Gov Ugwuanyi’s Stewardship In 2020: True Reflection Of Leadership Ingenuity

The yuletide is upon us, a joyful period of Christmas and New Year celebrations. Shortly after Sextus Julius Africanus proclaimed December 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth, the world embraced the annual tradition of commemorating the nativity of our Lord. Merry Christmas to you, or as the Spanish would say, Feliz Navidad. The festivities afford us a unique time to glorify the name of the Lord, re-examine our lives through the kaleidoscopic prism of Christianity and the perpetually infallible lens of the Bible, and rekindle the flames of love and fraternity beyond familial ties. This is underscored the more with our survival through 2020, the year a novel Wuhan coronavirus went on a catastrophic rampage across the globe, decimating systems, making a mincemeat of institutions and leaving a grim harvest of death and anguish in its wake. Having come to the end of a long and momentous 366 days, therefore, it becomes pertinent to take a sweeping stock of our lives at individual, corporate and sociopolitical levels.

Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creators! Evaluating is itself the most valuable treasure of all that we value. It is only through evaluation that value exists, and without evaluation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!- Friedrich Nietzsche.

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A vital ingredient of the democratic process is the constant, persistent and objective evaluation of political leadership. Elected public office-holders, who enjoy the trust of the electorate, should steadily be under the critical eyes of all and sundry, as opposed to the indifference and reclusiveness of political apathy. His Excellency Rt Hon Ifeanyi Lawrence Ugwuanyi, the governor of Enugu State, is one leader who views such appraisals as sacrosanct in his social contract with the people, and applies their outcomes in shaping the policy outlook of governance and intensifying efforts to deliver the dividends of democracy to every demography of the Wawa clan.

Governor Ugwuanyi’s election in 2015 was heralded by a cornucopia of challenges, including dwindling federal statutory allocations, stunted internally generated revenue (IGR) growth and a debilitating economic downswing culminating in the 2016 nationwide recession. The task before him was onerous, demanding a significant shift from convention, intentional reinvention, attitudinal reorientation and all-encompassing revitalization. Besides his enviable track record as an honourable lawmaker of the Federal Republic, experienced administrator and an astute intellectual, the governor most importantly has the grace of the Almighty God in whose hands he committed the state. His two-term mileage is a flamboyant narrative of christocentrism, selflessness, multispectral reformation, unimaginable precedents, and sociopolitical inclusiveness. In 2020, the year of global cataclysmic disasters of monstrous proportion, Governor Ugwuanyi pursued economic self-sufficiency through diversification, serenity and amity, a harmonious political climate, social justice, fairness, and sustainable prosperity for the people, with profound vigour, unflappable courage and uncompromising dedication.

The biggest challenge of 2020 was the coronavirus pandemic which spread like wildfire from the oriental city of Wuhan, capital of the Chinese Hubei Province, to Europe, the Americas, Africa and most recently Antarctica. In Enugu State, the gains of Governor Ugwuanyi’s vast array of investments in the health sector since 2015 cushioned the impact of the pandemic, limiting spread and fatality. The virus met a robust health system, a multiplicity of key infrastructure, a motivated workforce and a responsive government. Governor Ugwuanyi approved the immediate provision of Group Life/Group Personal Accident Assurance Policy and the monthly payment of 25% Covid-19 allowance for all actors on the frontlines of the pandemic. The ultramodern Enugu Diagnostic Centre inherited from the previous administration was equipped to standards to serve as an isolation and treatment centre. Likewise, the former Colliery Hospital was acquired, and extensively reconstructed and rehabilitated following modern specifications. The construction of seven units of Type 3 Primary Health Care Centres, now near completion, was kick-started in seven local government areas. Several other critical healthcare facilities were upgraded, renovated and refurbished in tune with the advanced medical health demands.

In education, Governor Ugwuanyi’s prioritization of the sector in 2020 mirrors Jesus’ philosophy on the systematic transfer of knowledge. Basic education as the cradle of academic training was revolutionized; secondary schools were upgraded and a massive wind of infrastructural renaissance blew across the latitudes of tertiary education. The renovation of Ekulu Primary School which was subsequently equipped with modern learning facilities, under the Enugu State Universal Basic Education Board (ENSUBEB), amplifies the essence of educational reforms in the Ugwuanyi regime. Work on the first degree-awarding institution in education in the Southeast zone, Enugu State University of Education at Ihe, Awgu LGA, attained new cheering heights. Academic zest rebounded effectively in all institutions of learning in the state after the first phase of the pandemic, and has since attained an even better rhythm.

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One noteworthy fallout of these innumerable interventions by His Excellency in the education sector is the triumph of the principal of Urban Girls’ Secondary School, Enugu, Mrs Chioma Ebue, who was decorated as the first runner-up – Best Administrator in Junior Secondary School category in Nigeria at the 2020 edition of the annual President’s Teachers and Schools Excellence Award (PTSEA). The future of Enugu’s political leadership and economy is secure as thousands of our motivated young people are being conscientiously groomed for global relevance in the 21st century.

The year 2020 also witnessed the continuation of infrastructural strides across the rural, suburban and urban terrains of Enugu State. The defining strategy of this undertaking is rebalancing the urban-rural contrast in discountenance of the parochial misconception that development can only be viewed to have been accomplished only if adjudged via the prism and precincts of urban renewal. In 2020, Governor Ugwuanyi remembered more long-forgotten communities, charted new territories and established economic-oriented rural-urban linkages. His administration’s maintenance culture found telltale expression on numerous roads within the metropolis and beyond, amidst the conceptualization and implementation of several infrastructural initiatives, not the least of which is the construction of 194 modern ‘bus stop shelters’. The first ever Christian Chapel of Worship was completed in the Enugu Government House, a towering masterpiece resplendent in its divine architectural glory. In Independence Layout, adjacent to the historic Michael Okpara Square, has also emerged a Unity Park in awesome wonder, an exhibit of Governor Ugwuanyi’s eccentric vision and design wizardry.

The year 2020, despite the trials and conspiracy of misfortunes, was arguably a year Enugu’s infrastructural landscape witnessed a major upswing. From the completion of 13-kilometre Nike Lake Junction-Harmony Estate-Amorji Nike- Adoration Pilgrimage Centre–Orie Emene road; Amutenyi/Obollo-Afor/Amalla road in Udenu LGA; Aji-Umuogboagu road (Phase One) in Igbo-Eze North; Forest Crescent road, GRA, Enugu; Ojoto Crescent Trans-Ekulu road; 14-Bay Bailey Bridge across Nyama river linking Umuogo and Umuagba Amechi Uno/Obeagu communities in Enugu South Local Government Area; Agbalenyi/Enugu-Onitsha expressway link road in Oji River LGA, to Orie Market-Nkwo Ida-Afor Inyire road junction Enugu-Ezike, as well as the gargantuan intervention in Nike Lake Resort; procurement and glazing of the main auditorium of the hitherto abandoned International Conference Centre (ICC).

The historic peace and thriving amity in Enugu State was sustained and advanced in 2020 by Governor Ugwuanyi through exceptional policies and strategic financial investments. Beyond the continued donation of funds, vehicles and gadgets to security agencies operational in the state, the governor did proactively establish the community policing initiative (Forest Guards and Agro Rangers) which the Nigeria Police Force capitalised upon to take security to the hinterlands. The office complex for the newly created Force CID Annex for the Southeast geo-political zone located at the Command’s Detective College, Enugu, which was renovated and furnished by the Ugwuanyi administration, is one of many critical interventions made in Enugu’s security sector in 2020. Except for the short episode of national unrest which unfortunately coursed through the state, Enugu remained unshaken in its prestigious status as one of the safest states in Nigeria.

This important milestone is also in part due to Governor Ugwuanyi’s intensive sociopolitical re-engineering which instituted, and continues to reinforce a peaceful political culture as opposed to the hitherto protracted do-or-die mentality. He has consistently forged new bonds of oneness and unity which have concomitantly fueled solidarity and egalitarianism in the state.

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In 2020, Governor Ugwuanyi continued to doggedly labour to strengthen the tenets of democracy in Enugu State and Nigeria by extension, through upholding the principle of rule of law, and checks and balances. Giant leaps were recorded in the governor’s judicial reform movement manifest in zero interference, support for the judiciary’s self-regulation and infrastructural exploits, which are crystallizing the emergence of an improved prototype of the judicial system in Nigeria. Governor Ugwuanyi completed the first ever Enugu State Customary Court of Appeal headquarters complex, an ambitious project that drew heartfelt encomium from the then president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Adamu Bulkachuwa. Also, the dilapidated state judiciary complex came under the Midas touch of the governor which has transformed it into a marvel of an edifice, befitting the business of justice dispensation.

Other infrastructural projects completed in 2020 include a complex of eight Magistrates’ Court halls and another complex of two high court halls with one Open Registry at Nsukka Judicial Division, located at GRA, Nsukka. Under Governor Ugwuanyi’s watch, political fiefdoms are being knocked down and consigned to the garbage heap of history. As such executive highhandedness, corruption, injustice and political hegemony are dispatched into the perpetuity of antiquity – an antidote to Nigeria’s ailing democracy.

The state also achieved several esteemed feats and won countless recognition for its varied spectrum of excellence. In the 2019 Annual States Viability Index released by the Economic Confidential on July 26, 2020, Enugu was among the six economically viable states in Nigeria that can survive without federal allocations. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) 2019 states’ ranking in internally generated revenue (IGR), released in May, 2020, placed Enugu as the ninth best performing state in terms of IGR, beating some oil producing states in the country. These are just a few in the expanding library of international and national achievements characteristic of Enugu State under Gov Ugwuanyi.

Gov Ugwuanyi deserves a truckload of accolades for consolidating on achievements of the previous years in 2020, in defiance of formidable obstacles, and stretching the frontiers of good leadership by all parametres. It is no surprise that the Ohaneze Ndigbo Youth Wing (worldwide) recently adjudged Governor Ugwuanyi the Best and Most Peaceful Governor in the South East. It doesn’t take the divine gift of prophecy or the paranormal genius of clairvoyance to forecast that in 2021, Enugu State under the stewardship of Gov Ugwuanyi, will remain the quintessence of christocentric governance, eccentric achievements, selfless political service and responsiveness to new challenges, especially if the world is lucky to escape a severer round of economic downturn.

We can hence march into the New Year confident that Enugu State is a ship in the hands of God.

– Steve Oruruo is the Special Adviser to the Governor of Enugu State on Information

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Disclaimer: This article is entirely the opinion of the writer and does not represent the views of The Whistler.

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