Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executive Editor of USAfrica — since 1993
The morgue keepers waited in vain. Even the large police and military contingents found hardly any ready targets to shoot at. Now they have to return to Abuja to account for unexpended ammunition. What was prepped as Anambra’s IPOB induced blood bath just did not happen after all. Armed political thugs also ran out of luck somehow. We the media who had prepared for a ceremony of macabre headlines had to change rules of engagement. We had to make do with routine election reporting. Entrepreneurial prophets who had had a field day of apocalyptic prognostications were left groping for belated validation to no avail. Reverend Mbaka may soon be out in the streets, searching for a new job. His open endorsement of Mr. Andy Uba and de-marketing of Mr. Soludo did not quite hit the divine bull’s eye. The prophesied clashes between security forces and armed IPOB militia did not come to pass. Anambra defied the lure of tragedy. Democracy survived even if it literally hobbled to deliver an imperfect outcome.
On its part, INEC initially erred in deference to our worst fears. The security threats provided a ready umbrella for INEC to initially live up to its familiar Nigerian pedigree. Officials arrived several hours late in many centres. Some voters, including the candidates, waited for upwards of five hours before INEC personnel and material arrived many polling venues. INEC’s newly acquired BVAC equipment refused to obey its handlers, necessitating quite a bit of on-site sheepish tinkering. In some cases, the voting hours had to be elongated or extended to the next day. But INEC stuck to its belief in its new capabilities.
On election day, the gods and ancestors of Anambra were awake. They answered in unison. The elections took place in a largely peaceful atmosphere. Lucky INEC; the BVAC devices woke up, obeyed the gods and worked at last. By last Sunday, less than 24 hours after the polling started, the results were largely ready to be called. But of course there was the hitch of no voting in Ihiala and the contested results in Orumba Local Government. Remarkably, there was a defiant spirit in those who turned up and turned out. It was a belief in something stronger than guns and machetes, the efficacy of elections as democracy’s period ritual of leadership renewal.
It is quite possible that something positive may come out of the Anambra experience. Two of the contestants, Mr. Ozigbo and Mr. Uba, have called Mr. Soludo to concede defeat and congratulate him. Only Mr. Andy Uba of the APC who came a distant third in the announced results has so far objected to the outcome. He now has the prerogative of going to court to prove his objection. Maybe, out of the crucible of worst expectations, something good may come into Nigeria’s political culture. Those who lose an election may now have the maturity of spirit to concede and move on. Whatever happens, judges are about to lose their relevance as election umpires of final authority!
It is a matter of understandable concern that the voter turn out was abysmally low. Between the total registered voter population of just less than three million and the accredited voters of less than three hundred thousand, the election recorded a voter turnout of about 11%. This is a typical of war or conflict situations. Check election results in post war Iraq, Somalia and Syria. In such situations, it is only important that elections take place at all. That is the only way to empower a legitimate government to ensure law and order and orderly societal functions.
Therefore, it is not just the specific outcome of the Anambra election that should elate us. It is the fact that two intangible values have survived and triumphed. The first is the will of the people to use the ritual of periodic election as a ceremony of leadership cleansing, a communal symbolic bath of self renewal. The people of Anambra trooped out, as they did in old times, to cleanse the leadership of the state as a community and commonwealth. Between that ancient communitarian legacy and the modern proposition of democratic change, something priceless has survived in Anambra last week.
The second intangible is the vindication and survival of democracy itself. Modern democracy as the most resonant expression of the will of the people to speak collectively about how they want to be governed and who should do the governing has just survived. With its imperfections, democracy remains the best tested system for the selection and renewal of leadership in the nation state. It harbors the rituals that unite and consolidates the unity of diverse peoples in the nation state. Democracies work best when they defy the many odds that threaten the existence of the nation state so that the people can testify directly about how and by whom they wish to be governed.
Despite our current imperfections, therefore, the ability of the Nigerian state to guarantee order and security during the Anambra elections must be saluted. Since after the election, I have heard it from the mouths of ordinary Nigerians that their faith in the future of Nigeria has been renewed. There was adequate arrangement for the security of lives and orderly election process. Of course, that is in the primary role of the state. But we cannot take it for granted. Even the fear that the overwhelming presence of armed security personnel would overwhelm the electorate with a garrison psychology was reasonably well managed. In guaranteeing the survival of democracy in Anambra during the elections, the Nigerian state acquitted itself as the ultimate guarantor of order in our federation. Failure to protect democracy in one state could have sent a signal to the world that perhaps the Nigerian state had failed at last.
There are even more spectacular outcomes from Anambra. Quite often, democracies end up not producing a leadership that is appropriate to the time and place of the election. Even in the most advanced democracies, it has occasionally happened that the popular will ended up producing a leadership that is the direct opposite of what the polity and society require or even wished for. The popular will can be a fool, grossly misjudging the character of the leadership contestant only to live out the tenure in popular disquiet and regret. Mr. Buhari was massively voted for in 2015. Alas his propelling myths of discipline, nationalism and integrity were largely fake as he may now end up as Nigeria’s most disappointing elected leadership gamble in history. Similarly, American democracy, easily the world’s most showcased, ended up electing Donald Trump, the most bigoted, disorganized and disastrous US president in modern times.
Ordinarily, the emergence of a winner in a state governorship election should leave the public guessing as to what the new governor has to offer. Speculation heightens if the new elect has little or no public service record or is previously unknown. Mr. Charles Soludo spares us that trouble. He comes as a familiar name, a known face and tested hand. He comes replete with a rare combination of intellectual sagacity and voluptuous resourcefulness. His tenure as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria featured a string of innovations and bold policy reforms that significantly altered the Nigerian banking and financial landscape for good. An copious record as an internationally recognized and respected economist will now put him on a sterling pedestal as a state governor. Luckily, his state has the human, material and economic base to support a transformational and innovative leadership.
However, there is a sense in which today’s Anambra state has defined Mr. Soludo’s job and mandate. Anambra was made for this grade of leadership at this moment. Also, Soludo comes specifically cut out for the present stage in Anambra’s economic development. A state bristling with untamed capitalist energy needs a leader who can read a balance sheet. Luckily for the governor- elect, Anambra has a rich backdrop of templates and traditions of excellence in diverse fields- politics, business, technocracy, art and culture- from which Soludo can draw.
In many ways, Anambra is a very historical state, in fact an ‘old’ state akin to but in some ways superior to Oyo, Kaduna, Lagos and a bit of Edo and Enugu. But it is even different and unique. Unlike the others, Anambra did not host the capital of any of the old four regions. Although the seat of the government of old Eastern Nigeria was in Enugu, the effective power centre was actually today’s Anambra state as the source of the elite of politicians, intellectuals, technocrats and pioneer entrepreneurs that drove the old Eastern Region. Its business prowess is made up essentially of the classic capitalist rags to riches crop of bottom up entrepreneurs. Anambra’s strategic advantages are not conferred but strictly home grown.
Most vitally, Anambra is one of the most politically sophisticated, enlightened and refined states in the federation. It boasts an illustrious pageant of political pioneers, intellectuals, bureaucrats and technocratic pathfinders. This is the home of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nwafor Orizu, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Alex Ekwueme, Chuba Okadigbo, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, Peter Obi and a host of others. In business, this is the home of illustrious pioneer illustrious entrepreneurs: Sir Louis Ojukwu, Chief Augustine Ilodibe, Mr. Innocent Chukwuma, Cosmas Maduka, Emeka Offor, Arthur Eze, Cletus Ibeto and many more younger ones. In Nigerian art and culture, Anambra is a citadel of letters, literature and the plastic arts: Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Ben Enwonwu, Cyprian Ekwensi, Onuora Nzekwu, Ossie Enekwe, Chimamanda Adichie, Okey Ndibe etc. There is also a whole string of world class technocrats: Jerome Udoji, Pius Okigbo, Charles Soludo, Obiageli Ezekwesili, late Dora Akunyili, Kingsley Moghalu and many others.
This rich inheritance is at once a great asset base as well as a burden. Soludo needs to uphold Anambra’s rich heritage while advancing its frontiers and fortunes in the context of the fierce urgency of Anambra’s now.
First, nowhere else in Nigeria is there so much privately earned big money in the hands of so many young citizens. Anambra people are among the most hard working, creative, enterprising and wealthiest Nigerians you can find today. They are literally unstoppable engines of wealth creations both at home and in the diaspora. The net value of real estate in terms of palatial private country homes, factories, hotels, resorts, hospitals and community buildings in Anambra state is one of the highest of any other state outside Lagos and Abuja.
The cash component of that huge quantum of wealth has in recent times tended to complicate the political culture of the state. Big money has tempted many a political rascal to seek to wrest political control of the state. Anambra maybe the home of great cultural and intellectual sophistication, it is also a rough jungle of untamed capitalist energy. In its present state of material culture, Anambra risks degenerating into a jungle of violence and fruitless recriminations. Like all mercantilist enclaves of old, it could be commandeered by gangster families battling for supremacy over titles and other silly things.
Onitsha is the unscripted metaphor, the troubled canvas of both the past and the future of Anambra. Its untidy womb holds both the promise and damnation of the state. The commercial cacophony of Upper Iweka, the concrete jungle of its multiple floor monstrosities and unpaved streets indicate an energy waiting to be channeled. The reality of a city with neither sewage nor drainage is a challenge of urban renewal which can only be achieved by creating jobs among the teeming youthful population. This is the signature tune of a disaster that has long waited to happen. This jungle of brick and mortar can be made beautiful and attractive to millions of commercial tourists intent on exploring opportunities in a new African miracle city. Dubai did not just happen. It rose from the rubble of an ancient spirit.
Anambra even has the homegrown beginnings of modern industrial capitalism. On their own, indigenous enterprise has commenced an unstructured industrial revolution. Nnewi and parts of sub urban Anambra are bustling with courageous manufacturing enterprises in strategic fields from automobiles, automobile parts, industrial machinery, textiles, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. A state government that understands economics only needs to channel these efforts into a coherent strategy with a clear vision.
While acknowledging Anambra’s advantages, Governor-elect Soludo has a very urgent task of value re-orientation to undertake among Anambra’s new breed money tribe. That community needs to waste less money and vain effort announcing to Nigeria that it has arrived. Adopting the wasteful culture of Nigeria will not bring the development Anambra needs. Anambra’s younger money tribe need to learn new investment strategies especially the wisdom of greater savings and more modest consumption. Their country homes could be more modest and functional. The man with one Mercedes Benz will get to the same occasion as the one who arrives in a motorcade of seven Rolls Royces in different colours! No one is interested in how many carats of gold that bedeck the casket of your dead mother or how much diamond you gift your many girl friends. Who cares how many barrels of vintage champagne you drown the rest of Nigeria in at your birthday parties. An Oriental Investment Fund dedicated to rapid regional infrastructure development in the Eastern corridor will bring faster and better returns for investors and to Nigeria.
But the challenge of leadership and development in Anambra is bigger than the state. There is an unstated new mandate for Soludo and for Anambra. The state now has a heartbeat that is not theirs alone.
In a nation that has been socialized to see reality first in ethnic compartments, whatever happens in Anambra resonates for the Igbos in the Nigerian homeland and their bulging diaspora. If Anambra succeeds, it will thrive for all the people who call the South East home. If it ends up a bloody disaster, the entire people who take pride in its leadership will bleed and flee the homeland.
In Soludo’s emergence as Anambra’s governor-elect, therefore, I find a conditional hope that the Igbos could still stride forward to re-establish the leadership and confidence with which they helped in building the first Nigeria. This requires that from the outset, Mr. Soludo clearly understands his “Dual Mandate”: to transform Anambra state into a modern economy and help restore the dignity of the Nigerian Orient as it once was. Perhaps from the architecture of the present ruin in the South East, a new Jerusalem may still rise.
