allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Honour for Sam Egwu (Page 1 of 1)

"The greatest legacy a leader can bequeath is to etch his name in gold in the hearts of his people", Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The evil that men commit, says the world's greatest bard writing in English, lives after them.

But the good they do, continues William Shakespeare, is interred with their bones. Most people in the world always quote the Shakespearean statement approvingly. In the context he is talking, Shakespeare is, of course, right. But we see from time to time in human history that the good deeds which some people carry out are appreciated in their lifetime and they are accordingly rewarded. At least that is precisely what the national leadership of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) demonstrated on April 25, 2008, when its president, Comrade Ndagana Akwu, led the body to a three-day meeting in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, where the newly built press centre of the state council of the NUJ was named after the immediate go Egwu.

It is remarkable that in a country where institutions are sycophantically named after men and women who are currently in power --with the names often changed no sooner than there are changes in leadership-- the NUJ thoughtfully waited for Dr Egwu to leave office before honouring him. Perhaps if Dr Egwu had won the national chairmanship race of the governing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) last March 8 it would have been thought in some quarters that the centre was named for him because of his new status. Therefore, that the honour came when he does not hold any office is very significant. Unlike the situation in many other states where present governors cannot be under the same roof as their predecessors, Dr Egwu's successor in office, Chief Martin Elechi, was the cheer leader at the event. In fact, he commissioned the centre. It is another confirmation of what most Nigerians have always known: Dr Egwu is not just a decent man, he ran an exemplary administration.

It is our tough luck that in the 21st Century what the Nigerian political class regards as an authentic achievement is the provision of basic infrastructure, grandiosely called dividends of democracy. Since the restoration of democracy in 1999, only very few and imaginative leaders like Egwu have been calling national attention to the fact that construction of roads, for instance, should not pass for a monumental achievement in this day and age when even in the 1960s great leaders like Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello and Dr Michael Okpara did not make much noise over the provision of basic infrastructure which the world takes for granted. Ex Gov Egwu once told the nation that the word "infrastructure" derives from a Latin word "infra" which means something below. In other words, modern development is built on infrastructure "which is below". What Egwu has been saying, in effect, is that in an era when the contemporaries of someone has built to roll out the drums to celebrate his attempt to build the foundation of a three bedroom house.

Egwu did not spend his time inviting journalists to write on the roads he built, in sharp contrast to what still obtains in all parts of the country. Interestingly he built far greater roads than time. Dr Egwu, in office, was more concerned with more challenging and taxing questions of development. He was fully aware of the peculiar challenge facing him as the governor with the least revenue from the federation account and with very little capacity for internally generated revenue. He was aware that his was the smallest and the youngest state in the Southeast geopolitical zone. He was also acutely aware that Ebonyi was the only state in the zone officially categorized as educationally disadvantaged. Not forgotten was the unenviable status of Ebonyi as the state with the highest incidence of guinea worm worldwide, a disease which is obliterated only through the provision of good water. Instead of bemoaning the fate of his people and complaining endlessly about their being schemed out of the national scheme of things, he swiftly rolled up his sleeves and got cracking.

Take education. No sooner did he assume office than Egwu introduced free and compulsory education up to the secondary school level. He established a college of education and a state university which the National Universities Commission rates among the best three state universities in the country. He personally approached some of the finest but retired professors across the country and recruited them. He offered generous incentives to leading scholars in older universities and hired them.

That's why today the Ebonyi State University Teaching Hospital is the best staffed state teaching hospital in Nigeria and its resident doctors do brilliantly in specialist exams. The state also has the best law programme of state universities. Its Shool of humanities boasts of scholars like Prof Adiele Afigbo, Nigeria 's most prolific historian and winner of the Nigerian Order of Merit (NNOM), the nation's most prestigious accolade for intellectual attainment.

For eight years Dr Egwu kept on telling the nation that there was no way it would leapfrog without paying adequate attention to agric development. Critics thought that his obsession with agriculture was because his state is primarily agrarian and that he was himself an associate professor of agronomy before joining politics. If our country's leadership had listened to him and then taken appropriate proactive steps, Nigeria would not have been a big casualty of the ongoing global food crisis.

To show that he is not just an armchair or classroom farmer, Dr Egwu has not relented in his management of huge personal farms in Ebonyi State . The state's ultra-modern poultry farm and the fertilizer blending plant, among other agric ventures, remain excellent examples of how to run publicly owned enterprises, thus mocking the received notion that state-owned businesses cannot do well. Aren't Ethiopia Airline, Singapore Airline, Eskom of South Africa, Petronas of Malaysia, Petrobras of Brazil and Indian National Oil Corporation successful government-owned businesses?

One personal and leadership virtue which Dr Egwu has in superabundance is liberalism. He has a mind free of all forms of cant and parochialism. He appointed people from different parts of the country into his government. My kinsman, Dr JAP Okolo from Oraifite in Anambra State who was special adviser on agriculture, is now a member of the State House of Assembly sponsored by Egwu. Dr Egwu's special adviser on solid minerals development, Dr Ifeanyi Ike,also from Anambra State is still there. There are other people from Delta, Abia , Niger , Oyo, Benue and other states still in office. If his colleagues had borrowed a leaf from him and appointed a number of non-indigenes into public office, there would have been more national unity and cohesion today. Current public office holders could still take steps in this direction.

Dr Egwu's modernization programme and policy has been a resounding success. Ebonyi indigenes are no longer the jetsam and flotsam of Nigerian society. They now go about the nation with renewed hope and confidence. No wonder, the two leading candidates in the recent PDP national chairmanship race, namely, Dr Egwu, and a former Senate President, Chief Pius Anyim, are from the state. This was unimaginable even eight years ago. The NUJ rightly named its press centre in the state after Dr Egwu for modernising and repositioning Ebonyi State. The future belongs to people like him.

Nwadimma wrote from Enugu

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