Diplomacy Is Not Weakness – Lessons From Governor Ugwuanyi – Frank Okwudili

People are funny! Annoyingly funny! How can people comfortably talk about someone they barely know and haven’t met?

Innocent Idibia aka Tubaba was indeed right when he said: ‘They don’t know you but they constantly judge you. They don’t don’t know the shape of your head, yet they are constantly shaving it.’ But isn’t that understandable? Part of politics, isn’t it? But must everything be politicised?

Well, if they don’t talk about you, then you are nobody. It comes with the crown and being in the spotlight. I used to think it was impossible for an individual or a group to cook up stories, selling lies in the name of propaganda.

I was so naïve I would have sworn people are so nice that they won’t go out of their way to hurt others. I was mistaken! Highly! Now I know better. People have huge tendency for mischief. Some sell it. Some buy into it. Some do both with such ease and effortlessness that it seems they were born with the innate gift. Or perhaps they have perfected the art through practice.

Sad, but it is beginning to feel this is a jungle. Truth be told, no government can get everybody on board. The best anyone can do is carry as many people along. Even the opposition wants a share in the governance as if they would do the same if sides were flipped.

If there was a skill that we all need to carry with us in this multi-cultural and diverse country, Nigeria, especially with the recurrent insurgence, it is diplomacy. You could call it tact. Confrontation has never proved to accomplish much. Rather than solve problems, it has escalated solvable problems and resolvable conflicts. The peace and development we enjoy in Enugu State has not come cheap. It has enormous cost implications, in ego and finances.

It is this skill that has kept Enugu State safe and dead body counts low under Ugwuanyi’s tactical leadership. The measure of leadership is not in ranting and raving. It is in keeping a calm disposition in pain and chaos. It is being human and humane enough to shed tears and man enough to form alliances that abate bloodshed.

It is very easy to talk from both sides of the mouth when you are on the sideline. What you do when the heat and hit are on you is another kettle of fish. People who cannot manage their three kids and a wife would do better as a governor. Coaches without trophy.

We have not seen the end of people who try to make political mileage from even the calamity of our people at the expense of government. God forbid we go back to the Enugu state of the unsafe past, where people were murdered in cold blood and molested in broad daylight! God forbid! So always remember that Diplomacy is not a weakness. Enugu state stays in the hands of God.