in the colonial times may have been
shattered with the lethal blasts of war cannons.
At
the moment, Obiano seems to have found the missing spark in the emerging
post-war Igbo storyline.Last Monday, he simply situated memory where it counted
most when he rallied Ndigbo from across the five South Eastern states to bury
their war dead. When his voice echoed in the valley of Alex Ekwueme Square on
that fateful day, it touched the raw emotions of Ndigbo; the living and the
dead. He strove determinedly to restore the long receded kindred spirit of his
people when he observed that“hardly is
there a family in this gathering without a story; a story of profound loss. But
beside every story of loss sits a story of success; of glory and of abundance.”
Then, his voice rising to a crescendo, he invoked the trope of the single story made famous by
ChimamandaAdichie, proudly declaring
that - “to the glory of God, we are not
a people with a SINGLE STORY…we are a proud, intensely driven, hardworking,
innovative, adventurous and forward-looking people with more gifts than the
world can take!” In one breath, he stolidly engaged the large themes of loss
and victory, pain and pleasure – giving his audience a rich rhetoric to chew on
a pointedly symbolic day.
Yes;
leadership should be able to strain against the deluge of contending issues of
governance to fish out some seemingly lost motifs, themes, ideas or leitmotif
in the narrative of a people which when carefully invoked can renew their sense
of worth and restore grace to a long history of wrongs. This was what Obiano
has done with the memory of the Igbo war dead.
The
second thing that signposts Obiano’s determined journey to Igbo leadership is a
mesh of symbolic activities that might be seen as the soft issues of governance.
In speeches and body language, Obiano has continued to announce himself as
having risen above the savage passions of the average Nigerian leader. His full
understanding of the concept of the leader as a symbol of the expressed and
silent wishes of the people, his sense of aesthetics and style, his deftgrasp
of the little things that matter and his
uncanny ability to connect with just about anyone, mark him out as the unexpected
leader of a sophisticated people. He has shown a remarkable sensibility, a
keenness to establish telepathy with the people and a boldness to demystify
leadership and strip himself of the usual aloofness of many elected officers
who place themselves above the echo of our common humanity. His ability to
rally the people together for a common cause as he has shown with Ozoemezina as
well as the fundraising he held in Lagos and Abuja to boost his efforts for a
safer Anambra State also places Obiano in the front row of promising leaders.Indeed,
each time his voice rises to sing the powerfully melodious Anambra Anthem which
he gave to NdiAnambra to mark his first 100 days in office, Obiano surrenders
his exalted office and melds into the audience in a manner that says, “Yes;
leaders are human. I am one with you!”
So,
in connecting with the passions of his people, in drawing attention to things
that ought to matter to them and in renewing their faith in their shared
ability to triumph over tragedies, GovernorWillie Obiano is redrawing the map
of Igbo leadership and fixing the beacons where they should be.
Eze writes from Ifite, Awka, Anambra State via
([email protected])
Ozoemezina – When a Leader Rises to the Call of History By James Eze
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Monday, January 19, 2015
Rating:
Great👏👏👏
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