EMMANUEL IN THE RING

John Adewale writes why Nigerians should buy into Udom Emmanuel’s bid for the Presidency

The name Berekete took a new meaning in politics, and it happened first in Abuja when some of the popular radio station’s officials decided they were going to buy forms for persons in the political world who they considered sterling enough to run for offices.

The first they chose is the governor of Akwa Ibom State, Udom Emmanuel, who was their guest a few months back.

After buying their form, they also performed a ceremony to hand him the form for the presidential race. It took place in Uyo, where he has been setting off a train of transformational developments that began under the national radar. Now, it is becoming common knowledge that the man who started his life in the maritime retreat of Nigeria’s oil-rich region and rose to become a top banker has turned around the state of Akwa Ibom into a sort of lodestar in the Niger Delta region and an example for a nation famished for an icon.

That is what Berekete saw, and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party has seen and the nation is being beckoned to appreciate. In his vintage Niger Delta hat, his idyllic strides and his walking stick, he cuts an image at once avuncular and fraternal. But it is not just that, and it is not just because he knows finance and can crunch figures like a wizard. It is that the time has met the man in Emmanuel and Nigeria.

Here are some of the piquant points. One, what Nigeria needs today is peace. Across the country, especially in the northern part of the country, we are seeing brothers slaughter brothers. Militants are reigning like hyenas and making breakfasts of their fellow humans. But this scenario is analogous to the sort of state Emmanuel met as governor.

Akwa Ibom was a state of tears and butchery. His predecessor was seen as an emperor more than a man, but he could not rein in the monsters on the streets. Guns shot freely on highways. Big men and women died at home, on street corners, in their party headquarters and, of all places in the holy of all holies, the church.

It was not safe to eat in peace, or sleep in tranquillity. The state was dreaded by the business man as well as by the priest. Neither god nor mammon found a repose in the state where many regarded as one of a capital places of investment and faith in the country.

That was the backdrop of Emmanuel’s taking over as shepherd.

But barely six months after he became governor, the state has moved from hyena to dove. Peace returned. Where was the gunfire and the butcher? Why was the state swimming into an oil of gladness when before it was troubles at sea?

It was because of one man, a new helmsman known as Emmanuel. He came in peace and gave peace. The people could not face other things. They did not want war. The worshipper returned to the church, the farmer to farm, the hunter to the bush.

How did he do it? He did not announce himself in a boast. He did not shout out policy. He went to work, and peace reigned. He brought the warring souls together. He knitted the loins of his people. And they understood, from Ibibio to Annan. It is said to the point of cliché that the first task of leadership is security. He knew that. He succeeded. After he pulled it off, he never went about in a rhetoric of the triumphant. He never boasted about what he did. Governance is no place for vain show. Today people take peace for granted. There is no greater achievement when we take prosperity for granted. It is the fact that the leader has done the extraordinary by converting emergency into history, and the people enjoy a happy amnesia. They forget that, at one time in their lives, rather than worship in church, they were afraid of the gunshot.

That is what we need in this country. We need a man who will make the militancy and kidnaps what we can forget.

But to do that, we need a man who can make it happen. How did he turn his state from murder to cooperation? It is one of the untold stories of the republic. There are indications that some persons want to take the state back to that period of unrest. The people’s amnesia should not excuse nostalgia. The people should not forget enough to allow the bloodletting to return. That is one of the tasks he is involved in by pushing a candidate of the pastoral stripe to run as successor, as a counterpoise to the return of the jackals.

With peace, comes prosperity. That has been the man’s path as governor. He made peace, and then started the state in the line of development. He started to build roads and highways that targeted the remote places, connecting the big cities to the small places, the rural retreats. That is the way of infrastructure, to set the tone for the entrepreneur.

And he has done that by introducing commerce in the model of state intervention in capitalism. It is a model that works well when done well. The state has seen one of the examples in the workings of Ibom Air, an airline thought imaginable a few years ago, but has now become a sort of royal in the skies. No airline is an equal to Ibom Air today in service, comfort, punctuality and efficiency.

Many are beginning to see the virtue of the Coconut factory, taking advantage of the power of the produce. It services a variety of human needs whether in the industrial place, for fashion, for kitchen, for medicine, and it is supposed to service the need of all humans for as many needs as each day of the 365 days in a year. As an oil-state, the oil majors had complained for years that they did not move to the state because they did not have befitting office. Enter Dakkadah Tower, a 21-story edifice that is perhaps the smartest in the sub-region and one of the tallest in the country. It is a tour de force for investment and magnet for the oil majors.

This sort of story tells us why Berekete bought him a form, and why they think Nigeria should also buy into the candidacy of Udom Emmanuel.

       Adewale writes from Calarbar