By Justice Chidi

If you ever pondered the many faces of the attacks and disparaging comments on His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, you may have been moved by the fingers of natural intelligence to also weigh the chances that their motivations are very likely to be driven by self-oriented interests and /or access to knee-level information, a neither-here-nor-there kind of information, about the present administration.

Most of the attackers, it seems, have appropriated the rumor they bandy about from fifth columnists or “beer-parlor” generals.  They are, therefore,  literally blind to the governing philosophy of His Excellency and could, consequently, be likened to the six blind men and the elephant.

Talking about the blind men and the elephant, a story has it that in the distant past, six old men who were all blind lived in a village in India. Since the blind men could not see the world for themselves, they had to imagine many of its wonders. They listened carefully to the stories told by travelers to learn what they could about life.

The men were curious about many of the stories they heard, but they were most curious about elephants. They were told that elephants could trample forests, carry huge burdens, and frighten young and old with their loud trumpet calls.

The old men argued day and night about elephants. “An elephant must be a powerful giant,” claimed the first blind man. “No, you must be wrong,” argued the second blind man. “An elephant must be graceful and gentle. “You’re wrong! I have heard that an elephant can pierce a man’s heart with its terrible horn,” said the third blind man.

“Please,” said the fourth blind man. “You are all wrong. An elephant is nothing more than a large sort of cow. You know how people exaggerate.” “I am sure that an elephant is something magical,” said the fifth blind man. “I don’t believe elephants exist at all,” declared the sixth blind man. “I think we are mere victims of a cruel joke.”

Finally, the villagers grew tired of all the arguments and arranged for the curious men to go learn the truth about elephants. They were led to a place where an elephant stood and they all stepped forward to touch the creature that was the subject of so many arguments.

The first blind man reached out and touched the side of the huge animal. “An elephant is smooth and solid like a wall!” He declared. “It must be very powerful.”

The second blind man put his hand on the elephant’s limber trunk. “An elephant is like a giant snake,” he announced.

The third blind man felt the elephant’s pointed tusk. “I was right,” he decided. “This creature is as sharp and deadly as a spear.”

The fourth blind man touched one of the elephant’s four legs. “What we have here,” he said, “is an extremely large cow.”

The fifth blind man felt the elephant’s giant ear. “I believe an elephant is like a huge fan or maybe a magic carpet that can fly over mountains and treetops,” he said.

The sixth blind man gave a tug on the elephant’s coarse tail. “This is nothing more than a piece of old rope. Dangerous, indeed,” he scoffed.

The six blind men had six different accounts of the elephant:

“Wall!” “Snake!” “Spear!” “Cow!” “Carpet!” “Rope!” They shouted.

“Stop shouting!” called a very angry voice.

“The elephant is a very large animal,” continued the voice.  “Each man touched only a part. Perhaps, if you put the parts together, you will see the truth.

Governor Ugwuanyi has suffered a similar fate as the proverbial elephant. He has had to endure a barrage of attacks from people who lay claim to absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experiences.

“Ugwuanyi has ignored the city roads which the immediate past government gave all the attention they deserved”. “He has failed”, they conclude. The above set of critics elect to be blind to the rural-urban renewal derive of his Excellency which has seen virtually all the rural roads in the state feel the governor’s Midas touch.

“We worked for the governor in 2015 and 2019, he would not have emerged successful save our wizardry. And nothing has been offered to us in recompense. Does he know that we can bring his government to its knees through off/on-line media attacks?” They argue. This set of attackers see governance from the perspective of personal gains, as they maintain a blind eye to the fact that governance transcends the universe of an individual or a select- few are self- driven concerns.

“He should move Enugu to Nsukka and Nsukka to Enugu. Nothing is geographically immobile including all the institutions and structures in Enugu,” they insist. The “one chiwa ya dozie be ha” philosophy should not die in the governor’s hand. “In fact, he is a failure,” they chant, derisively. This set of analysts chose not to embrace the fact that the governor, irrespective of his zone, has the entire state as his area of jurisdiction. Ironically, they are still the same set of people calling out the federal government on tribal-centric policies.

“Do you think that the governor will quietly go home come 2023?” “He may vie for the senatorial position”, they muse. “Let’s paint him rough and make him lose the goodwill he has been enjoying”.  “We must retire him from politics, come 2023”, they boost, as they sip from their cup of inordinate dreams. In their permutations, it does not occur to them that the governor is preoccupied with delivering the dividends of democracy to Ndi Enugu, then the 2023 computation,  knowing that God Almighty has a calendar where He has already circled the dates and times when every man becomes what.

“The governor has failed us, security-wise. Just the other day, we heard the sound of a banger, very close to our house, and he is yet to call a press conference to address the remote and immediate causes of such a deafening noise. If it were in advanced democracies, he would have tendered his resignation letter”, they sing, scornfully. This class of judges elects not to see that the governor has introduced and equipped the security apparatuses in the state, as important machinery of the government, for optimal function and maximal protection of lives and property.

“Going by the long-standing power rotation in the state, he is likely to move power to the Enugu East senatorial zone”. “We shouldn’t allow that to happen. We are likely to have grown too old for the position of a governor before it gets to the turn of our zones. No one else except us is good for that position. The only good candidate outside us is us”, they muse, rather paradoxically.

“It is time to sponsor all sorts of media attacks against him; in so doing, his attention will be so divided that he will lose grip on who succeeds him”. “Attack!” “Destroy!” “Annihilate!,” they chant. Again, this set of people, driven by the impulse of unbridled ambition have intentionally shut their eyes and ears against the voice of equity and justice.

And in the final analysis, the governor is the object of their missiles.

Will there ever be a time when the segmentary assessment will be dropped for a holistic approach? Are we ever going to have critics who are not driven by the dictates of their stomach but by the hands of conscience?

Only time will tell

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