By Monday Uwagwu
THE political journey of Senator (Dr) Ifeanyi Okowa, Governor of Delta State, did not begin yesterday, so to speak; it is the result of a long drawn out plan, laced with the enabling success tactics and strategies.
Following the innate push for a greater opportunity to give vent to his desire for enhanced and accelerated personal contribution to the development of his society, Okowa, shortly after his National Youth Service Corps Scheme (NYSC) engagement, cut short his full-time private medical practice to engage in partisan politics. Soon afterwards, he became Secretary to then Ika Local Government, before its split into Ika South and Ika North-East Local Government Areas. He was later to be elected chairman of the newly created Ika North-East Local Government Area. Okowa held that position between 1991 and 1993, when, following the national political crisis that dogged the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential poll by the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida administration, all democratic structures in the country were dismantled by the military.
Okowa’s long, almost arduous, journey to the Government House, Asaba, is all too known to be recycled here. However, certain facts need to be put in proper perspective, for the sake of posterity, particularly as they relate to history.
By becoming the substantive leader of the entire Delta polity as governor, he became the first person of Anioma Origin to reach that political destination. Before him, three other persons of the district had been deputies to the substantive leaders: John Edozien (to Col John Ewerekumoh Yeri); Simeon Ebonka (to Olorogun Felix Ibru) and Benjamin Sunday Elue (to Chief James Ibori).
Long before then, Chief Dennis Osadebay, another indigene of the area, had led the defunct Mid West Region by another name – Premier.
Okowa’s ascension to the governorship of the state also had another element of history to it – it consolidated a growing trend where medical officers are governors led the stste; his predecessor in office, Emmanuel Uduaghan, a medical officer of Health, with specialisation in Anesthesia, set the professional rhythmic trend rolling. Yet, in doing so, Okowa also set a record – he broke the jinx of University of Benin (UNIBEN) producing the state governors since 1999. That trend was set by Ibori, an Economics graduate of UNIBEN, and was consolidated by his cousin and successor in office, Emmanuel Uduaghan, who read Medicine in UNIBEN after a futile effort to read Accountancy. Okowa read Medicine at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s first university, whose products, especially the first stream of graduates, idolise themselves as The Ancients.
Above all else, are these other elements of the historic significance of the Okowa governorship: He is the first state chief executive to have prior experience in two of the three existing arms of government – executive and legislature. With regard to the executive arm, he has served as the Secretary to Local Government; Chairman of Local Government; Commissioners for Agriculture, Water Resources and Health as well as Secretary to State Government (SSG). In the legislative sector, he was the Senator representing Delta North in the upper chamber of Nigeria’s bicameral legislature. None of his predecessors in office, living or dead, in military or civil garb, had this repertoire of strategic experience that yielded multiple fruits for the state during his administration.
Perhaps, the benefit of his legislative experience may have partly informed his choice of Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori as his successor in the 2023 gubernatorial poll.
Correlatedly, Okowa’s unique exposure in this regard also had another significant historic element: he is the first state governor to have prior governorship experience at all three tiers of public administration in the country; local, state and federal levels. He was secretary and chairman, respectively, of Ika North-East Local Government; Commissioner with responsibility for the ministries of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Water Resources and Health, and later, Secretary to State Government (SSG). To cap it all, he was, in 2011, elected Senator for Delta North Senatorial District in the higher chamber of Nigeria’s two-chamber federal legislative house.
In all, Okowa is a human envelope encasing a welter of experience that proved vital to the overall success of his administration.
OKOWA:
MYRIAD FEATS OF A MAN OF HISTORY
Generally, it is held – and there is little argument to the contrary in that the morning tells the day.
For Senator (Dr.) Ifeanyi Okowa, this ancient African wise back is as true as the truth can be, having regard to his antecedents, even from the cradle, so to speak. And for those already used to him, there is little argument to the fact that the Okowa brand did not germinate and flourish overnight: it is the product of the inter-play of several variables – a modest but decent upbringing, providence and personal efforts and endeavours. The interplay of these variables has yielded what is undoubtedly one of contemporary Nigeria’s most alluring success stories in public life.
Though he was not born with the metaphoric silver spoon in his mouth, Okowa, quite early in life, realised that while everyone could hope to benefit from, and by, the benevolence of God and Mother Nature, those who actually stand the best chance of reaping maximally are those who are those who are quite acquainted with the laws of beneficiation. Those are men and women who, far ahead of time, primed themselves to be worthy vessels in the hands of God and Mother Nature. These are those who, by consistent positive self – application by way of honest hard work, make themselves ready instruments for the efficient use of these supernatural forces.
With this mindset of the right value on honest labour, Okowa, early in life, appreciated the core value of diligence and due process, which are later to play a strategic role in his life and in foreshadowing the classic success that he has unquestionably become today.
The evidence?
Like the beautiful tropical sun in the dry season, Okowa, quite early in life, began not only to shine but to dazzle, even in the constellation of other satellites. And like the foreshadow of what was soon to flood in, Okowa, at a mere 22 years of age, graduated from the college of medicine of the University of Ibadan. This was after he had dazed even his instructors and parents at Edo College, Benin City, where, against the grain of expectation, he placed second on the overall top performers’ chart in the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examinations in all of what was then Bendel State (now Delta and Edo states(
Put together, his feat at Edo College, and his near magic outing in the qualifying examination for medical students at the University of Ibadan, in far more ways than one, helped lay the foundation of the staccato of successes that were to profile his later life, and, perphaps, more importantly, to profile the man who, by even cynics’ assessment, was later to out-shine other stars in the firmament of the public service in Nigeria.
Today, decades after he set his feet on the touchstone of history and the drive for excellence, Okowa’s passion for the outstanding has neither ceased nor abated. In fact, this has become more evident by the day, especially since his historic ascension of power as the Governor of Delta State, on May 29, 2015.
Outside of the walls of Edo College and the University of Ibadan, the Okowa brand was already gaining momentum and gathering dust for the great shine that has now enveloped it.
And the evidence of this, like the legion limbs of the tropical multipede, have been too palpable to deny.
He was the first elected Chairman of Ika North-East Local Government, after its creation on August 27, 1991, after serving as Secretary to Local Government of the old Ika Local Government Area from which both Ika North-East and Ika South local government areas were created in August 1991. Okowa later became Commissioner for Agriculture, Water Resources Development, and, later, Health, during the administration of Chief James Ibori. Later, following the institution of the Emmanuel Uduaghan administration, he became Secretary to State Government, and, following his success at the enabling election after he resigned as SSG, became a Senator and head of the Senate Committee on Health. In 2015, following his electoral success, he was elected Governor of Delta State. In all of these, Okowa not only gathered a bagful of relevant experience, but also set record as the first Governor of Anioma extraction to lead Delta State; the first Governor to have worked in all three tiers of public administration in Nigeria (local, state and federal) and the first in the history of the state to have worked in two of the three arms of government (legislature and executive arms of government). Who knows, going by his well acknowledged dynamism. Okowa could one day be a legal officer, thus setting record as the first such personality to have worked in all three tiers and arms of government!
While the prospect of that feat lies in the huge womb of time, it is imperative to highlight, albeit in passing, what other feats Senator Okowa has attained in and out of public life.
In the National Assembly, Okowa, even though a first timer, earned the confidence of his colleague law makers, who readily made him Chairman, Senate Committee on Health: This enabled him to live out two vital dreams he had nursed for long: initiate a bill for a law on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the first in Nigeria’s history, and to mount two historic editions of the National Health Summit in Asaba and Benin City, respectively.
The import of the Summits goes to this moment: they brought all major stakeholders to dialogue on health insurance in proximate geographic quarters) and, equally importantly, on the fact that aside of those two editions, no other such similars ever held again.
As for the NHIS, its revolutionary elements, especially in relation to its capable response to the vital questions of access, funding and quality, depict the infallibility of the vision underlying it and the wisdom that is its predicate.
True to type, Okowa was to replicate the NHIS initiative, when, strong on his institution into office as Governor of Delta State, he inaugurated and operationalised the Delta State Contributory Health Scheme (DSCHS) that has now become a stellar success and the index reference for those inspiring in that direction. Today, the scheme has become a national reference point.
Yet, the NHIS and DSCHS are only a sprinkling of the worthy initiatives in the environment, power, infrastructure and sports sectors.
In the environment sector, Okowa’s timely key in into the World Bank – sponsored Nigeria Watershed Erosion Management Project (NEWMAP), enabled the Delta to be one of the first beneficiaries of the initiatives, following the payment of N530m in lieu of the counterpart funding and take-off grant, as a result of which remedial work was done at erosion sites in Owa-Ekei (midoma); Ukwunzu, Jesse, Obomkpa and Ubulu-Uku. The initiatives of the Okowa administration in relation to the environment sector also find due expression in its active work in respect of the massive multi-billionnaira storm water drainage works in Asaba and its environs. These initiatives are important not only because they are the first such effort in the state, but also for reason of the fact that it is the first time in the history of the state that emphasis – on such a scale – is being accorded the environment, which, as events readily show, is an increasingly important factor in the life of man and his society.
Perphaps, an inkling into the deep vision underlying the action of the state in the sector can be seen in not only the fact that the economy of the state actually managed to climb out of recession, but also the fact that the administration, inspite of the understandably limited resources available to it to meet the humongous development needs of the state and its people, was able to commit N530m to it.
Okowa, no doubt, is a man of great dreams and wonderful ideas. This is the evident almost everywhere.
However, if there be any specific areas in which vision has been deployed to telling effect to drive his dream of an outstanding administration, it is in lieu of his wonderful initiatives in the education, power and infrastructure sectors.
In the education sector, Okowa shifted attention from pure academics, to the sphere where skills augment the former by not only creating a board on technical and vocational education in the state and operationalising it, but also massively retrofitting the state’s six technical colleges in Agbor, Issele-Uku, Ofagbe, Kwale, Otor-Ogor and Sapele. It also planned to build and equip 19 more such schools to answer to skills deficiency that is now becoming evident in our society, and also to tackle the unemployment that has become an albatross for the Nigerian youth.
The effort of the Okowa administration in this regard – again the first in the history of the state – is consolidated with its alluring initiative in job creation under which aegis in excess of 20,000 otherwise unemployed youths were trained in legion skillsets as fashion design, catering, event management; tiling, plaster of paris (POP); bead making, poultry, piggery, aquaculture and crop farming and empowered to begin life as entrepreneurs. The trainees – under the aegis of the Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurship Programme (YAGEP) and the Skills Training Entrepreneurship Programme (STEP) are now not only viable entrepreneurs on their own, but have, in some instances, as evidence now shows, become proud employers of labour.
And then this: The huge gains that the state recorded in this sector have been steadily augmented with the massive rehabilitation of the various Women Development Centres in parts of the state, which enabled them train and empower more than 700 women in the state – again a record performance – in the past four years of his administration.
In the strategic power sector, Okowa, driven by his consideration for enduring long-term goals, sustainable on a cost-efficient benchmark, had to decisively respond to the debilitating power situation in the state, which, in spite of housing five power plants in Ekakpamre near Ughelli (three), Sapele (one) and Okpai (one) gets just 9 per cent of its estimated total daily need of 1,008 megawatts. In this regard, it sealed several power deals with the private sector, including Bastanchury Power Solution Nigeria Limited; Yutai Li Nigeria Limited and Luxra Nigeria Limited. All of the power plants are to run on clean energy and are expected to generate, in all, more than the quantum of power the state currently receives from the national grid. They (deals) represent a revolutionary step forward for the state, being the first time such agreements were reached in its history.
This feat – of being the first to seize initiative in respect of a worthy engagement also came to play in respect of the Delta State Capital Territory Development Agency (DSCTDA) which Okowa created, established and operationalised, short on his ascension into office, in respect of an embarrassing lack in that direction. Today, aside of breaking a quarter of a century (25 years) lack in that regard, the DSCTDA has largely attained two critical goals: coordinating development of the capital territory, and delivering quality service and infrastructure on a scale deemed impossible without it..
It replicated the effort in and around Warri by creating WUEDA.
Realising the mass appeal of sports activities and their development, Okowa latched in on that to develop and operationalise the otherwise abandoned Asaba Township Stadium (now more popularly called Stephen Keshi Stadium), Asaba.
Today, following the near magic performance of Okowa, the facility, once long in the works for upwards of 25 years, is now fully built up as Nigeria’s only fully covered stadium, which has had the rare privilege of hosting legion national and international sports meets, at both friendly and competitive levels. Okowa’s performance in this sector – both with regard to the stadium and his other revolutionary steps in the sector, have helped market it as the single most performing administration in the sector in all of the history of the 33- year old state.
OKOWA: VALUES AND VIRTUES
It is generally held that a single morsel does not tell the full story of a meal, particularly with regard to its taste.
This is as true today as it was tens of thousands of years ago when sages, borne on the wings of experience, first held this notion that has now crystallized into a wise crack.
For the human person, there is a parallel to the above saying in this form: no wise man reaches judgment on an issue based on a single incident.
Again, like the wise crack of the morsel of food, the proverb in the immediate preceding paragraph goes to the same moment: judgments become infallible only when they are pegged on a welter of related incidents.
As is evident, the core issue in both proverbs relate to taste – character, in the case of man – and how infallible judgments can be reached on them.
Based on his life’s experiences and how he has responded to them, a fair judgment can be reached to the fact that Senator (Dr) Ifeanyi Okowa, current Governor of Delta State, is a man of great faith, uncommon vision, steadfastness, diligence and due process.
And this is how.
As a man of uncommon faith, Okowa has demonstrated loyalty and fidelity to worthy causes, especially when they are in sync with the greater public interest. This virtue of faith, cultivated long, long ago in infancy, remains, to date, one of the strongest definitive terms in the profile of his personage.
And this was how it first manifested.
As was common in those days, young Ifeanyi Okowa – who had had to be enrolled in school well ahead of time – was too young to attend school all by himself. In order to ensure he is able to acquire basic education – for which he showed an uncommon passion, inspite of the fact that the school authorities were resentful of his ambition since h had yet to reach the required physical size – early in life, his elder sister, Stella Ngozi had to be assigned the responsibility to ensure his safe trip to and from school.
And, quite dutifully, Ngozi kept faith with this responsibility, glad that it will enable his petit junior brother fulfil his yearning for formal education. So, day by day, Ngozi, once she has ensured that Ifeanyi had had his breakfast, would take him to school – Iroro Primary School, Owa-Alero – on their mother’s bicycle. She would then leave him till after school hours when she would return to fetch him.
This routine continued for long without incident, until one day when something put a clog in the wheel of Ngozi’s seamless trips to and from the school.
That fateful day, Ngozi, bogged down by myriad chores she must attend to, delayed to go fetch him from school. Ordinarily, for an infant his age, this would have made many panick and raise the alarm.
But not Okowa.
Ngozi (now married to her heartttob, Mr. Ebegboni), recalled that when she got to school quite late, she met him sitting quietly and reading his book. Ngozi recalled, to her positive astonishment, that when she sought to know why he did not follow others home and whether he was not scared to be alone in the school, he merely answered to this effect, “I was not scared, neither was I in doubt that you will come to fetch me, no matter how long it will take”.
What abiding faith!
This incident, which happened more than five decades ago, going by Ngozi’s words, though the first in his young life, was set to define Okowa in the years after.
In politics, Okowa showed the same level of faithfulness to a worthy cause. This was quite manifest in the Ogwashi-Uku primaries for the election of the PDP governorship flagbearer in the 2007 poll in which, in spite of the general perception that he was short-changed, he neither jumped ship – as some in his shoes would have threatened or even effected – nor ceased his support for the party and its flagbearer. In fact, to the utter amazement of observers, Okowa, rather than lose sleep over the apparent undermining of his interest, went on to become one of the arrow heads of the successful campaign of the party in the governorship race, and, after the well-deserved victory, the secretary of the transition programme that laid the foundation for the Emmanuel Uduaghan administration of 2007 – 2015. A clear testimony to is the fact that Okowa went on to hold vital positions in the administration of Dr. Uduaghan, including that of the plum office of the Secretary to the State Government (SSG).
Even after he resigned office of SSG to contest the Primary for the party’s senatorial ticket for Delta North (which was initially dogged by controversy and had to be cancelled twice before the third and final effort capped in his success as flagbearer), Okowa did not lose faith in the PDP, in spite of being buffeted by legion hindrances, many perceptibly contrived against him by the powers-that-be.
OKOWA AS A VISIONER
Elma Wheeler, an English philosopher, once said that there are no failures in the world – only men and women who don’t know how to succeed. And he was right. After all, is it not said – at least, by Biblical account – that God Himself lamented that His people were perishing for lack of knowledge?
The relationship between what Wheeler said and what God reportedly did, going by Biblical account, is vision – the link between knowledge and skills and success.
In simple terms, vision is the link between knowledge and success. It is the ability to plan ahead for success, deploying the core elements of resources as skills/competency, time and other variables.
That Okowa, in every material particular and every particular material, can be described as a visioner, is not in doubt, not even for the briefest capsule of time. Evidences in prop of this submission abound everywhere like the ubiquitous housefly, in his life’s undertakings, in private as well as in public. This capacity had been evident in his life, right from childhood to the contemporary times. Right from his course of study, medicine, through his field of second calling, politics, Okowa has been driven by the imperative of the vision to explore every vista for the most potent opportunity to fulfil his childhood dream of being an accomplished selfless leader of men and society.
In politics proper, his vision for a virile state and happy, contented people, were significantly expressed in his job and wealth creation initiative, the state contributory health insurance scheme, the completion of Keshi Stadium, Asaba, the creation and operationalization of the Delta State Capital Territory Development Agency (DSCTDA), his effective key in into the World Bank – sponsored the Nigerian Erosion Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP), the storm water master control projects in and around Asaba; the creation and operationalization of the Delta State Technical and Vocational Education (Board); the reflation of Delta Mortgage Bank Limited and the legalization of Delta State Schools of Nursing and the Delta State Bursary and Scholarship Board and the introduction of the Bank Verification Number (BVN) in the personnel audit exercise for public officers in an effort to check the ghost worker syndrome and save the state the undeserved loss of scare resources committed to their pay.
In all circumstances and respects, Okowa’s historic initiatives in respect of the listed sectors were driven by his vision, for a sustainably developed wholesome state, peopled by truly happy and contented citizens.
DILIGENCE AND DUE PROCESS
Mathematicians, since the dawn of life on Mother Earth, have held that the shortest distance between any two places is a straight line. This is true in two broad services – literal and metaphoric.
In the literal sense, the import of the mathematicians’ holding is self-evident: it requires no elaborate dwelling on. Metaphorically, the saying goes to the effect of the importance of due process and diligence in daily activities – official and or private.
Okowa, as an exemplary leader of men, has always deferred to the truisim in the view of the scientists in the conduct of his official and private affairs, and evidences of this uncommon deference find due expression in the conduct of the affairs of the state and party, under his watch as Governor.
And this is how.
In the run up of the primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state for the 2019 general elections in Delta, Okowa, against the grain of the party’s tradition, insisted on the conduct of truly transparent in-house elections for the choice of the party’s flagbearers in the polls. The result of this insistence was that, contrary to all expectation, the culture of candidate imposition for which the party had become infamous, was jettisoned and due process prevailed. The direct benefits of this deference to due process by Okowa included the transparency of the process, and the general acceptability of the outcomes; the low incidence of post-primary polls litigations – unlike in the past; the higher level of unity among party members and the cohesion and confidence with which the PDP went out on an all-conquering posture in the polls which it won resoundingly.
To drive home his abiding faith in due process, Okowa, in spite of the fact that he had no one vying against him, insisted that due process be strictly adhered to with regard to the governorship primary in which he was sole aspirant. As a result, delegates still had to vote and all of the other processes adhered to before the party, in good conscience, pronounced and presented him as its flagbearer. The inclusiveness benefit of this procedure is regularly cited as a leading cause of the party’s unprecedented trouncing of all others in the governorship election of 2019 in which, against the grain of tradition, the PDP and its candidate conquered many otherwise impregnable ‘enemy territories’ enroute to recording the most overwhelming governorship victory in the history of the state.
Like the sharp-nosed shark smelling the odour of blood even far away, the result of the Okowa magic – as it then became – and its huge benefits, soon spread to places far and near and it was only a matter of time before he would be sought out for a rescue national mission.
And that did not take long to materialize.
The PDP, frontally trounced in the 2015 general elections by the All Progressives Congress (APC), was in dire need of self-redemption as it prepared to venture into the 2019 general polls. A clear strategy for the efforts in this regard was to prevent the party as a born again platform for the attainment of the goals of a more compact and potent national security architecture, greater inclusiveness and sustainable accelerated development in which respect not a few Nigerians cohered as to failure of the APC – led Federal Government.
It did not take long before the Ahmed Makarfi – led National Executive Committee (NEC) of the PDP found in Okowa, the hypodermic needle and all-cure strategist for the task on hand.
He went to work.
Before the party’s non-elective and elective conventions, fear had gripped PDP and its sympathizers: Still writhing from the anguish of its humiliating defeat in the 2015 general polls by the APC, everyone felt a sense of palpitation as any further misstep would spell nunc dimitis for the self-styled Africa’s single biggest political party that had once boasted it would hold power for a straight six decades (60 years) without fear of any worthwhile challenge to its electoral potency.
The air was humid with fear and every PDP faithful prayed, but dared not hope, for a miraculous turnaround.
But happily it came.
By the time Okowa was done with the conduct of both conventions and the Ekiti State PDP gubernatorial primary election to global acclaim of unparalled transparency, the party had had a vibrant, palpable turnaround and retrofitting. And the little management wizard from Delta had done the party proud, beyond words.
Buoyed on by the transparency of its presidential primary election – the first in which all contenders cohered on the integrity of the process, accepted the outcome and actively worked for the party and its candidate in the general elections – the PDP went on to record an unprecedented come back, by picking otherwise ‘safe’ states as Sokoto, Bauchi, Adamawa and Oyo, among others, from the APC in the governorship poll, and to give President Muhammed Buhari of the APC, a good run for his money in the presidential race. In fact, so earth-shaking was the resurgence of the PDP and its torch bearer, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, that, based on what it called the infallible evidence before it, it (PDP) mounted a high-heel legal challenge to the victory of the APC and its flag bearer in the presidential election.
In spite of the fact that the legal challenge turned out unsuccessful, there is no denying the fact that, from the apogee of its humiliating defeat in 2015, the PDP, guided by the Okowa compass, had in less than four years after, staged the most striking come back in third world politics in contemporary times.
