BY  CHIOMA UGBECHIE
BRITISH politician, John Bright, now late, once wrote of Abraham Lincoln in the Cincinnati Gazette:  “He was like a waiter in a large eating house where all the bells are ringing at once; he cannot serve them all at once and so some grumblers are to be expected”.

Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States. His ascendancy to the Presidency provoked a civil war era and it took his tact, emotional intelligence and far-sightedness to pull the American Union together in spite of the coalition of centrifugal forces trying to pull the Union apart.

The southern confederates of the American Union did not fancy a Lincoln presidency which they feared would abolish their juicy slave business. Lincoln was vocal in his condemnation of slavery as an unjust act of man against a fellow man.

In the midst of the civil war, Americans saw America almost disintegrating. The Union needed a voice to rise above the maddening din of the hour and instil a sense of belonging in the people. Lincoln effectively played that role. He was gentle yet steely; soft yet firm but above all, he was able to galvanise the people to buy into his vision of a new America.

A democrat to his marrows, but the circumstance of that time necessitated him to assume the halo of a dictator, making Lincoln to acquire more power than any American president before him.

Till date, his rousing of the people at Gettysburg (The Gettysburg Speech) remains one of the enduring totems of American civilisation. It is to the credit of the one the Americans call ‘Honest Abe’ that the United States of America still stands today as one indivisible Union.

Yet, in spite of his sterling achievements and the legendary leadership skills he evinced while in office, there were still loud grumble from some Americans. As a student of history and researcher on leadership, I have discovered that the most tasking aspect of leadership is not being the top cat of a multi-national corporation, it is leading men, no matter how few, in a democratic environment.

Often, men take advantage of the liberties of free speech, free enterprise and freedom of association to undermine the establishment.

In Nigeria , one state comes close in comparison with the American example. Delta State,  by far the most ethnically diverse state in the country, offers a clue to unlocking the dynamics of political leadership in the country. It parades the most acerbic opposition.

It is governed by the ruling party, the PDP, yet even that has done little to shield the leadership from the darts of the opposition, and sometimes from the self-contrived implosion in the PDP. At the centre of the vortex is Emmanuel Uduaghan, a medical doctor and governor of the state.

Since he was sworn in as governor on May 29, 2007, he has come under a heavy weather of criticisms; some constructive, some puerile and some downright whimsical. Anybody who relies on the media spins of the opposition to assess the Governor would come away with the impression that Uduaghan is under-performing.

His traducers have sworn to an oath of selective amnesia: they will only see evil even where good is flourishing. They are incurable cynics who never see any good in another. A cynic sees nothing but faults and acknowledges nothing but lapses, most times such lapses are non-existent but mischievously created in his prejudiced imagination.

Uduaghan’s critics, a small crowd of knockers who pretend to see the inside of a house better than those who live in it, do exactly this. They have gone senseless with their vicious criticisms and monotonous cynicisms. They epitomise the base values of the critic which Henry Beecher, the late American preacher once described as one who “never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one.

He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin and never seeing noble game”.

Uduaghan’s critics are vigilant in darkness. They are blind to light, blind to reality and the most pathetic of it all is their refusal to admit that the state is under-going transformation in diverse areas. They say the Asaba airport is a ruse; that it does not exist yet everyday they fly into and out of Asaba through the same airport.

They speak of a decrepit healthcare system yet their mothers, sisters and aunts benefit from the free maternal care of the Uduaghan government. They talk about the sorry state of roads but everyday they cruise through the richly asphalted mesh of roads criss-crossing the state; they pretend not to see the solar-powered street lights that have helped to stymie the pervasion of crime in the state.

No, they will not notice the far-reaching reforms in education, the turning of weapons of warfare to ploughshare by the militants. Never would they credit Uduaghan for his revolutionary peace initiatives and rapprochement which have birthed a new era of peace in a state that was once a theatre of savagery.

Because they are blind to reality and are eternally fated to peddling falsehood, Uduaghan’s critics would not notice that while other states are convulsing with demonstrations and strike by workers over the non-implementation of the new minimum wage, Delta State is at peace.

This is because long before the Federal Government decided to make the issue of minimum wage a state policy, Delta State was already paying a living wage to its workers.

Those of us who live in Delta know that the Governor is not being vilified on account of non-performance. He is being attacked on account of where he comes from and not what he has done or failed to do in office. This is the peculiar nature of Delta politics.

It is politics of ethnicity and of the belly. It is the most banal brand of politics. This is why Uduaghan should not lose sleep over a mob of cynics that is fated to seeing good as evil.