The recent inauguration of SABMiller Breweries at Nnewi, Anambra State, was a fulfilment of ex-Governor Peter Obi’s unquenchable appetite to see to the revival of Nnewi’s famed industrial prowess. SAM NWOKORO writes that it validates the popularity of ‘Okwute’.
In the first category, history reckons with men like Deng Xiaoping of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) who took over the reign of power from Chinese leader, Chairman Mao, in the 90s. Chinese politics in the age of Deng Xiaoping, a book published by Princeton University Press New York in 1994 on the place of the late Xiaoping in world history, and the change of communist character under Xiaoping, noted: “In place of a Mao’s insistence on austerity, Deng, along with his deputy, Chen Yun, advocated incentive-driven production responsibility systems, decentralised state administration, expanded use of market mechanisms and sharply increased international economic and technological involvement.” With this revamped ideal and strategy, Deng was able to weave China away from ossifying communist party-driven political economy that shackled the largest country on earth with one of the poorest living per capita income into a prosperous and burgeoning free market economy, without sacrificing Mao’s Chinese ethics of self-preservation and national pride.
In the latter category, visionless leaders who only engaged in leadership contests for their primitive ends are never in short supply in Africa.
Peter Obi, former governor of Anambra State, is a gold fish in Nigeria’s political and social engineering dialectics. This had to be because of the ideal he personified in his choice of a role model. To say that Obi, though he had never carried any gun, is a Godsend for his people is to deny the truth.
Only the undiscerning would say that the man known as ‘Okwute’ (Rock, the name Jesus Christ gave Simon Peter) is just another Nigerian politician. No. He is more than an average Nigerian politician. The typical Nigerian politician has this trade mark: “My interest first”. He sees politics as an investment on his social profile, to get a slight elevation status-wise before his village, town union or contemporaries. Thus, the Nigerian politician does not bother about rules nor conventions, hardly bother about principles or ideology, much more a pro-people blueprint in development processes.
Think of it, nationalists are made by personal conviction, of when one has chosen a path in righteous defence of a certain cause or promotion of certain values. No level of prodding by hangers-on propels a genuine hero into the murky waters of politics, unless he has articulated the needs of his people. Such prompting to be the avatar comes from the inner spiritual conviction.
There is even the burdensome dimension of having to be a champion of a people who, lacking requisite knowledge and the awareness that they are being cheated, may even turn against you, not knowing that you are struggling for their interests, for their better future. That Obi has for the past two decades of his 54 years on earth been preoccupied with how his people, Ndigbo, can find a better bargain in a better Nigeria is not in doubt. The beauty of it has been that he has done this much without making much noise about it, and has not engaged in it for selfish interests and has not expanded his fortune with it.
But all Nigerians, high and low, do agree that, to a large extent, Obi has acted the wise script of famed world leaders who had succeeded in placing their people in enviable social status in a once ossifying system, without fighting wars.
Silent reformer
As one Nigerian, Pat Mgbeokere, a don in Sociology puts it: “Peter Obi is such a born leader. He is a man of the people who does not need to demonstrate physical valour or infantryman gallantry. He is an introvert of positive ideals and a great accomplisher. His ideals seem modelled after great heroes of their people like Deng Xiaoping, the great Chinese leader who succeeded Chairman Moa, the founder of China. Mao Zedong, who took over the reins of the Communist Party, reformed the party, and Chinese outlook before the world. He reformed in graduated manner the traditional Chinese ethic of autarchy, isolationism and anti-western liberalism. He opened China to the outside world, preached the gospel of accommodation of the West and their ways in order to be able to benefit from West’s mastery of civilian technology to be able to feed the country’s growing population. Deng’s method worked. Today, China is an epitome of moderate free market that does not undermine Chinese traditional ethics of hard work, and national pride that floats freely with the rest of the world systems and ideologies.”
Another world leader that Obi seemed to have modelled his life after is the famed German ex-Chancellor, Helmut Khole, whose tenure negotiated the re-amalgamation of East and West Germany and ended the isolation imposed on the world’s once powerful nation before the world wars. Khole foresaw that a poor East Germany is both a military and economic refugee at its doorpost to the more advanced brother, West Germany under his watch.
In similar manner, Obi’s leadership modelling has been of egalitarian and utilitarian value to not just his fellow Easterners, but to Nigeria as a whole. Perhaps, this explains his attributes of hard work, knowledge-driven passion for truth, dedication, integrity, and love of country that border on heroism. Since the death of Ikemba Nnewi, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, even while the Ikemba was alive, Obi had always dreamed well for a crisis-free Nigeria, a Nigeria where truth, honesty, integrity, passion for goodness and excellence reign in public and private departments of national affairs.
He stymies the radicalism of the Igbo man with suave elderly wisdom, reminding him of the need to work hard for his economic resuscitation, and not allow his past shortchange his future.
Good works
Obi’s forages into leadership contest has been of utilitarian value to the Igbo man and Nigeria at large. It is not in doubt that his administration as governor of Anambra recorded landmark positive developments in the states’ growth matrix: infrastructure development, high stake investments in the future development projections, breaking an odious socio-political characteristics of elite leadership brigandage in Anambra known as godfatherism and political mercantilism, and formulating the Anambra Integrated Development Strategy (ANIDS).
Commenting on Obi’s leadership, Val Obieyem, his aide, says: “Obi is a paradigm setter in the development strategy of the Eastern states. His reformation of the education system in Anambra through the handing over of schools back to the missionaries has since improved school enrolment, and the state has won many prizes under his leadership as an education-promoting state. Obi has received many awards from UNESCO and UNICEF as one of the governors that have promoted education in the country. Many students of Anambra origin scored award marks at both national and continental competitions.”
Really, the first major effort at addressing the industrial landscape of Anambra, the heartland of Igbo commerce, is the initiative he helped drive in promoting the Orient Refinery project. From the former Chris Ngige administration through his two terms, Obi focused on the project because of its developmental and psychologically-exhilarating value to his people, making the state’s cash call in the venture available all through until Orient, being promoted in partnership with some responsible oldies from the area, reached the stage of exploration and production today, and is advancing towards refining crude.
The Igbo and Nigeria owe a debt of gratitude to Obi’s relentless drive in seeing that some key development projects in the East were addressed, chief of which is the remodelling and upgrade of the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, which has been of value both to the business travellers from the East and the Nigerian state.
The world had been amazed that such projects, very fundamental to the consolidation of the economic growth fundamentals of the Nigerian economy had been neglected for long.
The SABMiller example
It is in tune with Obi’s passion for the industrial revival of his place and Nigeria that he worked hard and brought in SABMiller Brewery into Anambra. The world’s largest brewing conglomerate recently commissioned the first phase of its plant in the state, at a ceremony attended by world class investors and Nigerian government officials. However, many are yet to know the level of investments and job opportunities SABMiller represents in Anambra.
A touch at SEC
It is not a coincidence that since Obi’s assumption as Chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the incidence of insider abuse at the stock market has reduced quite unlike what used to be the case in the recent past, where there were incessant reports of insider abuse and underhand trading.
Obi, to the calculation of the investing public, has acquired reputation as a man of prudence who has successfully nurtured many high networth enterprises and resuscitated and redirected the economy and policy direction of a state virtually ran down by mafiadom.
As an ex-governor who left the heftiest balance sheet for his successor, since coming up to SEC as chairman, the index at the stock market has been coasting up, and the capitalisation is grossing over N10 trillion, to the extent that bankrupt state governments are looking up to it again as a place to borrow development funds, after avoiding it for a long time due to many unsavoury stories of sharp practices.
Dodged campaigner of integrity
Obi showed Nigerians the beautiful face of democracy in action through the series of battles he fought against political dark forces which wanted to steal his mandate in 2003. He fought those battles, not because he was power-hungry and wanted to rule Anambra by all means, but because he wanted to set a pattern whereby only merit and passion for service should inform voter decision, leadership and election conduct.
Born on July 19, 1961 in Ogbaru, Anambra State, Obi is an alumnus of the famous Christ the King College (CKC), Onitsha, and University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN). He had nurtured many valuable knowledge-driven enterprises from pay instrument services, finance and entrepreneurial consultancy outfits and banks before becoming a two-term governor of his state, and now chairman of SEC.