By Reuben Onyishi
(Ugoachataberu)
If the need be altruistic service to the people, selfish interest, vengeance, bitterness, vendetta and vindictiveness constitute the mesh above which true leadership must rise. Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah of Enugu State has, by allowing Chijioke Edeoga to return to the PDP, demonstrated the fact that he is driven by transcendental values.
He, of course, has a clear understanding of what true leadership and governance entail, and so has risen above the mesh.
Politics may be the process of gaining power to govern, a process leading to the election of leaders, or if you like, representatives of the people in government. It is a path strewn with the mesh. It is a muddy cesspool into which you could be mired in the process. It is full of landmines, projectiles, brickbats, and vitrolics, a dangerous path full of tortous ends. Paradoxically, the snaky end leads to the aristocratic palace of leadership.
Getting to the olympian heights of leadership is one thing, and getting committed to governance is another. A vindictive ruler may concentrate on vengeance, especially when the battle at the cesspool overflew into calumination, damaging falsehoods and personal issues.The ability to rise above the mesh and draw opponents to the same height is the hallmark of true leadership, which Governor Mbah demonstrably epitomises.
Chijioke Jonathan Edeoga is a foundational member of the Peoples Democratic Party. He had through the party risen to heights of service to the people and the nation, up to the House of Representatives, where he served as the mouthpiece of the parliament. He had also been an SA on Legislative Matters to President Goodluck Jonathan, a PDP president of Nigeria, and later served as Commissioner for Local Government Affairs and later as Commissioner for Environment in the administration of Dr Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, a PDP Governor of Enugu State. Chijioke was also a gubernatorial aspirant of the PDP extraction prior to the 2023 general election. He, however, lost to Mbah in the 25th May 2022 PDP primaries.Thereafter, he pledged his support to Mbah but would later move to the Labour Party, where he emerged the party’s governorship flag bearer.
It would be right to hold that the 2023 governorship election in Enugu State was between Edeoga and Mbah. Any other candidate had zero weight on the scale in the consideration of the Enugu electorate.The two had locked horns in a keen contest until Mbah prevailed yet again. But Edeoga would not give up at the polls. He shifted the battle to the courts, but on the three occasions of the contest, Mbah prevailed irrefutably.
Mbah began governance on a sound note, taking daring decisions that would lead to the disruptive innovation he had promised in his manifesto. Of note is that he had at each occasion at the courts extended the olive to Edeoga, asking him to join him in the development trajectories he had obviously brought to bear on governance. But Edeoga would not give in. He challenged the governor inexorably to the Supreme Court.Yet Mbah prevailed unassailably.
A winner-takes-it-all political thinker of Machavalian orientation would consider it the time to crush Edeoga to political death since he had nothing else to hold politically. But Mbah would not take to that ignobly vindictive path. He would yet again extend the olive to Edeoga, carrying him along in decisions, especially as it concerned his people of Isi-Uzo. Mbah would construct a 21.7km road in Eha-Amufu leading to Edeoga’s Mgbuji village, besides the smart schools and type 2 hospitals constructed in Eha-Amufu, Edeoga’s hometown.
Pix: Chijioke Edeoga receives PDP constitution
Chijioke Edeoga himself is a great man. He commands a great followership and so has much political capital to offer. Governor Mbah apparently looked beyond his own personal interest but trascedentally gleaned from the prism of the value a synergy with Edeoga would add to the governance and development of Enugu State, and so extended the olive to Edeoga to return to his roots, the PDP.
As a matter of fact, there is no Labour Party anywhere in Enugu State except that contrived by the personal interests of some aggrieved members of the PDP. In pardonable ideological infidelity, some PDP members in the state migrated to a strange land in search of political green pasture. It paid off to some of them, especially as they rode on the political wave Peter Obi had stirred; they nonetheless would soon realize the grape is sour in the strange land as the need to return home, as would the biblical prodigal son, has become inevitable.
Many had before now returned home, and more are returning in days to come. The father(Mbah) has shown love and magnanimity to the sons and so welcomes them back without any bitterness whatsoever. It is an uncommon demonstration of a large heart on the part of Mbah to eschew the mesh and reach out to His brethren in the lost Diaspora. How pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together.
Edeoga’s return is a robust boost to the political fortunes of the PDP in Enugu State. It is ostensibly the putting of a sharp knife on the throat of the beast – the Labour Party. Edeoga was the iroko to which Labour tied the bull. By Edeoga migration to his home, politics has torn the loin off the waist of Labour Party in Enugu State.
The party is already cowering so feverishly at the brinks of strangulation following the rope around which the APC-led administration at the centre allegedly tied around its neck. Edeoga’s exit puts the last nail on its coffin as far as Enugu State is concerned.
But they have no option who play opposition in Enugu State. What would they oppose: good governance, unprecedented multisectoral milestones the Mbah Administration has engendered? What is there to oppose? Absolutely nothing? No wonder every politician in Enugu State wants to identify with Mbah, seeing he is a transcendental leader committed to the welfare of the governed citizenry.
It is apparently clear that the Enugu electorate has nowhere else to look, as they luxuriate in the balmy disruptive innovation Mbah has wrought. As 2027 draws nearer, smart politicians scramble to identify with Mbah that they may survive the future. The mass return to the PDP is evident of that. This is one lesson to learn in leadership and governance. He shall have played the true politics, the leader who commits to real governance, turning around the economy of the state as Mbah has done. To attract the bees, plant the flower. That is what Mbah has done and which has endeared him to the people, even the opposition now returning en m