Clearly, very clearly, Chimaroke Nnamani, senator representing Enugu East senatorial zone, is bitter, perhaps traumatized, that he lost his recent bid to retain his seat at the Senate. His grief is understandable. The Senate is not a bad place to be, more so as former state governors have identified the upper legislative chamber as a suitable retirement home after government house. The former governor of Enugu State seems to have taken his defeat so badly that he has refused to be consoled.
An otherwise intellectually strong mind, with a disposition that swiftly swings between the bonhomie and mercurial, Nnamani ought to be equipped, analytically, to appreciate the dynamics at play in politics around him, to the extent of properly reading his prospect at an election. From all indications, he was unprepared for what he got at the February 25, 2023, election. Too bad. The senator’s bitterness over his recent electoral loss seems, sadly, to have driven him to an unfortunate psychological point at the moment where he throws wild punches in any direction from whence he believes his loss came. That is dangerous. For him.
The trajectory of Chimaroke Nnamani’s political odyssey has been, at once romantic and tragic. It speaks eloquently of the mixed fortunes of paradise given and paradise lost, of grace taken for granted when undue value is arrogated by man to human capacity.
Nnamani emerged in the politics of Enugu State and Nigeria at about the time preparations were being made for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria around 1998 or thereabouts. Straight from the United States of America, with a stellar profile in medical practice, grace, more than his resources or political grit, saw him to the office of governor of Enugu State. He held his own.
The young governor was intellectually vibrant. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of his tenure was the lecture series he initiated. The Nnamani lectures offered an insight into his belief in the place of intellectual discourse in finding solutions to the problems of society.
To his credit, too, Nnamani raised a new generation of leaders in Enugu State, seeking and succeeding to a very large extent to retire the older generation of political leaders who held sway before his advent. His Ebeano political family became the incubator for political leadership in the state. If, however, his political policies were successful to the extent that he nurtured a new dominant corps of political leaders in his state, his economic policies left no distinct mark. Indeed, Enugu, the historical abode of the majority of the elite of the old Eastern Region, lost quite some shine, especially as insecurity and killings became far too rampant for the comfort of many.
It took the emergence of the taciturn and efficient Sullivan Chime, Nnamani’s chosen successor, to quietly but effectively restore security and urban infrastructure in Enugu.
Politicians live in a bubble. Most prefer to listen to themselves and to those around them who have mastered the art of telling them what they like to hear. Nnamani is not different. Had he cared to stretch his ears beyond those around him, he would probably have realized deep into his tenure as governor that he was no longer the darling of many, unlike his early years.
Sadly, however, although he may not have known it, Nnamani was, at the end of his tenure as governor, a disappointment to many who earlier saw in him very bight prospects of a political leader in the East, as in Nigeria. He had, at the outset, counted easily in the reckoning of many as a bright star, a whiff of fresh air for the emerging new world. A man of solid intellect, well spoken, courageous, if well channelled, and not bad looking as well. Nnamani was rated well above his peers in the South East in the early years. At the end of his tenure as governor, all that came virtually unstuck. Even at a young age, therefore, he found himself in a political winter of sorts.
Grace saw him back to the Senate in 2019, with another chance to thrive. His defeat in the last election was a verdict of historical proportions. He is intelligent enough not to miss that fact. His disappointment at his electoral loss is, therefore, understandable. The senator must accept on profound introspection that he has nobody but himself to blame. He may need to further interrogate the political decisions he makes.
Nnamani’s apparent conclusion that his present political travails are located in Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, is pathetic. Obi owes him no obligations. Wrong choice and reliance on troubled old ways have cost him his Senate seat. His current one-man campaign of calumny against Obi will, if care is not taken, bury whatever chance may still remain of his political future. The senator made a choice at the beginning of the present political process. He has to learn to live with the outcome of his choice. His present wild punches hardly reflect political maturity.
The bitter campaign by Senator Nnamani to de-market Obi and deny the reality of his lofty standing in current Nigerian politics is at best delusional. Obi may not be smarter than Nnamani and some of the hanging geniuses from the South East, who are quick to wave their first class certificate, but grace and uncommon personal discipline have brought Obi to a place few, if any other personality, in contemporary Nigerian politics has found himself.
Nnamani knows, as those who are determined to torpedo truth also do, that, against all predictions and human plots, Obi was chosen by the majority of Nigerians across all old political cleavages. Obi may not even know how he came to be, but the reality is that he became. What providence has offered Nigeria through Obi is an uncommon opportunity. Obi is just an instrument in the hands of higher forces.
The recent, hackneyed campaign by Nnamani that Obi has hurt the Igbo in Nigeria’s politics is, at best, bunkum. The opposite is the case. The sooner the senator got real, cooled down, realigned himself for the future, the better. For him. Much more importantly, Nnamani is, in his effort to undermine Obi, undermining the Igbo who are presently under threat in Nigeria for no other reason than that one of their own dared to contest to be President of Nigeria and, indeed, won national acceptance. The vicious campaigns to diminish Obi are nothing else but desperate expeditions to peg back the Igbo within that glass ceiling erected by those who, over the years, benefited from the wicket pitch that the rest of Nigeria do not trust the Igbo enough to entrust them with national leadership. The 2023 presidential election has buried that lie.
If Nnamani posits that by running for President and getting up there Obi is endangering the Igbo in Nigerian politics, the import of the nauseating thesis is that the Igbo should not ever dare to contest Nigeria’s presidency. That will be a most grievous and opprobrious position for anyone to hold, not the least an Igboman. On the other hand, if, as Nnamani contends, Obi has not done it well, what option is the senator offering? Himself? Why not! Let him step up and quit playing a spoiler. He is hurting himself, to the discomfort of those who believe he is better than the profile he presently casts of himself.