Uduaghan at 71: Your footprints continue to inspire, pens Tony Nwaka ~ Truth Reporters

 

A one time Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Bureau for Special Duties and Education , Dr Tony Nwaka , has affirmed that former Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan,s footprints will continue to inspire generations to come

Dr Nwaka who served under the Uduaghan administration as Commissioner in charge of various portfolios, stated this while felecitating with the former Governor on his 71st birthday , on Wednesday 22nd October 2025

Excerpts of Nwaka,s birthday wishes to his former boss are as follows :

H.E. Dr. EMMANUEL UDUAGHAN TURNS 71 TODAY. MY JOY IS UNQUANTIFIABLE!

Your Excellency, Asamaigor, sir! We thank God for your new age and His incomparable grace upon your life.

For some of us who were privileged to come in closer contact with you, we are not amazed at the outpouring of well wishes and prayers for you today.

Any wonder we optimistically christened you Dr. Emmanuel "ChukwuEweta" Uduaghan! 

Indeed, I am particularly gratified to see people now recall your era with fond memories, as they discern the benefits and multiplier effects of the Asaba Airport, the overhead bridges, the Youth Empowerment through Agriculture (YETA), the mass transit buses, the beautiful multi-storey buildings in our schools, the Education Marshall that ensured school children were not loitering the streets during school hours, the construction of rural roads, the Asaba Events Centre, the bold initiative of Ughelli-Asaba dual carriageway, the excellent response to the unprecedented 2012 flood which earned you national and international accolades, the new legislative complex, the legislative quarters, the talent hunt programmes that took our gifted youths to national prominence, the microcredit schemes which repeatedly won the CBN award, with some of the beneficiaries becoming international traders, etc. 

Yet, of all these massive programmes and projects, you said the ones that touched your heart the most were the free medical care for pregnant women and the free treatment for underaged children. Many people could not reconcile the logic. 

They scoffed at it. But such is the vision of a leader with genuine feelings for and commitment to the survival and happiness of the less privileged of the populace.

Your Excellency, sir. No volume of my verbal effusions will sufficiently capture the profundity of your legacies. I can only but reproduce hereunder the words I once lifted from the International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences in commemoration of your birth anniversary.

"A best seller may be forgotten within a year and a low-sale book remembered for centuries.....Many books have a tremendous but short-lived and localized success...Others, in contrast, starting from a comparatively narrow acceptance, continued for centuries to call up wider, deeper, and stronger responses."

Certainly, your footprints, Dr. Emmanuel Ewetan Uduaghan, will continue to call up wider, deeper, and stronger responses. God bless you, my boss and leader, as you celebrate your new age today.

Ide Tony F.E. Nwaka, Ph.D.