Count Down 4: The Humanity of Willie Obiano

When the story is finally told, it would be remembered that Governor Willie Obiano is probably the first governor in Nigeria who spent eight years in office and never took a salary. Obiano signed away his salary to charity from his first month in office. And with a handful of days left, it is not out of place to finally acknowledge the symbolism of that act.

As it turned out though, giving away his salary was the least of Obiano’s humane act as a governor. His philosophy of ana alu olu ana alu mmadu (fix lives before you fix things) was to gradually evolve into a subtle theme that ran through much of his stay in office. It was the silent force behind Obiano’s decision to increase the salary of workers at a time when Nigeria was in the throes of recession. It was the energy behind his decision to clear the areas of pensions owed the old employees of the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) and National Light that was outstanding for 25 years. It was the motivation behind his choice to clear the areas of salaries owed both local government employees and the staff of Anambra State Water Corporation by previous administrations within his first term in office. It was also the main reason in his eight years in office, civil servants were given bags of rice at Christmas to ensure that no one was left out of the circle of happiness.

But perhaps we would appreciate Obiano’s remarkable humanity better if we realized that his government was the first in Nigeria to set up a proper office on Disability Matters and the first to aggressively pursue the passing of the Disability Rights Bill into law to ensure that our brothers and sisters who live with all forms of physical disability are treated as decent human beings who deserve dignity. The Anambra State Disability Law prohibits any form of discrimination against people living with disability in the state. Obiano was also the first to set up a Disability Rights Commission and charge it with the mandate to formulate and implement policies and programmes it considers appropriate for the education and well-being of people living with disability. To give fillip to his decision, he offered scholarship to students living with disability in Anambra State from primary to tertiary levels. He also appointed a brilliant but blind lawyer as his Special Adviser on Disability Matters and made a member of the disability community a Permanent Secretary in one of the ministries.

History will also record the fact that Obiano and his wife mustered enough kindness in their time in office to provide a home for the society’s cast-away and adopted many abandoned babies. In fact, they built a special home in Nteje where the mentally deranged people, the homeless, waifs, tramps and vagrants are rehabilitated and reunited with their families. The bulk of Obiano’s forfeited salaries went into the running of the Nteje home. It is also on record that in October 2015, Obiano granted amnesty to 25 prisoners serving jail terms in prisons in the state and gave each of them N1 million to ease themselves back into the society. It had not been done before. Again, he offered scholarships to orphans. A case in point is the scholarship he gave to the children of the victims of the “Mubi 12” massacre which took place in Mubi, Adamawa State in 2012.

Driven by his keen sense of justice, Obiano always stayed above the fray. He never threw any punches back at people who hounded him and was quick to forgive those who offended him and ask for forgiveness from those who felt offended by him. Two years ago when some traditional rulers staged a royal coup against him with an unauthorized trip to the Presidency to stir malcontent against him, Obiano showed anger by placing a suspension on them. But he rescinded the order shortly after in a rare show of mercy when the popular clamour was for outright dethronement. In much the same way, Obiano is the only governor in Nigerian history to have tendered an unreserved public apology to his predecessor and pleaded for forgiveness even when the offence remains unknown.

And well…the Obiano administration will forever be remembered as the time when the Anambra youth had his day in the sun. The governor offered employment to hundreds of youths and ensured that wealth trickled down to people to whom government had formerly been as distant as the moon.

In simpler terms, Obiano’s government belonged to the people. He placed the people first in all he did. He lifted the weak and stabilized the strong. He will be remembered for a long time to come.