After about a year’s break from his lecture series, Governor Chimaroke Nnamani of Enugu State last week mounted the podium to do what he knows best, writes Davison Iriekpen

After more than a year that he suspended his lecture series to “enable him concentrate on the reason he was elected governor in 1999,” Governor Chimaroke Nnamani last Thursday in Ibadan did what seemed like a rekindling of that passion. As part of the activities marking the first anniversary of the Westerner, the governor was invited to speak on the topic: “Regionalism and the Challenges of National Integration.” And as usual, he did not disappoint.

As early as 9am, Premier Hotel, venue of the event was already filled to capacity with people from all walks of life. The governor used the lecture to canvass for a strong centre. “Since we know that the regions are equally conglomerates where distinctive and narrower interests equally compete, federation ought to be objectively reviewed for a safe democratic culture. Just as federation obtains elsewhere, federation reigns and reins in on the rest which may be regions or states, where minorities, cultures, clans and sub-clans will continue to rise, especially on the feelings of overtaken, though rigorous and outspoken elite are available.”

He added that equity, fair-play and balancing of competing interests could not be realized where there was no force of intervention and reining-in possible predatory tendencies.

The governor declared that the topic was not an implicit suggestion that the country should halt its integrating development, or the immediate imposition of such intense job competitions that go with globalization. “What is clear to me is that the traditional loyalty of people, especially such anchored on territorial grounds, would soon become flimsy as such preachments which ignored the development of man for actions to have basic things of life readily on his table.”

This was not the first time Governor Nnamani would visit Ibadan for a lecture. As part of the activities marking Chief Bola Ige’s posthumous birthday lecture on September 30, 2003, he delivered a lecture with a somewhat unsettling topic: “June 12; the North and the Rest of Us,” which offered him an opportunity to dwell on power shift.

Perhaps, it is not an over-statement to say that Nnamani has enriched national discourse more than any other politician of his generation with his incisive postulations on issues of national importance. His lectures are mainly aimed at preaching the gospel of peace, tolerance, equity and justice, unity and peaceful co-existence. Since he assumed office in 1999, the governor has delivered over 150 lectures bothering on growth and development.

But by July 2005, it appeared interest in that pastime had waned. Not quite, the governor said. He had suspended the lecture series to attend to the completion of some of the landmark projects he initiated in 2004 for which he got President Olusegun Obasanjo’s commendation recently. The President had publicly declared that apart from being a man of his words, Nnamani was a leader that has successfully delivered the “dividends of democracy” to people of his state. This led to the phrase: “Enugu is Working.”

What could today be regarded as the Nnamani Lecture Series, started out with his pre-inauguration blueprint on the health system in Nigeria. It was in that work that he gave a hint of the current policy of health districts in Enugu. He soon showed he could go into areas outside his professional enclave when he gave the opening speech at the Southern Governors’ Conference in Enugu, in January 2001.

That same month, Nnamani went to the Igbo Summit at the Hotel Presidential, Enugu, for a lecture entitled, Ndigbo: let Us Be Frank With Ourselves, he jolted his kinsmen whom he believed were not adequately vigilant in the way Nigeria was run. On May 15, 2001, Chimaroke was on the intellectual road again. It was a timely move to arrest a national restiveness, which grew from people’s bloated expectation framework against the overwhelming impediments on the path of national recovery. In that topic: the Press and our Democracy, the Part Not Trodden. “Things were too bad in the military era. Nigeria was left to decay. So, time must be allowed for revival,” he had told the audience. Then came the Post Express Inaugural Lecture which came July 2, 2001 at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos. Its title was Transition Politics and Nigeria’s Search for Sustainable Democracy. Under this topic Nnamani laid bare the pretension and deception of the national political elite on elections, particularly the needless apprehension over election 2003. By his summation, Nigerians should begin to see elections as mere points in democracy and not the only value of democracy. He likened it to the process of procreation which begins with conception through pregnancy, culminating in the delivery of the fetus. “Democracy is not limited to elections as labour is not limited to delivery of the fetus (baby).” Soon, he was to travel to Kaduna where he worked the topic: the Nigeria Idea … Can the Press Sustain the Nation’s Interest? In it he lamented the abandonment of the true nationalist struggles by self-seeking politicians and soldiers who reduced the values of true nationalism to ethnicism and subsequently to the base individual. These he said had hardly been unmasked by the press which ought to be the watch dog and the conscience of the nation. Nnamani was again out and in Jos where he dealt with the topic: the Press, the Faith and the State. December 14, 2001, he journeyed to Owerri and returned to Igbo issues: Ndigbo, Can your Generation Sustain our Igboness? On March 18, 2002 he was again on the move and this time he was in the main auditorium of the Babcock University, Ilishan Remo where he dealt with the issue of the Democracy 2003; it must be the voter’s world. April 11, 2002 Nnamani returnsed to Igbo issues where he laid bare matters in Refocusing Igbo Youth Energy. Lagos now appeared to be the base of Nnamani’s intellectual crowd. In taking up the matters in National Question in Nigeria and the Democratic Experience at the main auditorium or the University of Lagos, April 23, 2002 he further swept the nation into the four dimensional implications of issues in contention in the making of the impending nation state.

Again, may 20th, Nnamani was at the Press week of the Nigeria Union of Journalist (NUJ) Abuja where he took on the issue of the Wave of Arbitrary Culture in Our Nascent Democracy. May 28, 2002, he was to return to Abuja in discussing Rediscover Nigeria… Democracy as a Vehicle for Investment Growth and Development. Again, Tuesday, May 20th, 2003 at the Nigeria Institute for International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos, Nnamani took an upward swing stroke at the question of the godfather in Nigeria politics. He entitled it the Godfather phenomenon… in democratic Nigeria… silicon or real? This was prophetic as it was barely one month after which what look like the godfather morass erupted in Anambra State, and virtually consumed all on the way. In all, the governor has delivered over 150 lectures.

Culled from Thisday, Saturday, September 9, 2006