Lessons of Anambra election

I  am happy for Willie Obiano. He was re-elected as governor of Anambra State and his victory is good for our democracy.

As much as godfatherism is necessary in politics, loyalty should be to the people and state. Enough of godfathers who want their godchildren to perpetually hold onto their apron-strings.

True democrats are idealistic and remain so in spite of changing times. They hold onto their beliefs for as long as possible.

When they waiver sometimes, because man cannot be 100 per cent idealistic, they give their followers reasons which they understand and empathise with.

How can a former APGA chieftain announce the puritanism of another party? Did both parties have an ideological co-dependence from the first?

Had he not forsaken the party that made him what he is, and campaigned for another candidate behind the scene, with reasons, I would have taken him seriously.

Many leftists engage in the disrobing attitude of berating parties that made them. George Bush (Republican) the 41st president of the United States, voted for Hillary Clinton (Democrats) in the 2016 presidential election for personal reasons but didn’t abandon the Republican Party.

Clinton was raised in a family of Republicans and was a Republican herself, interned for high-ranking Republicans in earlier days, until after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jnr, one of the few men that shaped her world view during the heydays of the civil rights movement when she became a Democrat on principle.

She never tasted electoral office on the platform of the Republican Party. Even though there are cases of defections in the United State, they are fewer than in Nigeria.

Our politicians become ‘important’ personages thanks to governmental platforms and after tours of duty, make a volte-face to castigate the platforms that made them.

Obiano has proven that the welfare of Anambra State matters to him.

Simon Abah

Port Harcourt, Rivers State.