It was way back in 1999; Ugochukwu Agbala – son of opposition exponent and minority leader in the Jim Nwobodo-led administration, 1979-1983, Chief Petrus Agbala – leapt into the air and threw a clenched fist at the hilarious crowd. His eyes misted over as he bellowed out what looked like a struggle to say so many things at the same time. He was obviously overwhelmed by joy as he pranced around.

Suddenly, he swirled around, letting his crisp new grey suit in a free fly. His face beamed in pleasure as he bent over his knees and did another swirling dance, gesticulating at the now ecstatic crowd. “Today”, he yelled, “we can confirm that Chimaroke Nnamani, our visionary governor, is a miracle worker.”

The crowd yelled back and broke into an emotion laden song: Chima is a miracle worker, he has come to deliver us from the clutches of deliberate neglect and underdevelopment”

It was at the commissioning of the just then completed Ozalla-Obe-Umueze-Agbani and Agbani-Akpugo-Amagunze roads, in the first six months of the democratic administration of Chimaroke Nnamani.

Before that day in history, these roads had been reduced to a beltway of craters, slowed and painful vehicular movement and anguish. What used to be a mere nine minute drive from a tough junction neighbourhood borne of a new military depot (Apaukwa) Garki, had as far back as 1985 been reduced to an excruciating two and half hour punishment for road users.

Then the erstwhile inter-social and cross cultural exercises among the Igbo sub-values of Nkanu, Awgu (in Enugu State) and Ubulu, Ohaozara and Anaocha (in Ebonyi State) had seized, bringing back memories of a supposed dark age which enveloped that economic highway in the late 19th century. That was when the marauding Aro slaving Oligarchs and their mercenary fighters – the Abiriba/Ohafia/Abam - seized the region by its jugular, leaving only agents of internal disorder and comprador human merchants to complete the disintegration of these societies.

Of course, the course of colonialism had given vent for these cultures to re-blossom, re-coalesce and renew healthy advancement in elevation of human enterprises, causing, also, a road passage from Enugu through a junction town called 4-Corner at Ozalla to Agbani from where a major junction of three arteries developed and gave birth to the cosmopolitan setting born in Agbani. It was from here that the pincer intersections and road tracks evolved the three prongs, one leading through Akpugo to Amagunze, to Onicha-Agu, all in Enugu State; to Onicha, across the Atavu River in Ebonyi State. The other two had devolved to Ugbawka-Nara-Nkerefi, in Enugu and thence to Ubulu, home of the legendary salt mines in Ebonyi State. For the last, it was like a deliberate jutting of major track from Nara to Isiogbo-Nara, in Enugu State, before launching into the plain which snaked through to Isu, Ohaozara, in Ebonyi State.

While the strategic importance of rescuing these areas, especially the towns in Enugu State could have been paramount, the historic roles of these paths, being a major national beltway for a major food belt was unimpeachable. And consequent upon the social impetus accruable to the larger population who were put beyond the borders of Enugu at the Ebonyi end indicated that the government in Enugu had had to work to augment a further spread of global development rather than the insular attributes supposedly accruing from the road passage in the Nkanu areas.

Howbeit necessary, the strategic importance of the road, which aught to signpost Agbani as a cultural, economic and administrative collective, moving on the fillip of a junction town, and having also been so conferred with the location of a railway station, sustained large human habitation and rise of new enterprises.

It was the recognition of these attributes of the stretch of road which propelled government into quite a hasty, if not precipitate; drive to get the areas reopened.

Governor Nnamani was subsequently reported to have told correspondents, in Enugu, that the urgency arose from the urge to beat the threat of early termination of the new dispensation as it was hardly believed then that the military, which just ceded power had accepted that democracy had come to stay.

At the time Agballa shrieked and thundered across that the governor in whose cabinet he was serving as Commissioner for Works and Transport, was a miracle worker, the locales hardly believed that a prophesy had taken place and would be fulfilled in their lifetimes.

According to one of the natives, Mr. Innocent Owo, the actions of the then Commissioner was not clearly suggestive of any such gestures which would turn to indications of the bigger picture harbored in government quarters.

Yet, what looked like a replay of the episode of wild jubilation was reenacted with stronger intensity and wider participation, Friday June 23, one day after the President of the Federal Republic, Olusegun Obasanjo, gave ample testimonies to, not only the visionary stamina of Governor Nnamani of Enugu State, but also the creativity, focus and political will. He had bellowed, to the consternation of political opposition, Enugu is working.

It was again, at the old 4-Corners at Ozalla, where the natives had strutted along the emerging dual carriageway, from Ozalla-Obe-ESUT-Umueze-Agbani road. Bemused natives re-told stories of the once historic stretch of road which ran from the early 20th century colonial British headquarters at Udi when present day Enugu was not born.

They further revealed that it was a direct throw from Udi Government Station to such British sub-stations at Ubulu, Okposi and Afikpo which were deliberately erected as new economic and political livewires to snap off the erstwhile slave trade route from the Agbaja country through Iji-Nike to Owo – Akpugo – Amagunze – Agbani, and then to the then mini-slave depot at Ugbawka, which on its own was the launching station for the unfortunate captives to commence their journeys to Igwenga, the pre-colonial city of disastrous memory, known as point of no-return.

Although the villagers were scattered in their assemblage and lines of stories in reliving their past which they believed was being recreated by Governor Nnamani, there was an air of frenzy, wrapping around the air of a high profile presidential testimony of the previous day. Theirs was like some elation which had awaited such climax of a presidential visit. As they repeatedly hollered and banged out to any person willing to stop and listen, they were celebrating a seventeen kilometer dual carriageway which formally heralds the coming of the State University, ESUT, into their locality.

According to one community leader, Chief Emma Ngene, whose home stead adjoined the new University, the emerging cluster of development, which commenced from the 4-Corner-expressway, running through to the areas covered by the dual carriage way was like a miraculous development well predicted in season. And in reminding this writer that Governor Nnamani had predicted the “miracle” of that day, what had turned out as joy for every person was far beyond their expectation.

He further stated that prior to the last stages of both the University and the Roads; he had no such regard for what he derided as mere pretensions of politicians. More so, many had come and promised, extracting people’s support only to mind their own after their elections. But what he had seen in this season of Governor Nnamani was one marked departure from the practice of promise and fail.

Down the road, off the farmlands of the Obe Village, at the new university campus, youths of the community were equally hilarious, dancing and beholding the intimidating edifices on the grounds of the university. They were more taken in by the sheer size of the four hostels, each completed with the space and facilities to take in 3, 000 students. They were baffled by the contours of the various designs which showed in the 262 buildings and they were overwhelmed by the sleek roads winding through the campus.

It is for real, moaned a spokesman, Ugochukwu Ugwu, whom this writer traced to the main grounds of the University Campus. As he stood stupefied before one of the giant hostels in the university, his eyes misted over, in tears of joy, as he watched this writer roll out a notepad and pen. He then croaked, please write there that this magnificent building is in my village, say that this place has turned into the best part of Nigeria and that the facilities here are not to be found in any part of Nigeria.

Indeed, the young Ugwu had every reason to be jubilant. He was standing in the midst of the pleasant jigsaw of mansions now commissioned as facilities of the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT. Although he was rounding up is academic programmes in the university, the reality of his having to finish up in the permanent site of the university was like a reality never foretold.

Taking the writer through the expanse of lands already developed and handed over to the university authorities, he simply revealed that he had followed every step of the development. He told stories of the then wild virgin lands which had caused clashes and anguish among the communities – Obe, Ozalla, Amurri, Agbani and Umueze. He knew about the barren promises of the terrain which at best were theatres of subsistence farming and misery for the local folk. But now he was overwhelmed by the sheer splendour of a new university whose time, as he shouted, had come in the administration of Governor Nnamani.

As Ugwu led the way through the vast university community, his furious gestures for the writer to fully comprehend the gleaming attitude of the people in pleasant response to the development soon caused many of his folks to converge. What followed was like a cacophony. Each youth tried to outdo the other in telling the stories of the terrain now turned the most modern town in Enugu State.

Yet, what could be called the ecstasy of the people on the old Ozalla - Agbani beltway, would melt into paltry cheers when placed side by side with people’s reaction when they first beheld the brand new tunnel crossing named after the governor’s political tour-de-force and rallying echo of the party machinery in the State, the Ebeano phenomenon.

Of course, it was at that juncture that Mr. President, previous day, first screamed out to the nation that Enugu is working. People had followed suit on their first unhindered visit to what they now confirmed as Governor Nnamani’s miracle work.

Indeed, that tunnel was both a marvel and beauty to behold. It has automatically eased traffic, opened up the hidden belt land standing as major divides between elite areas of Enugu in the G.R.A and the workers’/traders’ quarters in Asata, Ogui, Obiagu, which used to be called the African Section of the then British Colonial town. Of course, there was an old link through a three-kilometre circuitous trip. This wound through the Ogui Junction/New Haven Junction from the Okpara Avenue/Abakaliki Road, or the bottleneck at the Main Market Road junction. In fact, it is this junction of repeated unpleasant tales that daily pains of heavy vehicular traffic had caused displeasure and frustration that it became understandable when traders on the eastern end of the tunnel, at Artisan Market, broke into joyous dance after the commissioning.

Josephat Oyinze, grocery seller at Artisan Market, beamed in satisfaction as he walked briskly across the tunnel. Although he owned a vehicle, he wanted his first crossing of the tunnel to be on foot. He was as taken in by the finishing of the road as he was by the aesthetics of the heavy padded tunnel itself. He had not seen that quantity of tiles before. And they were all white, spotless, glistening and delicately placed. We can even sit down here and eat food, he roared in appreciation of the road.

Soon, he was forcefully hugged by a woman who had come from the opposite direction. She was shouting out her pleasure and satisfaction. She apparently had set out before Oyinze. He had felt the road and he was full of praises for Governor Nnamani. But Oyinze himself was to catch up with the woman and those others who scrambled to take photographs of the scenic beauty of the tunnel. Soon, they were clustering in twos, threes, and sometimes, large groups as they posed to take shots with the photographers who had arrived for brisk business.

In less than three hours of Mr. President commissioning the project, the entire tunnel was filled with people who wanted to share in the sweetness of first appearance in the first ever such tunnel in Nigeria.

According to Mrs. Kate Anozie, foodstuff seller in the adjoining Artisan Market, the real import of the Tunnel would be in sparing some road users of the repeated but endless torture of going through the various bottlenecks along Ogui Road, Okpara Avenue and Chime Avenue. She said that although the administration of Nnamani had done well in urban and rural road development, especially in building new roads, the idea of the tunnel meant infusing life in the areas previously adjudged filled, tight and tough for easy going residents.

She was corroborated by building designer, Dr. Ernest Ukwunze, who attested to the action of building the road tunnel representing the best policy action in urban renewal.

According to him, urban renewal did not have to be narrowed to changing the buildings erected in the early days of the old city but in finding ways of infusing life and movement into the existing infrastructure of the city.

He said that Governor Nnamani had impressed him as good Enugu Boy, who knew how to bring back the old good days.

The Tunnel, he further stated, brought back the memory of the old pedestrian subway which was built in the early 1950s, on the southern end of the railway line, but which served the purpose of pedestrians who were rarely allowed to walk their bicycles.

Ukwunze, senior partner in PANWU Consultants, Lagos, but whose family resides in Enugu said he was equally overwhelmed by the sheer sizes and beauty of the structures in the ESUT College of Medicine and Teaching Hospital. He said that he had an idea of student hostels fitted ensuite but such only obtained in Europe and America. Such idea and eventual realization as achieved by Governor Nnamani was a great marvel he did not believe until he had been there.

He said he now believed that Nigeria would work and that if democracy would continue to thrive, leaving the room for visionary and courageous leaders, as Nnamani, to hold the reins, good things would not be long in coming to the majority of the people. Yes, majority of the people, I mean, he yelled. Otherwise, he had argued, how would a poor student of poor parents dream of the opportunity of living all through his/her university days in state-of-the-art suite which could stand higher facility stead than any average hotel room/suite.

In the case of the teaching hospital and college of medicine of the ESUT, the more jubilant but more direct beneficiaries were the medical students, many of whom had spent over eight years in the school without any bearing until Governor Nnamani took up the challenge of building the permanent site of the university and the college of medicine. All that while they had no any form of accreditation for the academic and professional programmes until just a few weeks after the authorities of the National Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria certified the College of Medicine on account of the new structures and equipment which came in the wake of Governor Nnamani’s interest in the school.

This time it was the turn of the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Simon Idike, to be hilarious. He happily told this reporter that the College of Medicine had been certified to take the first ever professional examination – the second MB examination – and was ready to be tested for fitness to continue in the professional training of young doctors. The examination, Idike stated, was due in two weeks as external examiners had agreed with the College authorities to let the students move into their various stages of preparation for professional services.

The vast estate emerging as the Loma Linda Housing Estate is one other which has set Enugu residents joyous in their expectation. Perhaps, it was Governor Nnamani’s response to the various charges against Nigeria authorities for having pursued elite housing programmes against the more urgent need to provide accommodation for the lower echelon of the economic ladder. But it is one also geared at achieving the best taste. A total of 28 giant structures which are housing a total of 326 two-bedroom flats. It is expected to give birth to another new town. With one community centre, two nursery schools, one primary school and a junior secondary, each serenaded behind the community shopping mall, it is bound to be an enviable quarters for an emerging early-to-start-middle class.

In the heat of the pressure after governor Nnamani built his earlier splendid housing estates – the Ebeano Housing Estate on Chime Avenue, the Golf Estate, Phases 1 and 2 and the Permanent Secretaries’ Quarters, government spokesmen had argued that Enugu State Government had never believed in yielding to pressures to take down the standards for the mere purpose of meeting the immediate requirements of lower income earners. Rather, it had pursued standard practice of housing as obtained in the developed parts of the world, suggesting that people had to be motivated to climb the ladder and meet up instead of being consigned to a definite low income class of squalid housing.

But however plausible that argument was, the new effort in meeting the lower income class down the line appears a better option of providing for their advancement rather than shooting the facilities far beyond their reach.

Loma Linda Estate, named after one of Governor Nnamani’s Alma matter, in the United States, is located at the corridor between the plush Independence Layout and Achara Layout, a conservative middle class quarters developed in the administrations of former premiers, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Michael Okpara. It lays on the formidable road path from Timber Section of the tumultuous Jomo Kenyatta Street Market and Ugwuaji, end of which is a flyover pass, into the Enugu – Port Harcourt Expressway.

What can be said in reporting of the aftermath of the commissioning of the Z.C Obi Link Road had better be captured in the history of the man who had to found the Igbo State Union in the 1940s. Governor Nnamani excavated it and shocked his audience at a dinner after the commissioning exercise.

He said at the Banquet Hall of the Government House, “we have chosen today, to honour the revered Chief Zacheus Chukwukaelo (Z.C) Obi, Nigerian patriot of Igbo fervour, national president, Igbo State Union, first African Manager of UAC, former Councillor of Port Harcourt, former Vice President of Port Harcourt City Council, founder of Igbo National High School (now National High School), Aba, Contractor, philanthropist; one who exemplifies the true texture of the trinity of Igbo Character, viz, akpauche – the cot of reason; njepu – the spirit of adventure, powered by ukwun’ije, which, together with aka ikenga, herald the accomplishment – ntozu - of the man.

After many years, today is the proclamation of the fame –odenigbo, of Chief Z.C Obi.”

The gathered audience cheered and clapped. Many had long forgotten the sage whose efforts led to a kind of revolutionary Igbo rise in western education and eventual bargaining power in the Nigeria setting.

Son of the late Obi, Chief Onyeabo Obi, who had to serve as a senator as his great father did, was just speechless. Perhaps, even in appreciating the contributions his great father did (they never gave him a biography), he could not fathom why a distant Governor Nnamani would be the person to bring his father to such high reckoning.

At the Okpara Square, which stands as the Enugu version of 3-Arms Zone, there were multiple celebrations. People converged in groups and discussed the astounding but magnificent Judicial Headquarters Complex which has been named after the retired State Chief Judge, J.C.N Ugwu.

An estate of mansions housing 18 court rooms, a library, conference hall, press coverage lodge and recreation centre, it promises one no other part of Nigeria had provided. These too had been finished 100 percent and commissioned. Men of the Bar and Bench were as happily disposed as plain workers who had to move from the drudgery of the colonial type headquarters in use to ultra-modern facilities as provided in the judiciary headquarters. It will house and operate the first ever automated court recording facility in Nigeria as its internet facilities will expose legal practitioners to the latest techniques in their chosen profession.

As lawyers and their crowd celebrated, the opposite site of the Okpara Square provided the arena for people to gain the ever opportunity of coming close to multiple theatre facilities in that part of Nigeria. Indeed, as raised by our correspondent in a previous report, it had become difficult to, sometimes; understand what fired the imagination of Governor Nnamani in pursuing the International Conference Centre, ICC, which is designed and built as three major auditoriums. The first is a 5, 000-seater; the second a 3, 500-seater and the last which is dome-shaped is a 1, 500-seater. The first is designed a double-deck ring theatre with sedate-stair-run to a VIP lounge, Press Gallery, Performance platform and an officiating duct. The second is like a sliced off corner of an orange ball with semi-circle rows of seats, a performance platform, officiating duct, press gallery and VIP lounge while the dome-shaped theatre is like a vast round hall, especially designed to house major conferences and public dinner. Looming at the rear of this echelon of theatres is a steadily rising 200-bedroom five-star hotel, which is expected to house guests due for functions at the International Conference Centre.

The nearest we could come to appreciating Governor Nnamani’s inner minds on this vast and intimidating project was when he told our reporter, we are not an oil state and we have to build a display platform to get people to appreciate our tourism potentials. We have the urgent need to muscle in as a tourism destination in this country. That will be our own crude revenue earner.

As he explained, Enugu had enough to be known as an inescapable tourism destination. The halls and stages would be used to showcase the potentials and as they would be used for intellectual harvests in the region.

Of course, the entire efforts of Chimaroke Nnamani in rebuilding the State have amounted to the boldest actions in governance, since the return of Nigeria to a democratic setting. The most reverberating are the efforts in diffusing administration to spread impact of development to every inch of the State. This has returned as one in which the Enugu administration acted to achieve the highest spread of economic empowerment throughout the region. With the creation of 39 development centres, an average of three from each of the 17 Federal Local Government Areas, he reached a world record of pushing health care and facilities to an inch of one institution in every seven kilometer radius. Same are the cases with the varying services available in the old local government headquarters, agricultural extension, native administration, customary adjudication, local education administration, etc.

Initially, it was felt that an area the government of Chimaroke appeared not too eager to display to the world was its feats in agriculture. It was one area Mr. President had urged the governor to look into when he had to commission some of projects completed early 2005.

This reporter confirmed that what may have caused the seeming lack of enthusiasm in the government was the peculiarity of Enugu being home to Igbo merchants who barely had enough stretch of land to get into big time farming. In fact, such vast lands that abound in the Northern parts of Nigeria are so far fetched in Igbo land that it usually turns into battles of life to take communal lands for large-scale agriculture. More over, the terrain is also drilled in escarpments, gullies and soils soaked in raw coal. Some of these tend to present very dangerous surfaces where such farming equipment as tractors would never operate.

Nevertheless, Governor Nnamani was said to have directed members of his executive to lead in micro-farm projects and the attendant cooperatives, causing the emergence of over 200 small cassava farms, plantain plantations, palm plantations and yam orchards. These are in small patches of individual holds which did not necessitate his taking the presidential entourage to undertake inspections.

Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr. Patrick Asadu, told our correspondent that the government of Enugu State had therefore deployed its energy in acquisition of the right seedlings, research reports for guide to farmers and extension services to local people who were expected to employ modern techniques to further their productivity.

According to him, it had become customary for the government to acquire or refurbish farm equipment as tractors, loaders and bulldozers which were hired out to needy farmers at highly subsidized rates.

State Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Onyiroha Nwanjoku, declared that he had remained a direct beneficiary of the policy thrust of the Enugu Government and had implored his followers to exploit the willingness of the Chimaroke Nnamani administration to increase food production.

Explaining the explosion of agricultural activities as a result of direct government activities, Igwe (Barrister) Jeremiah Onovo, who is the Grand Patron of the Millers Association of Enugu State said that the turn of food production had advanced as more local people now patronized their milling facilities, making it easier and neater to have finished produces released to the population. He said that these had also put more money in the pockets of the people as the association.

These days, as people settled in their acknowledgment of the feat of the administration, there appeared puzzles on where Governor Nnamani’s talents and energy would be employed after 2007. That may be a subject of a future report.

(Additional reports filed June 26, 2006, by Semiu Aderogba (Bureau Chief), Obinna Ezeaso, Queendaline Ekaete, Tom Orbunde and Echezona Olubueze)

Culled from Daily Sun, Monday, July 3, 2006