As Dr Chris Ngige, former Anambra State governor, former Labour and Productivity Minister and former Senator of the Federal Republic, turns 74 today (August 8, 2026), a lot of tributes have been appearing in the media. He is deserving of all the plaudits. His place in history as the Anambra State governor from 2003 to 2006 is secured, based on a stellar record. Ngige laid a strong foundation for the significant achievements of his successors, ranging from the provision of solid basic infrastructure to far-reaching reforms in security, health, education, and, of course, values.
His values legacy is the concern of this brief tribute. In 2004 or so, a delegation of leaders of the sprawling Ladipo Spare Parts Market at Mushin in Lagos approached me to request that I ask Gov Ngige to intervene in the closure of the market by the Gov Bola Tinubu administration which was on its 9th day, making life exceedingly difficult for not only them but also their customers. Ladipo is the largest old auto spare parts in Lagos. I quickly called him on the phone without success. I turned to his cousin, Uzoma Igbonwa, a young enterprising businessman, who informed me that the traders had approached him to speak to the governor on the same matter, disclosing that Ngige was on a visit to Abuja. Uzoma promised to reach him later in the day when he would be free and give me the feedback. He did. He told me that the governor had decided to cut short his visit to Abuja.
Once Ngige was informed of the market closure, he reached out to Gov Tinubu, and they agreed to meet the next day at 6 am in Tinubu’s residence on Bourdillon Road in Ikoyi, Lagos. I was advised to proceed to join him at the meeting. However, as I was driving into Ikoyi from Ilupeju where I was living, I saw Ngige’s motorcade heading in the opposite direction towards the Mainland, and I quickly made a U-turn to join it. I couldn’t keep up with the pace of the governor’s convoy. When I drove to the market, the traders were already ecstatic, wildly rejoicing from the good news from the governor’s lips. They embraced me with tremendous excitement for my part in the unfolding drama. One of the two conditions given for the reopening of the spare parts market was to keep the market clean. It was really a hygienic mess.
Since the 2023 general election, the large Igbo community in Lagos State believes it has been facing all manner of discrimination and oppression, including the change of names of major roads and streets named for such foremost Nigerian nationalists of Igbo extraction as Dr KO Mbadiwe. The Igbo people have been expecting the current generation of Southeast governors to intervene on their behalf the way Ngige did some 20 years ago when the Ladipo Auto Spare Parts Market was shuttered by the Lagos State government. None of them has, however, endeavored to speak to their Lagos State counterpart on the issue.
The governors seem to be under the impression that leadership is solely about bricks and mortar, that is, about building physical things like roads and bridges. But leadership is more about values than anything else. Adolf Hitler, for instance, led Germany’s industrial transformation by establishing history-changing organizations like Volkswagen, today’s Europe’s biggest automaker. But no-one regards Hitler as a transformational leader because he was brutal. In other words, a leader’s values must be in sync with values like the common good or service above oneself. Not service driven by crass selfishness, the bane of contemporary African society.
Chris Ngige was given the sobriquet of Igbo Leader long before he joined politics in 1998. He was president of Aka Ikenga, a very influential collection of Igbo professionals and intellectuals in Lagos, and he led it so well that Oscar Onwudiwe, the late Igbo thought leader, activist and lawyer, during one of its meetings, declared him in a paroxysm of laughter “the Igbo leader! The Authentic Igbo Leader!” The title stuck because Ngige’s ideas and activity were in sync with the values and expectations and work and mission of Aka Ikenga members: A peaceful, just, and fast developing Nigerian society, starting with the Igbo homeland.
Okey Ezeibe, founding president of the Balogun Business Association which built one of the biggest and most modern markets in Lagos, never tires of recounting the story of how during a riot in the North in the 1990s that targeted the Igbo, Ngige refused to remove his Igbo red cap, despite all entreaties. “I would rather be killed than hide my Igbo identity even for a minute”, Ezeibe quotes him as saying.
I join many people from different parts of the nation to wish Dr Ngige a most rewarding 74th birthday experience.
Adinuba was the Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Anambra State, from 2018 to 2022.
