Integrity Is Everything Needed to Rebuild Imo Like Other States, Country of the Globe.

By Emeka Diwe

It was our own Col. Anthony Aboki Ochefu, a former Military Administrator of the defunct East Central State, not any alien philosopher, who first enkindled into my consciousness the centrality of character in human life. I was a fledgling student at secondary school in the seventies and he visited my school at mid morning with a moving speech which harped on the essence of character and the nullity of life without it. In his words, “When wealth is lost nothing is lost. When health is lost something is lost. But when character is lost all is lost”.

The above quote was later made a compulsory rendition by our school principal, and, as a teenager, I memorized and recited it day after even when it made no meaning to me. It was necessary to have it by memory and readily available on lips because avoid an impending punishment by our “wicked principal” who would suddenly call you up at any time to recite it.

However, as I grew in life and experience it dawned on me that that philosophical piece which had been nothing more than rhetorics to me was actually the beginning and end of life. It is the only thing that there is. It is the most efficacious advice in humanity. It is the truth and nothing but the truth.

In further adoration and total betrothal to the substance of the quote, I adopted it as an article of faith and guiding principle, and espoused my own version of it as “Integrity Is Everything”.

• Integrity is the absence of corruption.
• Integrity leads to good governance.
• Integrity gives you Godly love for fellow humans.
• Integrity is knowing God.
• Integrity keeps you at war with evil and corruption.
• Integrity keeps you at peace with your environment.
• Integrity is the only imperishable asset in life.
• Integrity takes you to Heaven.
• Integrity immortalizes your existence.
• Integrity is the only panacea for corruption.
• Integrity brings about unprecedented development.

Each of the above is laden with so much meaning which can make a full piece on its own. However, the ultimate idea is to relate this octopus phenomenon called integrity to the incoming administration of Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha as it concerns good governance. Good governance is another phrase that is loaded with meaning. In short, it is the only thing required of Rt. Hon. Ihedioha to succeed. Anything short of good governance will amount to another wild goose chase of notorious iberiberism.

Imo State Governor, Rt Hon. Emeka Ihedioha

The Governor-elect, Rt. Hon. Ihedioha, has started off on a very commendable note by assembling stellar citizens of the State to constitute Transition and Inauguration Committees. These are astute professionals, bureaucrats and technocrats in various sectors of the economy. There is no illusion about the fact that they will roll out almost impeccable policies, programs and roadmap. However, those initiatives invariably fall just on one side of the good governance coin. The other side of it is the human element.

Fantastic policies cannot implement themselves, neither can splendid frameworks run on autopilot. They all require men who are imbued with a great measure of integrity to make them see the light of the day. When a sound blueprint meets a sound character the result is good governance.

The bane of governance in this part of the world is that in assembling functionaries we are too fixated with paper certifications and impressive résumés without paying concomitant attention to character. Our school system, to say the least, has marginalized character building in the process of glorifying cognitive learning. The result is that we now have doctors who take lives instead of save them, lawyers who spiritedly root for injustice at the expense of justice, civil servants who demand for bribes in order to do their work, and politicians who primitively accumulate commonwealth and build islands of affluence in a sea of mass affliction. They are professionals and technocrats. Aren’t they? But they lack integrity. They lack character! They are in fact professionals in human underdevelopment and social misery.

A glimpse into the economic miracles of the Asian Tigers validates the notion that integrity, more than anything else, is what sorely needed for good governance and overall development to thrive. Singapore, under the inimitable man of startling integrity, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, presents us with a fit testimony to this, and we shall briefly dwell on his reign here.

Much of Singapore’s success can be attributed to the vision of one man – Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s first prime minister. He was in office from 1959 to 1990.

Singapore broke away from neighbouring Malaysia and gained independence in 1965. Less than half a century ago, Singapore was an island without any natural resources to call its own. Since then, it has pulled off a dramatic transformation – boasting two casino-integrated resorts and an airport that has frequently topped the “world’s best” list.

In addition, the central business district is crowded with skyscrapers that rival neighbouring Hong Kong and mid-town Manhattan in far-flung New York.

Lee Kuan Yew’s emphasis on integrity as a policy thrust for making Singapore attractive as a destination for investment as well as his focus on drawing world class manpower, transparent tax regime; morally clean bureaucracy and a strong regulatory and legal framework ensured Singapore’s stupendous economic success.

These factors have led to the emergence of Singapore as a powerful and wealthy financial centre. A Third World country which rapidly grew into a First World economy!

This principle accelerated economic ascendancy by unleashing the forces of upward social mobility for people of integrity, with little tolerance for complacency or corruption. Complemented by a fair and transparent judiciary, businesses thrived. Singapore currently has the world’s second busiest port after China’s Shangai.

Lee Kuan Yew performed no miracle transforming Singapore from one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1960s to being among the most advanced today. His main contribution, and the key to his success, was that he understood that in order to put Singapore on a sustainable growth trajectory all that he needed assemblage of men of sound character with sound economic policy.

Progressive nations have shored up to the idea of placing a premium on integrity in public governance. India under the great liberator, Mahatma Gandhi, laid the foundations for prosperity by bringing integrity to the fore and making it a matter of national consciousness. Lying, bribery and favouritism were all considered injurious to collective progress and were indeed acts of violence against humanity which Gandhi’s principle of ‘Ahimsa’ greatly condemned.

Gandhi set standards in detachment from appetitive and acquisitive drive and exhorted his people to, “Look onto the world like a mirage, for no evil befalls he who looks down on the world”.

Back home, this principle has been practised and found to be matchless in advancing the frontiers of good governance and of development. The quintessential former governor of Anambra State, Sir Peter Obi, raised the state which had been at the lowest rung of the ladder in almost all indices of performance to an enviable height by his integrity and that of his team. The pre-Obi Anambra had been a gangsters paradise, rife with decayed social structures and brutish violent crimes. But Obi, a man who even as a governor statutorily in-charge of all the land in Anambra never allocated a single piece to himself, transformed it into the best Igbo state in Nigeria today.

Before Obi became governor of Anambra State, it was practically unthinkable for anyone to pass by Upper Iweka in Onitsha with a bag without robbed and brutally maimed! In the ease of doing business index, Anambra was 34 out of the 36 states in Nigeria. Education literally ended in Anambra as all the schools were shut down for over one year. Driving on the roads of Anambra was like engaging in a dance of the dead. But today, Anambra is the shinning example of socio-economic transformation in the Southeast Nigeria.

Comparative development analysis has shown that various frameworks can lead to development. Russian moved from an agrarian to industrial economy with socialism. America became a leading economic power with capitalism. China has emerged as an economic force with communism. However, what has led immensely to their triumphs is not the framework adopted but the human element. These countries venerate integrity in public service and punish corruption severely.

In order to rebuild Imo State, the time come to search for people of impeccable integrity to take charge of the various aspects of the new administration. I do have an unyielding belief that if the amount of effort that has been put into drawing up of blueprints, policies and programs by the Transition Technical Committee should be replicated in searching for people of credibility, character and integrity to implement those initiatives, Imo State has already come halfway to prosperity.

Chief Emeka Diwe is the President-General of Orluzurumee Cultural Union, the Association of Imo State Indigenous Town Unions (AISITU) and the Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU).

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