Do you think Gov.
Alamieyeseigha is being victimised for not
supporting alleged third term
bid?
Governance: The
Chimaroke Nnamani Perspective
Eziuche
Ubani on Friday, 11.04.2005
There is a view in contemporary politics and
governance that collides with Nigeria’s antecedents. That view is
that governance can run without ideas and that anybody, just anybody
who can manipulate the system to his advantage, can be in politics.
This view has crystallized to become the grand ideology of current
politics. That is also responsible for the hollowness of
contemporary governance. And that perhaps is why many of those who
posture as leaders at the moment cannot challenge the led with their
vision and intellect. Yet, it is these kinds of persons, who
wield the red ink, sign resources and make decisions that affect the
lives of millions. If such persons were running their own
enterprises, it won’t matter, for the law of competences would be
trusted to deal with their density. But such men impose their
limited vision and incompetence on the public sphere, beguiling
people to expect improvements in their lives. But how can those who
do not see, lead their people to change? Such persons have a view
of governance which holds that all a governor, local government
chairman or any other executive has to do in office, is build roads,
boreholes, and other projects, without an idea of how they connect
to the lives of the communities. In this paradigm of governance and
administration, once these projects are executed, the chief
executive would have justified his place. The result is that when
you encounter such officials, all they talk about are the projects.
Some tell you how many motorcycles they have distributed, how many
generators or how many persons they have sent on pilgrimage. People
with such project-mindset stay in office, and plod through their
tenure, without significantly affecting the people on whose behalf
they hold a mandate. The issue is not that these projects are
not necessary. The point is that not often do the initiators of such
projects have a view about how a health center, or school connects
to improvement of the life of the potential beneficiaries and by how
much. However, this notion of governance is being seriously
challenged by Chimaroke Nnamani, the governor of Enugu State since
1999. The governor has built several projects around the state. If
you visit Enugu State, any person you encounter should be able to
tell you about the many projects executed by the administration. For
instance, the administration has built hundreds of kilometers of
asphalt roads, water projects and housing estates. There is the Golf
and the Ebeano Estates which have been completed. There is also the
Loma Linda Housing Estate, which is still under
construction. There are several other projects. On the grounds of
the former Parklane Hospital, has risen an ultra-modern teaching
hospital. The facility will serve the medical students of the Enugu
State University (ESUT), and the state as a pinnacle of its
ambitious health programme. Students are moving into the hostels
that have been completed already. The hospital will have
ultra-modern reference laboratory and pharmacy. The Department of
Foreign and International Development (DFID) will grant the state
about £4 million to equip the laboratory. Nnamani’s government has
been worried about the decline of the state university, which at its
inception in the second republic showed a huge promise especially in
science and engineering. The conclusion is that the university’s
continue stay in a temporary site has affected its growth and
development. To solve that problem, the government found a permanent
site at Ozzalla. At the site, work is going on. About 162 units
of buildings are being constructed simultaneously. That is all the
buildings the university requires at its new site - from junior
staff houses, to professors quarters, to library, administrative
blocks, faculty buildings and hostels. The state calculates that
more than 20,000 students will live in residence at the ultra-modern
hostel facilities. The governor has set himself a completion
deadline of March 2006. “We will keep chasing the contractors,
because we want to restore ESUT to it lost glory and let the
Institute of Management and Technology (IMT) breathe”. The IMT,
renowned for technological education in the past, has suffered from
displacement by the ESUT. There is yet another project that is
being pursued with so much zeal. The state is building an
ultra-modern headquarters for the third arm of government, the
judiciary. Situated at the eastern end of the Michael Okpara Square,
the project is informed of two considerations. The first, the
governor said, is to bring the three arms of government nearer each
other. Indeed, the Governor’s Office is to the right of the new
judiciary headquarters, while the Enugu State House of Assembly is
to its left. The second reason, as he explained it, is to
actualize the state’s access to justice reform programme. “When the
judiciary works in a better and dignified environment, then, it will
be in a better position to dispense justice”, the governor said.
There are 18 courtrooms in the complex. The courtrooms are
purpose-built, with portals for computers to ensure electronic
recording and registration of cases and proceedings. “This will be a
totally paper-free court”, the governor said. The DFID is said to
have agreed to equip the courts with books, reference materials and
technology. Opposite the new court complex, another gigantic
project is going on. The International Conference Centre is planned
to have three auditoria, six banquet halls, offices, shops and other
facilities. The main bow could sit 5,000 persons. The governor said
the idea is that Enugu State is tapping into tourism. ìWe do not
have oil, so we want to tap into conference tourism. We want to make
Enugu State, a foremost conference destination in Nigeria”, he said.
“I guess you know the consequence of that. More money will be spent
here on hotel facilities, goods, and other things. When people
benefit from such spending, you are attacking poverty”. Somehow,
the other unspoken drive is to open up the state to the world.
Nnamani, has worked hard to draw attention to Enugu, the capital of
the former Eastern Region, which somehow has fallen in reckoning
compared to its peers like Ibadan and Lagos. That was one of the
underlying reasons for the government’s aggressive effort to cause a
campus of the Nigeria Law School to be cited in Enugu. That was made
possible through the construction of buildings for the school.
Currently, the government is also building an auditorium for the
school. Of late, the desire to open up Enugu and the South-East
region has been given additional impetus through the engagement of
international agencies like the Department of Foreign and
International Development (DFID) of the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
and the European Union (EU). Not long ago, about 13 ambassadors from
the EU toured the state and held discussions with the government on
how their various countries can assist the ambitious development
proramme of the state. From impressions given by the envoys, it
appears that Nnamani is almost succeeding in making the outside
world know that there is another Nigeria beyond Lagos, Ibadan,
Kaduna and Abuja. There are several road and urban renewal
projects being executed simultaneously. The chief of these is the
road tunnel project. There is also the dualization of the
Agbani-Ozzalla road. This project anticipates an increase of human
and vehicular traffic on this road where the Nigeria Law School and
the ESUT permanent site are located. “We expect a community of
30,000 people coming to live here", said the governor. “If we do not
expand the transportation infrastructure now, there will be
difficulties in future”. It is not only transportation
infrastructure. The government seems aware, from what the governor
said, of the likely demands of this expected influx of persons on
electricity, water and sanitation. The Enugu projects are
impressive. The buildings are painstakingly finished, in the old
tradition of the quality associated with public buildings. Still, it
was difficult not to temper my view of the project with some bit of
cynicism. Impressive buildings do not make a people, and
considerations other than people may drive public works. In Nigeria,
this has been the chief motivation over the years. At this point
the governor was called in to explain, the place of the people or
how the people connect to the gigantic structures. It turned out
that that has been properly reflected, in what he likes to call the
Enugu story. The governor governed in the old paradigm, until
he encountered Joe Abbah, and Lynn Simmons of the DFID. Just like
any other chief executive, Nnamani and his team were content to just
provide, a bouquet of social amenities, roads, electricity,
hospitals etc - known as dividends of democracy. “We did that for
four years of governance. We realized that the anger in Nigeria is
all about poverty. It is all about the struggle of people for very
few resources, poverty, amid plenty, in society with little or no
middle class”. So, the need to tackle poverty became the defining
idea or grand ideology of governance in the state. Poverty
affects about 70 percent of families. It is also a cause and effect
of the other problems in society. Poverty is both a cause and effect
of illiteracy, of poor nutrition, of low life expectancy and crime.
It was envisaged that since all the problems of society tie up in a
knot at poverty, any resource applied to reduce it would impact a
greater proportion of society. The next challenge, after
defining the central problem was to draw a poverty reduction
strategy. “We built our poverty reduction strategy (PRS) on six main
planks”, the governor said, drawing six rings on a white sheet. The
planks are creation of a Ministry for Poverty Reduction and Human
Development, a wealth creation programme, reformation of the
criminal justice system, reform in public finance management, reform
of the civil service, and State and Local Government Programmes,
(SLGP). These planks of policies in the strategy have specific
programmes. The health and human services, has a school meal
programme, called the School Meal Plus. The overall goal was to
increase school enrolment by attracting the indigent child to the
school system. Beyond the meal, each child that enrolls in school is
entitled to annual health evaluation. Critical data like weight,
height, visual acuity, hearing deficit, attention deficit disorder
or colour blindness are gathered to enable the school system
evaluate and determine the specific need of each child. Beyond this,
the child receives vitamins, malaria or other forms of treatment.
Through each index child that enrolls, it is easy to gather critical
data, as per population of family, the educational status of his
siblings. “We have gained”, the governor said “we got double of our
school enrolment, and we have obvious changes in height for those
kids that have enrolled in our school meal plus programme”. Enugu
believes its strategy ties to the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). “If you use the School Meal Plus Programme you can see that
through that you are reducing poverty, you are increasing the
well-being of the child, you are decreasing infant mortality and
even maternal mortality”. To feed the primary school system, the
government has also formalized pre-primary education by introducing
early learning centers at the primary schools. From this, something
stands out. Enugu could point to how many classrooms built, but its
critical interests is how the infrastructure (buildings) match with
policy to empower people through quality education. In the area
of health, the ambition of the state is as grand as in other
sectors. The government built 24 cottage hospitals. The health
system is decentralized into seven health districts. The idea is to
enable the system respond to the rising need for health care. The
DFID has so far given about £4 million for equipment and staffing of
the districts. The new teaching hospital in Enugu connects all the
district hospitals. It will serve as a reference center, and will
provide service to the whole state in terms of blood banking and HIV
screening "The advantage is that you have a uniform data and also
uniformity in service" The government is also tackling poverty
through wealth creation. In partnership with the DFID, the state
also set up the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Advisory Centre.
The centre advises potential entrepreneurs on wealth creation
ventures. To ensure integrated rural development, government is
partnering with Community Development Country Councils (CDCC). The
idea is that each council will identify a project of choice–road,
hospital, or school. The community will then contribute some
resource, be it land, human resource or finance. The state or
development partners will then match such communities “Besides
ensuring that there are no abandoned projects, this partnership
ensures that projects chosen fall within the overall strategy of
poverty reduction”. Nnamani and his team appear to be thoroughly
convinced by their task. And they know where the buildings and
projects fit in. “Projects are about people. There is none we have
built that we are not sure of how they will impact on poverty
reduction. If we focus on poverty, we focus on people. It is poverty
that is responsible for most of the problems of society", he said.
"What we are doing is to show that power can be used effectively
to change lives”. “we want to show Enugu State as a model of what
can happen when ideas drive governance. The bottom line is that
governance and leadership is not for artisans. There is a thought
process that goes into it. It is not about cultural shows, courtesy
calls and official travel. There is mental energy that goes into it.
That is what we are trying to prove” he said. The message sank in
especially with the tardiness in some states in mind. The bottomline
is that anybody can conceive and even build grander projects. What
is interesting about Chimaroke Nnamani is that he prefers to talk
about the ideas behind the projects. His perspective of governance
is engaging.
