By Onyekwere Nwobodo

Ordinarily, appointment of new members is a routine, standard administrative action in the life of a government. It could entail filling existing vacancies or bringing in more specialist hands  based on the critical need assessment in the course  of project delivery.

Governments do this all the time, at all levels, and  in all jurisdictions, so the recent appointment of additional members by Governor Peter Mbah into governance roles couldn’t possibly be any different!

Disgruntled mischief merchants, for lack of verifiable shortcomings in Mbah’s impeccable governance model, have attempted to make a meal out of an action that ordinarily deserves to be applauded. Pray, which government in history recruited every personnel it would ever require once at inception?

No government is beyond interrogation, yes, but if, for instance, someone is appointed anew from an otherwise underrepresented area, was it better to have allowed the perceived injustice to persist or take practical steps to cure the apparent oversight? Is there a prescribed number of allowable political appointees in a democracy?

It has become so obvious that rather than for any altruistic reasons, the noise by the motley gang of  opposition, (present only in the social media anyway), to the well intended exercise is driven by a sense of grievous  communal loss!

Governor Mbah, apart from continually delivering on his governance mandate, has, with this  masterstroke, struck a surprise,  devastating blow to his opponents by effectively diminishing,  virtually extinguishing the shrinking  population from which their grieving rank had recruited. Otherwise, how is it their worry that some people who had opposed the emergence of the governor in  2023 were appointed into government?

They would have preferred the governor to continue to dwell in their unhelpful, hateful, old fashioned political philosophy which  views  political disagreement as mortal enmity rather than appreciate and acknowledge the goodness and statesmanship in  Mbah’s action.

If anyone had opposed Mbah as gubernatorial candidate in 2023, the man himself reckons and quite rightly so,  it wasn’t anything personal, and if in his judgment and magnanimity as governor he makes that former opponent an offer to join hands with him to move Enugu State forward, and the fellow accepts, shouldn’t we applaud?

The governor is an intellectual giant,  no doubt,  but he  does not fear or loathe to cohabit with equally knowledgeable persons, even if they were originally of different political persuasion. That is rising above self, ego or pettiness!

His interest, as I have come to understand, is what you bring to the table, and how that makes the governance  group and Enugu State better; nothing more, nothing less.

Many politicians recruit and surround themselves with ‘yes-men’ who grovel at their feet, massage their bloated ego even if they offer nothing  more to drive the administration’s agenda.

Mbah is so confident without being arrogant, so self-assured, and forever  highly receptive to and respectful of empirically sound, professional viewpoints.

The opposition criticism of his  recent appointments is ‘much ado about nothing.’ They go to no issue really and change nothing.

The new team members are highly welcome, and must not forget that adding value is the main consideration, and Ndi Enugu must not lose on any account.

As long as the need arises, and/or vacancies exist, any forward looking administration like Mbah’s would always continually reinvent, recalibrate, re-jig the machinery of governance with injection of quality personnel in needful areas for optimum performance. And crucially, the more, the merrier!

*Mr. Nwobodo is Special Adviser, Media, to Enugu State Governor.