Monday, November 14, 2005 People and Politics
Ochereome Nnanna

At last, a credible survey of the performance of the governors of Nigerian states and the Federal Capital Territory has taken place. It was a partnership project undertaken by the National Planning Commission (NPC) and international donor and development agencies, such as the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and a couple of others. They had embarked on a programme of assessing, in a layman’s language, how the various state governors had spent the federal allocation they had received.
A number of internationally compliant technical criteria were drawn up. These included policy formulation, budget and fiscal management, service delivery, communication and transparency. At the end of the survey, the result was surprising in some cases, startling in others and expected in yet other categories. The Government of Enugu State, led by the ever dynamic Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani, scored number one, with 57.22 cumulative points and far ahead of the second- and third-placers - the Federal Capital Territory and Osun State respectively.

Dr. Nnamani stands congratulated for making the people of the South East proud. He has thusly added to the lengthening roll of first class-performances, which young czars and czarinas from that part have chalked up with the chance given them under this administration. He joins the likes of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Charles Soludo; the Director General of NAFDAC, Professor Dora Akunyili; the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Madam “Due Process” Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and a host of others who have helped give the Olusegun Obasanjo administration a modicum of credibility, direction and hope; a total departure from the disaster of the first term in office.

I make this point against the background of recent past campaigns of calumny against the Igbo and their capacity to provide leadership. They have answered the questions openly posed by Doubting Thomases, motivated only by a need to intimidate people out of their legitimate aspiration to the highest office in the land. But we saw through all those amateurish shenanigans by those who would rather want to see the Igbo through the prism of their own hand-made products, the Eselu Aguata type.
We also congratulate other governors for their achievements and urge the backbenchers to sit up, if it is not already too late. Many Nigerians found it instructive also that many governors from the North out-performed their Southern counterparts, thus also dousing a growing image of northern leaders as offshoots of General Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalami regimes in terms of “squandermania/looting”.

Obviously, this survey is difficult to fault. You cannot compare it to the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) Smart Adeyemi and Professor Jerry Gana media tour, described in some quarters as “cash-and-carry” assessment. These agencies are donors and spenders, with tentacles spread worldwide. Only the heavenly authorities can give a more credible scorecard.
However, let us hasten to stress the point that these agencies only assessed service delivery and governance, and these are just aspects (crucial though) of leadership, not the whole of it. We need service delivery for rapid development, just as we need to obey the rules of democracy for the growth of the polity. The two must go together. We must grow our democracy, because that is the only means of sustaining physical development and growth. You cannot build tons of ambitious physical structures in a war front.

Only an atmosphere of  fair democratic competition, respect for the rule of law, tolerance of alternative viewpoints, accommodation of opposite political platforms and respect for all the stakeholders in a system, can guarantee the long-terms survival of physical structures. This is the point we tried to make in an earlier write up on Governor Nnamani, which did not seem to go down well with him and his officers and they started playing to the gallery.
Another lesson from Nnamani’s experience, which his colleagues will do well to emulate, is the importance of communication. Let the people and the world know what you are doing. Don’t wall yourself away into Utopia. You will rejoin the populace before long, remember. Nnamani engaged in effective internal and external communication. This is not to be mistaken for the Orji Uzor Kalu type of cheap and noisy propaganda (about non-existent landmarks), a venture that is soon proved for the fraud that it is.

We are looking up to the present crop of leaders, especially those who have been tested at the state levels, for credible successors to President Obasanjo who must leave office in 2007. We are looking for men and women of vision and action who will help develop our country rapidly. The high scoring governors have met this requirement. However, we urge them to work harder on the humanising side of leadership - the democracy and civility-building aspects. We pardon Obasanjo for his serial abuses of the laws of the land because he was of the military, and was saddled with the task of taking the polity out of the hands of the military.

Future Nigerian presidents must not only be proven and experienced in service delivery, they must also be democrats, in preaching and practice. We must not be led, by the prevalence of controversial governors in the top four, to the mistaken conclusion that to be a good performer in Nigeria, you have to be a bloodthirsty roughneck!