Yesterday, May 30, was the 66th birthday of my former boss, Dr Chimaroke Ogbonnia Nnamani. Born that day in 1960, he was a day shy of his 30th birthday when he became the governor of Enugu State. I first met Nnamani sometime in the year 2002. The state was then roiling in the crisis that sparked from the Adoration tragedy which occurred in the early hours of March 7 of that year. Stampede and pandemonium had broken out at the exit gates of this religious ground.
A massive all-night crusade, led by Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, at the Government Technical College (GTC) had been its catalyst. At the end of the pandemonium, 14 worshipers were stampeded to death. It suddenly transformed into political barbs aimed at constricting the government. Mbaka claimed that a poisonous tear gas ordered by the governor had killed the worshipers. At the end of it all, a judicial panel of inquiry revealed that it was a political crucifix disguised in episcopal garb, erected to hang Nnamani.
This particular travail caught my attention in faraway Ibadan. It was to be Nnamani’s baptism in political persecution. It opened the trough for many other persecutions in his eight-year governance of Enugu State. When we thereafter met, Nnamani confessed his admiration for my weekly newspaper catechism. And he landed the bomb: Could I work for him? My eventual movement to the Coal City in 2003 marked a strategic turning point in my life. I transited from being a naive student of practical politics, though its doctoral student, into a full understanding of what makes Nigerian politics tick. From Enugu, I learned raw politicking, grit, and candour.
I left for Enugu with fear and trepidation. Nnamani was to later make me fall in love with the Igbo race. He was a workaholic who didn’t believe that impossibility was possible. His de-tribalism was infectious as he apportioned to every man measures that approximated their contributions. He had aides of all tribes in his government. He later made me, a man who traveled across several rivers to arrive at the Coal City, head of the governor’s media team. I cannot forget his excitement when he learned I wanted to make Enugu my home and had started to erect a place to live therein. Enugu soil thereafter accepted the umbilical cords of two of my children.
For four years, I weathered the political storm of Enugu with Nnamani. His battles became my battles and his victories my savour. He protected me like Mother Hen does its chicks. At meetings when conferees naturally descended into their mother tongues, Nnamani jokingly cautioned them, “Lest Adedayo assume we wanted to sell him.” And as a riposte, he asked me to go pick one of Igbo ladies as a sure way of learning the language. After my sojourn in Enugu, I had a lifelong ostracism from the commune of ethnic profilers. Bad and good people exist in all tribes.
Nnamani was too trusting and suffered huge loss of his trusted loyalists, including the man who succeeded him. His developmental legacies in Enugu State are still akin to legends. They dot every corner.
Nnamani is a grossly misunderstood man. A man with his own foibles like every typical man, he is Nigerian inside out and loves his people like an irredentist. He worked both as governor and senator for the uplift of his Enugu and Nkanu people. It was that love that propelled him to work for the then incoming Tinubu government, at the detriment of himself, a love that backfired in his people’s disdain for the APC. The people occupying the federal government today, for whom Nnamani was crucified, seem to have forgotten him as he is left in political Siberia.
Here is a toast to a long life for and the continued great health of Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani.
