MUCH that has been spewed out about the business man, politician, philanthropist and nationalist, Chief Ifeanyi Patrick Ubah has largely been a case of less sense and more nonsense. Most public commentators have missed the entire forest of information about the man, and have focused fixatedly on the single tree. Often too they misidentified or mis-analyzed that single tree even.
Thus for instance, when Ifeanyi Ubah contested 2013 Anambra State governorship election, many failed even to consider his manifesto, but derided him for such daring. But when the candidates for that election gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, for a meet the people professing of ideas, Ubah emerged tops.
Those who thought the ranking was a fluke, and that there was no way an Ubah, a businessman from childhood, whose heart was since then enchanted by the challenge of creating wealth and beating the mighty odds involved therein, could have bested the likes of former Governor Chris Ngige who was by then a Senator and Dr. Willie Obiano in presenting their ideas of how to govern a state, had a second chance to reform their belief. That chance came with the public presentation of each governorship candidate’s manifesto in Awka. Once again, Ubah trounced all comers in this two-fold province of ideas.
The quintessential Ubah, is a man who plans in great detail before he embarks on any quest – yes, he sees any project he is involved in as a quest, an expedition, a prodigious adventure. So, anybody who took his manifesto serious in 2013, any governorship aspirant then who was forward-looking enough to copy it, and implemented it, would not have been caught napping by the money crunch that hobbled the states recently, making them besiege Abuja like mendicants or panhandlers. Such would have been avoided if only they had imbibed Ubah’s dictum that states must be governed as business or they would suffer bad management’s consequencies.
As Anambra joins other states in suffering the present cash-crunch, as Onitsha and Aba bound containerized goods continue to inch their way through the perilous and lengthy Lagos road instead of being cleared in nearby ports still lying fallow, as Ubah had planned to make possible, even as the Onitsha River Port remains a dream as Ubah had pronounced, one should wonder why Ubah’s ideas as encapsulated in that manifesto are not taken more seriously.
The trouble is that many simply see Ubah as nothing beyond a money man, forgetting that he was not born into a wealthy family. So, if he did not inherit his mammoth wealth, and if money making is not for all comers but a precious few as personal wealth creation is an audacious adventure, then those who made a success of that adventure should be taken seriously.
Yet, how many Nigerians have considered Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) with the seriousness it deserves? TAN could have only come out from a can-do spirit such as Ubah’s.
Prodigious spirit
It was so novel, so audacious, so comprehensive and so overwhelming that only a prodigious spirit that recognizes no limits could have unleashed it – like a tsunami. Nigeria had never witnessed anything like it. He was among the first to congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari on his electoral victory and urged everyone to give him their support.
Most of all, the quintessential Ubah was on display when he single-handedly stopped oil marketers strike action from marring Buhari’s inauguration as President and doing further damage to the economy, when he moved, with just days to the inauguration, and began selling petrol to the public and to tanker drivers. That action also showed Ubah’s independent and nationalist streak.
Ubah knew that his Capital Oil had over 30 per cent of the nation’s oil daily needs in the safe storage of its tank farms, and that he could load tankers with the same ease in Kano and Suleija as in Lagos. He, all alone, could keep Nigeria rolling. And he did it. And without asking for any concessions too. And if other tanker owners refused to join him, he had over 600 tankers to dispatch to service across the country. He acted. He served.
Ubah is just 44 years old. As this article applauds him, it also tasks others to dig into his 2013 governorship manifesto and steal as much as possible – just as late President Yar’Adua acquired his former rival Atiku Abubakar’s idea of a Niger Delta Ministry from Atiku’s manifesto. It is a reality today! Ubah deserves a closer look from his countrymen, especially from his fellow Anambrarians. He was once asked why he spells his surname with an h. His reply, intriguing, worthy of being taken seriously, was this succinct: “the “h” in my Ubah is for honour”.
By Tony Eluemunor
