By Reuben Onyishi (Ugoachataberu)
When words are used in cultural contexts, they tend to naturally acquire the cultural senses. They subsequently cast shadows of former usages and meanings around themselves. When in 1966, Chinua Achebe published the fictional prose, A Man of the People , his audience had hoped to encounter a protagonist whose every breath aligned with the mind of the people in the positive sense. Of course, Chief Nanga’s thoughts and behaviour were within the accepted political culture of the people. However, Achebe waxed satirical and ironical against the people and their hero. The phrase, a man of the people, from that text acquired a pejorative connotation in ironic and satirical mode.
This phrase was to sustain this negative sense until it reclaimed its value when the legendary South African singer, Brendan Fasie, ascribed it in a song to Nelson Mandela whom he referred to as The People’s President. The phrase in syntax may have varied from a man of the people; however, they reflect the same meaning in terms of keeping with the will of the people, or rather as someone who enjoys the legitimacy of the people. The phrase was sweetened of its soiled being in Achebe’s text with the perfume of the true essence of leadership Mandela exemplified. Indeed, Mandela was the people’s president. He was loved. His character and thoughts aligned with the post- apartheid South Africa’s required spirit of reconciliation, forgiveness and unity.
In similar circumstance, If one were to feel the pulse of the people of Enugu State with the barometer of populism or search for what Carl Jung in his psychoanalysis calls the collective unconscious or its direct extension by Jameson to the political unconscious, one would find that the governor, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Lawrence Ugwuanyi, has been sustained therein as a huge consciousness. Such consciousness is evident in the unspoken mind of the people which is expressed as feedback to good governance, as it, on its own, flows and percolates into the inner recesses of the collective great soul, the mind of the people.
This kind of a thing in the subconsciousness of the people is earned and not forced nor given in vain. It is willed into being by actions that take place in the tangible and physical realm.
Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi daily thinks the people and his government’s policies are centered around the people. The many developmental giant strides in all sectors and zones of the state as numerous as sand upon seashore are carefully chosen to benefit the people.
I was once in a meeting where a particular security challenge in a local government of the state came to the front burners. What presented itself as a solution was there at the surface and an ordinary thinker would chance on it as the solution. His Excellency, however, would not toe that path. He looked at the issue deeply and critically in consideration of how taking the surface decision would affect the people. He rather came around the challenge using another uncommon solution, thereby saving the greater number of the people of what would have denied them their means of livelihood.
Recently, the social media space was awash with the outcry of the people over an amendment bill on exgovernor’s pension before Enugu State House of Assembly. The bill had just been introduced in the house by way of first reading. It was not as though there was anything wrong with the process, as it had not even been considered by the house. A fake version of it was being circulated on social media and many who did not know Jack about it joined the emotional bandwagon to curse and grumble. Haters of the administration and some disgruntled political jobbers made a feast of it and castigated the administration in no mean measure. It is not the business of the governor to make laws nor interfer in the legislative process, but he had, by way of appeal, asked the assembly to step down the bill until wider consultations are made for the people to buy into it. Elsewhere, the assembly could have passed the bill without anybody knowing it, but the Ugwuanyi administration would not condone anything that is unpopular before the people, no matter how justified it may be. Until the people of the state buy into it, it shall not stand.
Yesterday, 20th March, 2021 was the governor’s 57th birthday anniversary. The people of Enugu State came out with torrential outpouring of goodwill messages and felicitations with the People’s Governor. Social media platforms were endlessly replete with the celebration of the birthday of this gift to humanity and the people of Enugu State. Ugwuanyi is loved by all. His genial disposition to both friends and foes endears him to all. Even people in the opposition celebrated him. The people digged into the muck of their mind and came out with love and appreciation of this quintessence of good leadership, a man of peace, meekness of heart and much kindness to all. Ugwuanyi to the people is like the biblical Moses. He is selfless in his service to the state and so it was a payback time for His Excellency and the people of Enugu State left all to toast to the health and longevity of the unrivalled epitome of excellent and people-oriented governance.
Some disgruntled fellow who had served in the government of His Excellency in his first tenure who failed to make it in the second tenure for want of competence had cashed in on the social media brouhaha over the bill before the house to insult and castigate the governor in his open letter. He had accused His Excellency of prebendalism as a guiding philosophy to the legitimacy of his government. The poeple of Enugu State answered him yesterday as both the high and low came out to celebrate His Exellency on his birthday for good leadership. Ugwuanyi’s government has been interested in the poor and lowly and so has done projects that would benefit them, besides direct extension of help to them. Ugwuanyi had always celebrated his birthdays with the less privileged and had in the past asked anyone that had any birthday gift for him to send it to motherless babies’ homes. Yesterday, he celebrated the 57th birthday anniversary with the elderly and had paid the hospital bills of many indigent persons.
The door of the Lion building is open to all. Ugwuanyi removed the barrier to the Olympian height and has by so doing made himself accessible to the people of Enugu State. How else does a government pander to populism against the accusation of prebendalism when the people testify of its goodness?
I join the people of Enugu State to celebrate a real man of the people in its very positive sense and pray the Almighty God to continue to uphold him with His right hand of righteousness and take him to the utmost heights in his career and service to humanity.
Happy birthday to you, the People’s Governor.
