Not a few also have tried without success to create the impression that he is a totalitarian leader. These same elements have tried and failed to portray Enugu as a political garrison, with its attendant regimentation.

This vocal and determined opposition has tried over the past two years to paint Governor Nnamani in dull colours, in a vain bid to discredit him in the eyes of the gullible and the not-so-acutely aware.

These same people are the same ones who have laboured in vain, as it has turned out, to satanise the governor and to hold him up not just as a trouble maker but as a liar and a corrupt leader, who manipulates the media to lay claim to what he has not done.

It was the same people who took shots of the governor’s many projects and sent them to the president to claim they were computer generated images which did not exist anywhere on planet earth.

The president exploded the myth of their trademark lying and skullduggery when he announced to the nation that no one could have successfully pooled wool over his very discerning koro koro eyes.

These are the same people whose faces grace national dailies and magazines as they lie barefacedly about corruption, killings and official impunity in Enugu State.

One is amazed at the shamelessness of the opposition in Nigeria. In communication, facts are sacred while comments, personal opinions and wishes are free, as they catch the fancies of their purveyors.

Facts can never be swapped with fiction. They will never mix. Any effort to force them in each other’s place will go up in smoke as the zany experiments of the mad professor in children’s popular cartoon series, Dexters’ Laboratory.

It is clear that the typical football trick of leaving the ball when outrun by an opponent and going for the leg has become the Nigerian opposition well. Anything that can be deployed successfully to hoodwink their targets into chewing their diet of lies without questioning is right so long as it is aimed at cutting a political opponent to size.

In Enugu State, the opposition has run out of steam trying to catch up with the dizzying pace of the governor, in developing a political philosophy that has welded the people into one big, impenetrable family.

When these returnee politicians come with their baits and run into high stone walls as they always do, they resort to name-calling. They lose sleep over their failure, attempt after attempt to penetrate Governor Nnamani’s political family, the ebeano structure. Their easiest tactic is to re-brand the governor.

But the truth is that Governor Nnamani is a great organizer, a visionary administrator and a compassionate leader, who knows how to integrate the desires of his followers into the directive principles of state policy, in such a way that the people see in him a messianic oak tree that gives them food in times of need and provides them shelter against the scorching heat of the vicissitudes of life.

The governor is so compassionate that he knows the least of his supporters in the remotest part of the state by name and status. It is not uncommon when favours are being distributed for the governor to ask of this and that lowly party people in far-flung fringes of the state. This way those without any connection save their membership of the ebeano family are nominated into boards of government companies and parastatals and for pilgrimages to the holy lands of Israel and Mecca, among other privileges.

Having studied the governor and his style of administration these years, I have come to the conclusion that he is a national asset imbued with a rare dose of altruism and patriotism. For him, the state comes first.

So, when the president presaged his comments while commissioning the many projects of Nnamani recently with a proviso that the projects were for the benefit of the nation as they were for the people of Enugu State, it dawned on me that the governor’s brilliant potentials have finally caught national attention in a manner that even the opposition will find hard to dispute.

For sometime, I have agonized over the prospect of the distractions from the opposition obscuring the governor’s many sides, and along with it the fact that the nation, not just Enugu, needs this man, to apply his redemptive Midas touch to our nation’s ailing administrative machine.

To comprehend what this man has done, and what he can do one needs to visit Enugu. The visit will address many questions. It will show how deep vision and burning patriotism can compel a man to push the frontiers of human adventurism. The projects wrought in Enugu in just seven years need to be seen to be believed.

A visit to these projects will reveal how a determined leader can strike out and make a difference where others have resigned themselves to the whims of godfathers and such other influences which deplete the resources of state and leave the people shortchanged.

If you have ever listened to Governor Nnamani, you probably have heard him say that the price for these projects is the comfort of his appointees and associates, which he sacrificed in the interest of the people.

These days, the governor thinks he drove himself and his team rather too hard in the quest to give meaningful dividends of democracy to his people.

Not to worry. The people, his appointees inclusive, are happy, and they say it whenever the opportunity offers itself, that God has been kind to give them Chimaroke Nnamani at this point in the history of the people.

They look to the governor’s legacies and generational change he has engineered to bring to prominence people who are just beginners in politics, as it were, and they are satisfied.

They know their governor. And their governor knows them. They know he is not a dictator. They know he is tolerant of others’ views.

They know he is a consummate team player, who arrives at decisions through consensus building. They know who their leader is, and they can trust his judgment on politics and governance.

What else can a leader ask for?

Mr. Oba wrote in from Enugu
Culled from Tribune, July 16, 2006