Imo: Governor Uzodimma’s Stretched Hands Full Of Olive Branches

OGU BUNDU NWADIKE, M.A

A good leader is a good peace-maker. A good peace-maker is a good leader. The concept of “olive branch” is an idiom which connotes and denotes “need for peace”, “quest for peace”, “room for peace”, “available for peace”, etcetera.

The Executive Governor of Imo State, His Excellency, Distinguished Senator Hope Uzodimma is a man of peace. He’s a good peace-maker. Hence, he’s a good leader. This isn’t a newly developed trait, but one that those that have known him closely intently confirm.

That’s why since after he was declared the authentic winner of the 2019 governorship election in Imo State, he has stretched his hands full of the parabolic olive branches, urging Ndimo to give peace a chance and appealing to them to embrace unity and progress, which comes with peace.

Nearly every time, Governor Uzodimma highlights the need for peace. He educates that it’s only in an atmosphere of peace that desired grow and development of the State can be achieved. He regularly stresses that without peace, progress becomes a herculean task.

The olive branches in Governor Uzodimma’s outstretched hands he has always extend to all those that contested the 2019 governorship election against him. He’s not oblivious to the need for post-election reconciliation of all aggrieved persons, who usually are those who lost out in the election.
The ball is now actually on the court of the people to whom it may concern. The governor’s hands full of olive branches are stretched out for whom it may concern to reach out and receive them.

Instructively, leaders of the people of Imo State are steadily plucking the olive branches in the governor’s hands. For example, the stakeholders meetings that were organized as Town hall meetings for each of the 27 LGAs, where select leaders of each LGA were hosted by the governor. Those meetings engendered peace in no small measure in the State.

Since after the stakeholders town hall meetings, the traditional rulers and the religious leaders of the the State have in their own ways and times felicitated with the governor to pledge their loyalty, solidarity and support. That’s their own way of accepting their governor’s olive branches. They too are agents of peace in the State.

In human history, there’s never an endless war. No matter how much a person or group of persons may be vexed or aggrieved, the resultant psychological and physical war never lasts forever. Every war ends somehow at some time. And after each war ends, peace returns and reigns!

The electoral political and legal hostilities and brouhaha of the 2019 governorship election have come and gone. Governor Uzodimma has been governor cognately for about two years. 

The war ought to have ended by now. Peace ought to have returned and be reigning by now. Wounds ought to have healed. Unity and progress ought to have been the predominant story in Imo State!

That’s what the olive branches in the constantly outstretched hands of Governor Uzodimma are all about. It’s for the total acceptance of the need for there to be peace.

Incidentally, some of the people the olive branches are stretched to, shove it aside, scheming for the continuation of the won and lost war. Those people are the enemies of the State and the people. They heat the polity by words and deeds. They create unnecessary unpatriotic fear and tension among Ndimo that they should join the governor in growing and developing.

However, like the hands that our Lord Jesus Christ spread on the Cross of Calvary, which theologians teach is an invitation to those that desire life to come in, the outstretched hands of Governor Hope Uzodimma, full of olive branches, are for all peace-loving people of Imo State to accept and live in peace, unity and progress. Let the wise remain wise!

By God’s grace, Imo State must be rehabilitated, reconstructed and recovered!!