By Chuks Ugwoke

PRECISELY 24 hours from today, eligible voters in Enugu State will return to the booths, this time, to elect the Local Government chairmen and councilors who will pilot affairs in the seventeen Councils.

This will be the third time that the State Government under the leadership of Governor Sullivan Iheanacho Chime will be conducting Local Government elections, the first and only regime to have achieved such a feat in the current democratic dispensation.

Yet, he would never celebrate such a rare record nor even permit one the opportunity to call attention to it. He calls any suggestion to that effect “playing to the gallery.” However, one only hopes that this mere mention of the imminence of the election would not raise any eyebrow. But that is hardly the news.

The beauty of the coming poll is that in fifteen of the seventeen councils, candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would have no candidates. They will be returned unopposed! In a similar manner, over ninety five per cent of the councilors will enjoy the same no-opposition passage.

Only recently, Local Government administration in Nigeria came under the media focus, with a seeming blanket verdict that the Councils are somewhat appendages of the State Governments.

Gov Chime

Strikingly though, one national newspaper did a State-by-State analysis where its reporter (incidentally not one of the friendliest this end) did not mince words that the funds of Local Government Councils are not tampered in any form in Enugu State.

And that is just the true position. It is common knowledge in the State that Governor Chime does not tamper with the allocations due for the Councils under any guise nor does he control what the chairmen do, the projects they choose or how they generally run their Councils.

Throughout the campaigns that ended yesterday, this fact was consistently on the front burner. Speaker after speaker paid glowing tributes to the governor for releasing full allocations to the Councils, resulting ultimately in verifiable achievements by the chairmen.

Today, it is on record that virtually all the out-going Council chairmen who had done their two terms (and few who will be contesting for their second term) have done several kilometres of asphalt roads.

That is in addition to the provision of electricity, portable water, health facilities and the rehabilitation and/or construction of new primary school buildings among other people-oriented projects and policies.

With such accomplishments, it came to nobody as a surprise that the negligible persons in opposition did not need the services of a soothsayer to read the handwriting on the wall concerning Saturday’s elections. After all, PDP achieved a hundred per cent success in the last general elections in Enugu State.

Notwithstanding the absence of opposition in tomorrow’s polls, Governor Chime still campaigned vigorously for both the chairmanship and councillorship candidates in all the seventeen Local Government Areas. In all the campaign tours to the Councils, Governor Chime never offered a word on the multi-sectoral transformation that Enugu State has experienced since May 29, 2007 when he came on board. But what could not be concealed was the excitement of the people on the level of awesome development attained under his charge, from the urban cities to the rural communities.

Today, the undisputed truth is that under Chime, Enugu State has rediscovered itself and the people proved that with his sweeping victory at the polls and even the triumph of those he endorsed in the April elections. By tomorrow, the chairmen and councilors who will be elected will add to the list of beneficiaries of good governance in the Coal City State.

At the end of it all, legacies which are timeless truths that outlast their creators will, no doubt, preserve Chime’s efforts and name. History has a place for all actors on the stage.