Here are snippets of stories that emerged from government houses in the eastern part of Nigeria in the last few weeks.

Authorities stop Governor Willy Obiano of Anambra State from boarding a plane at the Atlanta International Airport after an altercation while making his way back to Nigeria. Police arrest former Gov. Rochas Okorocha in Imo State in an escalation of his conflict with the state over his assets the state took possession of following a court order. Senator Smart Adeyemi accuses Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State of being a drunkard. Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State rewards six Enugu State NYSC members. In Ebonyi state, everyone knows what Gov. David Umahi is doing every day. He is busy rebranding himself while cranking up his attack on independent media and civil society voices and at the same time engineering new ways to suck up to President Muhammadu Buhari.

These are the unfortunate bunch that currently inherits the stool once occupied by great men like Akanu Ibiam and Michael Okpara. The five governors’ total IQ would probably be less than half of that of Akanu Ibiam or Michael Okpara. Their tragedy is not that they have no regard for the legacy of the two giants who once strolled that territory that five of them now share and poorly manage. The real tragedy is that they govern people who do not know Akanu Ibiam or Michael Okpara.

The citizens do not know because, with a life expectance of 54, over 90 percent of today’s inhabitants of the East were not born when Ibiam and Okpara ran the region’s affairs. They do not know Ibiam or Okpara because nobody taught them the history of that era when men with their manhood still intact ran the region’s government.

Even the not-so-distant era of Sam Mbakwe in the 1980s has faded in the memory of those currently occupying the territory called Eastern Nigeria. So, that is the unfortunate era that we found ourselves in the East. We must, therefore, put any analysis of things happening in the East within that context to get a reasonable understanding.

The other context vital to an understanding is that the current leaders are of a generation that saw the defeat of the East in the 1967-1970 Biafra-Nigeria war. Without proper healing or debriefing, the generation that makes decisions in the East stumbles into things they have not processed well.

Many are still battling with undiagnosed and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder. In the last two decades, these have been the characters bestowed with the responsibility to guide this critical region of Nigeria. One can argue that they stole the mandate, that nobody bestowed anything on them, but that is a conversation for another day.

So, when people wonder why these governors are penis-shy over their own people’s security and welfare, as an example, that is a place to begin to understand it. Deep inside, they are still a defeated people manifesting their subjugation. They worship in the shrine of their conquerors.

And because they are not upright, they cannot look their masters in the eye and tell them the truth without risking retribution. Nobody told them that the most potent insurance against retribution is uprightness and working in tandem with their people’s wishes and desires. Even those amongst them, who are smart enough to know, cannot resist the temptation that power and endless loots shove to their faces each day.

To make matters worse, the Obianos, Ugwuanyis, Ikpeazus, Umahis, and Uzodinmas of the East have to contend with the next generation who are impatient. The generation has no patience for excuses and no patience for failure. They have had the hint that it wasn’t always like this. They have had the premonition that their forefathers once were masters of their fate. They cannot fathom how the current state of affairs came to be, and frankly, they do not care. They want it changed, and they want it changed like yesterday.

The conundrum of this era is that the leaders have no skillsets needed to harness the energy of the young. Meanwhile, the young have no patience or knowledge of the affliction that crippled their fathers. Each side is holding their newly found flags up, rushing down the hill that leads to the river banks without any advance knowledge of what climate change has done to the river.

The rallying cry from the East has always been a simple one. It goes like this – since the end of the war, the East has not received fair treatment in Nigeria. In the process of chorusing this cry, we sidestep the next logical sequence of thinking. Historian Professor Chieka Ifemesia articulated it this way – what others did to us is a lot, but what we did to ourselves is enormous.

The master plans for the East’s economic development, as contemplated by Ibiam and Okpara are somewhere collecting dust. The exclusive list in Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution is not the only reason nobody is implementing them. The truth is that awareness is not there on the part of leadership, and even when they are made aware of it, the will is not there to make it happen.

The easy path to take is to blame it on the unitary or centralized nature of the Nigerian constitution. While the constitution’s structure constitutes an impediment, a determined people, impatient with failure, will find a way to knockdown obstacles on their way to get to their divine destiny. While we wait for that struggle to bubble to the surface, we have to contend with watching the Lilliputians of the East take on the constitution-backed Gullivers who lord it over them.

The Obianos, Umahis, and other travellers who have crashed onto leadership positions in the East will be dancing on the rope for a long time. Those of them who cannot stomach the moral repudiation of their transgressions will use alcohol to mask their inherent discontent. Those whose whole existence rests on the stupendous loots they accumulate, like mad women of Ogbete market, will run to a dozen shrines searching for an elusive peace of mind.

As for those unsatisfied by either loots or liquor, there are always the arms of women of easy virtue. There they will find fleeting resemblance of peace and tranquillity until the inevitable storm of karma sweeps them off the face of the earth. And then, history will remember them for squashing the opportunity of a generation.