IGHODALO: A CONFLUENCE OF VISION, COMPETENCE AND INTEGRITY, BY GEORGE ETAKIBUEBU

In Edo State, the political conversation has continued to revolve around the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the September 21 election, Dr Asue Ighodalo. His unprecedented acceptance and popularity is sweeping across the state like wild harmattan fire in the month of January. He’s been described as a confluence of vision, competence, capacity, compassion, integrity and to a large extent a very warm personality. His vision for the state is crystal clear; his voice is loud, coherent and unambiguous. His willingness to drive the process for development and prosperity, infectious and very convincing. So far, nobody who has had the opportunity to interact with him or listen to him fails to acknowledge that he is truly in his own class. He is literally head and shoulders taller than any other candidate in the contest.

Fact is, as campaigns for the September 21 governorship election formally got under way, it is important to state that Edolites must in one accord agree and vote massively for Ighodalo, the man who comes across as Solid Gold in the contest. By the same token, they must avoid candidates without cognate administrative experience either in the public or private sector and international exposure and connections. Truth is without these essential requisites, no one can govern any state successfully. This is exactly where Ighodalo is in a class of his own.

With his experience, exposure and contacts as chairman in many corporate organisations, sitting on the board of many companies and having being within the precincts of the corridors of power in Edo State from the days of Senator Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, through all these years as Chairman of Alaghodaro, he is sufficiently equipped for the job at hand. What stands Ighodalo out of the crowd are many, and no other candidate can boast half of them.

As an individual, Ighodalo is highly charismatic, sociable, accessible and friendly; he is in particular youth and women friendly. His background counts for him a lot. Having a mother that was the first female permanent secretary in Nigeria, and a father among the first trained accountants in the likes of Akintola Williams and having as a junior brother a very popular cleric by name Pastor Itua Ighodalo, all speak to an enviable pedigree. Little wonder, he exudes humility, confidence and integrity. Significantly, he is an ardent respecter of culture and tradition. Simply put, Ighodalo is the Solid Gold that must not be traded for anything else.

Before now, what many people had canvassed as his shortcoming – the question of Ighodalo’s political experience, has been destroyed as a weak and ineffective argument. It has been the question raised by those who ostensibly feel threatened and diminished by his towering credentials and what Chinua Achebe called “solid personal achievements” in his enduring classic, Things Fall Apart.

Often than not, people tend to underrate the amount of political power-play that goes on in the boardroom. When a man is the chairman of several top flight companies, you know he must be adept at playing politics. The truth is that boardroom politics is even tenser and more tasking than the partisan politics we are talking about. Boardroom politics is more difficult. So, for someone who was able to sit on top of about six companies, he must have gained a lot of experience to deal with difficult situations. So, it is a massive plus that Ighodalo has come to the table with a mixture of corporate and partisan experiences.

Talking to a group of young men and women in one of his numerous engagements recently, Ighodalo declared: “When I was in secondary school, I could go to school and come back home with an empty suitcase, I mean I might lose all my clothes and there wouldn’t be an uproar. But if I came home with a pencil that was not mine, I would be in big trouble. This was a time when the home was a haven for teaching right, and the school was a haven for topping up on teaching right. Now if we get that right, we will be able to build more responsible leadership and more responsible followership. If we don’t build a responsible society, we can’t progress.

“The second thing is that we have to take care of our security. Nothing is going to happen if we don’t get our security right. Tourists won’t come even our people in the Diaspora won’t come home, serious investors won’t come and our farmers won’t be able to farm, so we have to deal with security and it is a major issue for me.

“The next thing is revenue generation. How are we going to build revenue? The shortest way is to use other people’s money. How are you going to get other people’s money? You can only get other people’s money if they trust you. So we have to run a transparent government that is accountable, that knows what it is doing and that can buy the trust of other people’s money.

“All I am trying to sell is this; that I have an understanding as to how I can build an Edo State that will move from a Third World environment into a First World environment regardless of what is happening at the centre. With your support, we can build the Edo of our dreams, a state we can be proud to call home.”

Here’s a man who clearly knows what the issues are and has ready solutions for the identified problems. Ighodalo is not just one of the candidates, he is the candidate who knows his destination from the beginning and the route to get there.

Then, there is the call for Fairness, Equity and Justice which has dominated political discourse in the state for a long time. It is the turn of Edo Central Senatorial District to produce the governor where Ighodalo hails from.

In the last 24 years, Edo North has ruled the state for 8 years and by the time incumbent governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki, is done by November, Edo South would have also had it for 16 years since the return of democratic rule in 1999. In the over 24 years, Edo Central has produced the governor only for 18 months (May 2007 to November 2008). But then, some opinion moulders have insisted that with Ighodalo, it is even beyond zoning, saying the people are looking at the competence of the three major candidates. They argued that it was not just enough to zone, but zone to a competent person.

As an Edolite, wouldn’t you rather vote for Ighodalo, the Solid Gold?

Etakibuebu, a Strategic Communications expert, writes from Benin City.