Lagos — Anambra state is not like any other state in this country. It has the singular distinction of /Y" sharing a number of ironies with Nigeria, full of potentials, short in actualizing any.

The , point that the state has donated to the Nation and in indeed the World some of its finest officers in different fields of human Endeavour is a truism. Yet the state has remained 1 rudderless in most of those areas it has offered quality human capital. That Anambra is the face of lgbo race is not a matter for argument. However, hers is a face that has refused a make-up or spa preferring instead to retain its natural beauty or lack of it. There is no gainsaying that if Anambra gets it right, the rest of Igbo land will wake up from its slumber and run like wounded lions to salvage whatever, is remaining of a race ravaged by a senseless war and crippled by not a few Federal policies.

The Igbo man as personified in the Anambra man is one in search of a lost identity. He is a man still faltering from wounded pride. A pride shattered by the holocaust nicknamed civil war.

What Nigerians are witnessing in Anambra is not new to any close observer of this state with an indomitable spirit. Anambra is a metaphor in missed opportunities. It is a state where only the materially strong and not necessarily the smartest survive. Anambra like any other vibrant society symbolizes the good, the bad and the ugly.

If you desire to gauge the temperament of the average Anambrarian, all one needs do is spend a week of intensive study of Onitsha, a major commercial town in the state. Here, one is confronted with the worst kind of competition known to man. From the array of uniform six story buildings that appear to have been designed by one miserable apprentice architect to the rough and dirty road net works to the furious human inhabitants of this city, one is offered a buffet of organized confusion, unbridled competition and serial chaos in human existence. Here the truck pusher sees goods before he sees human beings; the bus loaders see luggage before they consider the humans carrying them. The food vendor sees naira before they see the holder. The story is the same in practically every sphere of life here. Yet the same Onitsha is home to some of the finest high street lawyers and bankers' you see in most cities.

The point am trying to make is that in spite of the negatives emanating from this state, one will ignore Anambra at its own peril. The positive forces controlling and directing the spirit of this state is far more potent than the negative no matter the headline space the negatives command.

Things have not always been like this. The do or die attitude is to some extent a throw back from the past. Any environment that is home to extremely hardworking, intelligent and proud people who are equally shunted out from participation in the real economic life wire of this country are bound to channel such excess capacities elsewhere and not necessarily for good causes. Instinctive survival strategy of man permits that. The human person is like water in motion; it must find its way. This is the abridge story of the Anambra and by extension the larger Igbo nation.

The fact that the Igbo thrive best in a democratic setting does not lend itself to any argument. Democracy comes natural to the Igbo nation because that is the only system of governance she knows and understands because it bas been in practice in this geographical space as long as its existence. I have seen not a few privileged Igbo men and women lament what they consider "Igbo enwe Eze" {Igbo has no King} as the root cause of the Igbo leadership crises. I have been consistent that in the contrary, the forced kingdoms breed the crises. Kings and kingdoms are antithetical to democracy and at best compromise its true essence. The fact that some Igbo sons and daughters are copying sheepishly the feudal cultures of the north and southwest are the real reasons true democracy has eluded the region. There is nothing in the core Igbo cultures and traditions that promote and sustain natural rulers. Igbo society has always existed and prospered under the system of consensus leadership where key decisions affecting the society are taken after weighing rigorously the available options. This is the reason they have always viewed the 'new kings' with suspicion.

This position does not distract from the practice of kingship by our neighbors who equally for centuries mastered their leadership succession system. Often when some of our privileged elites see this as a leadership template, try to copy and paste on our people, it brings the clash of cultures that degenerate into the crises that have come to define the so-called AnambralIgbo crises of leadership.

To contextually situate this culture of impunity, the recent PDP gubernatorial primaries come ready as an analytical thesis. A certain Chukwuma Soludo formerly of the Central Bank of Nigeria has emerged as the flag bearer {I prefer, cross bearer because it is more like a burden.} of their party. His emergence has created political time bomb in the state because according to his fellow contestants, he emerged from a flawed process considered undemocratic. The people rooting for Soludo have made a powerful but puerile argument that given his academic stature and experience, the party stands a better chance to persuade the Anambra electorates to vote for the party in the February 2010 gubernatorial election. Every close observer knows that educational attainment and experience are far from the reasons Soludo is preferred.

Truth is Soludo has always been there with same qualifications. He has also been politically active all his life. Why didn't they consider him earlier? Simple, he has not acquired the financial war chest required to grant him audience then. I mean the kind that even caused Chief Anenih to contemplate a name change to Anene {siddon look}. In the politics of Nigeria and Anambra in particular, the financial muscle of the Soludo kind is more important than twenty-first _ class degrees. In fact, if degrees and experience are standard measures of who becomes Anambra governor, it is most likely that Soludo, as brilliant as he is, may not make first eleven. This is because the average Anambra man does not do any thing in half measures. If one carries out a proper content analysis in Anambra today, one will find so many other unsung 'Soludos' waiting patiently for their time. If quality degrees are in themselves a liberating force in governance of Anambra, then the state could have been a haven of sort now because, before the emergence of Soludo, people like 'Okwadike' a Harvard {Ph.D} trained economist and 'Odera' a Colonel {Ph.D} trained attorney have been there without making impact.

As important as qualitative education is to modern governance, there is yet no proven correlation between first-class degrees in any field whatsoever and good governance. This is not by any means calhng on Chris Dba to become the governor of the state. I equally do not subscribe to the school of thought that says Soludo should not have ventured into the murky waters of Nigeria politics as if that water is the swimming pool for only thugs and miscreants. If politics is only for them, why do we then desire and demand quality leadership?

On the contrary, I have always favored a system that will make the Soludos, the Pat Utomis and the Wole Soyinkas to start serving the people politically from the local government level if indeed they genuinely believe they care for us. Their impact will unarguably be felt most at this level of governance.

At the root of the leadership crises in Anambra and indeed all the states of the southeast is the audacious imposition of candidates by persons from outside the region. This impunity of imposition ignites a repugnant feeling of rejection in the Igbo electorates. It goes against all the grains of their civilized democratic conduct and violently erodes their cherished culture of democracy. When you combine this with a situation, where electorates' votes do not matter any more and the huge corruptive reward of instant wealth deriving from politics rather than industry, the terrain becomes a major attraction for all manner of charlatans. The lowering of the entry level for politics in the entire southeast by introduction of money and violence as key factors in the political mix compounded the ugly situation. Those with fat wallets easily purchase agents of violence and bribe electoral officials to announce results of elections that never held.

In the instant Anambra PDP scenario, a new twist has been introduced, and those shouting 'haba' Anambra again will be shocked by the replication of this latest addition to the template of our political infamy. The ingenuity in how Soludo secured his candidacy through his excellent application of time, money and elimination principles using the court and super political jobbers will surely recommend itself elsewhere in 2011. Equally intriguing, is the over 47 PDP aspirants that collected forms to run for a single political seat of governor of the state at a princely sum of =N=5million. All the participants in that exercise are shroud investors. None picked the form for reason of service to the Anambra people. The difference is only in the classification of their investment. Some are short, medium and long-term investors.

The 36 short-term gubernatorial investors among them are reported to have since divested at =N=35m within an investment period of less than two weeks. And like Soludo rightly predicted that with his candidacy, Anambra will sing a new song, 36 of this class of gubernatorial aspirants are already singing the chorus in Soludo's Orchestra choir where he is the choir master. The remaimng aspirants fall within the medium term investor class. Their investment is slightly higher and as I write, full negotiation on return on investment is on going and at maturity, they will equally reap bountifully. The long-term investor in this case is candidate Soludo who if 'selected', will probably set aside his chains of degrees and recovers first, all the funds he is presently spending to purchase the options of the . short/medium term aspirants. He will then settle down to also make a decent profit before doing any thing for the good people of Anambra state if the remaining resources permit. With this kind of return on investment {R.O.!} or return on capital employed, {R.OC.E} the money/stock market can go to helL

This is the nature of politics here. It fits into all known principles of business investment, chief of which is 'the higher the risk, the higher the returns'. Am sure this maxim is not lost on a brilliant economist, as Soludo who I suspect must have even written a scholarly book on this tricky subject of risk/return triangle. When therefore you see in 2011 a political system replete with multiple candidates in most states, please remember to give Anambra credit to yet another modest contribution to our nascent democratic doom.

Orjiako wrote from Lagos