Where good men are scarce, strife and disorder rule. You cannot have peace without at least one person placing his personal time, resources and comfort on the slab as burnt offering for what every other person eventually enjoys.
I am not sure if there is anywhere in the country there aren’t wars of attrition between godfather political leaders and their godsons, most especially incumbent godsons. One of the leaders of the All Progressives Congress in the State, Sullivan Chime, was at daggers drawn with his godfather, Chimaroke Nnamani all through his tenure. It was Gov. Ugwuanyi that supervised and superintended the return of Chimaroke Nnamani back to the senate for peace to reign. I don’t intend to give examples from outside the state, but Enugu State is the only State where the incumbent is not fighting his predecessor. This, by every metric, is a masterstroke and rare, if not totally absent, in other parts of the country.
It is no more news that Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State is a man of peace. What is even more newsworthy is that his love for peace has become infectious.
Over and over again, the Executive governor has been hailed as a peace-lover and a man who eschews violence; not just by ‘ndi Enugu’ but by other eminent Nigerians and doyens of international repute.
According to Brig. Gen. Lasisi Adegboye, General Officer Commanding (GOC) 82 Division Nigerian Army in Enugu, said recently that “Gov. Ugwuanyi has invested heavily in security”, in his words, “…Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State has invested heavily in the security architecture of the state. I will not say much but only implore you to please continue with the love you have for your people and Nigeria as a nation. “It takes somebody with human feelings, somebody who loves his people to invest so much in security like you have been doing”, said Gen. Adegboye.
The fact that his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), opted for him to be the South East Leader of PDP, is a testament to that effect.
His goal is to ensure that the party internal democracy did not degenerate into chaos and, also, to make sure all parties – winners and losers- agreed with the process at every step of the way.
True to type, Gov. Ugwuanyi recently spear-headed the South East PDP Zonal Exco elections in Enugu and have showed political observers how possible it is to conduct a peaceful party elections devoid of rancour.
With this move, Ugwuanyi put himself on a pedestal and set his beloved party on the way to achieving great things and, all things been equal, sounding bold, a victory at the end of the tunnel.
*But that is not all.*
Many argue that the governor is too calm and gentle. No, yes, he understands the rules of engagement, at the risk of coming across so many obstacles, he has ensured that he builds bridges of brotherhood across the various political divides in the state.
This here is the difference between Ugwuanyi and his predecessors, as well as the opposition. The governor has traded a lot for peace but, then, who can blame him? Peace is a sacrifice; you cannot have it without, at least, someone somewhere making a blunt sacrifice and laying it all down for the good of the commonwealth.
Governor Ugwuanyi has been able to unite the people of Enugu State around the common need to develop the entire State through rural access roads, revamping the decadent infrastructure and providing relief to the poor, especially to the rural dwellers. In doing this, he was also able to extract an unwritten understanding that the only things that may divide us should be political ideology rather than the hitherto usual brigandage over who shares the spoils and who goes home hungry.
In order to ensure that he entrenches peace in the rural areas, even where there has been no tangible government presence over a long period, the governor took development to them, in form of ‘Own Your Project’ scheme, prior to his re-election for a second term in Office.
Communities asked for projects they considered important to them and his administration provided the money for the projects to see the light of the day; whatever it was – schools, town halls, electrification projects, access roads, primary health centres, skills’ acquisition centres, playgrounds, rehabilitation projects, intricate road networks, market squares etc.
Thus, Gov. Ugwuanyi embarked on a smart community project drive, taking the government to those who had lost hope of ever seeing a government intervention in their time.
To further pacify the youth community of Enugu State, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi allocated over 75 per cent of the tickets of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 29th, 2020 council elections in the state to youths, besides other political appointments in his cabinet, in fulfillment of the promise he made during his second inaugural speech, affirming that it is “youth o’clock” in the state, in line with the advocacy for the ‘Not Too Young To Run’.
That move has given young people more confidence in the state administration, earned the governor more trust, catalysed a community-based responsibility for shared governance, taken more young people off the streets, ensured a representative mode of administration and, above all, helped the governor put down his legacy as a man of peace.
At such a moment when the nation is almost rid of her peace by a myriad of factors which can guarantee an almost certain division and chaos, men like Ugwuanyi who have a strong inclination towards peace and how to bring it back home and fuse it with administration are the rare breed Nigeria
needs.
