About 40 years since he died, the second Premier of the defunct Eastern Region, Dr Michael Iheonukara Okpara, was honoured on August 22, 2024 with a lecture and awards event that was graced by many eminent personalities in Abuja.

Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State, who played a leading role in making the event a success, also delivered the lecture which brought back, in graphic details, Okpara’s achievements that still make him a reference point as a people-centred selfless leader, achiever and master strategist.

Also, a fund-raising was done towards building the proposed Michael Okpara Leadership Centre in Umuahia, his home town, in Abia State.

Okpara, a medical doctor who was popularly known as “M. I. Power” in his heydays as a leader of the defunct National Council for Nigerian Citizens, NCNC, replaced the first Premier of the Eastern Region, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s foremost independence patriarch, in 1959. He led the Eastern Region (now Imo, Abia, Rivers, Anambra, Akwa Ibom, Enugu, Cross River, Ebonyi and Bayelsa states) till the first military coup of January 1966.

During his six-year reign, the Premier focused his “Okparanomics” on agricultural, educational, industrial and infrastructural revolutions which, according to data from a research group of Michigan State University in the USA, ranked the Eastern Region as the fastest industrialising economy in the world by 1964, ahead of Asian Tigers – Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan.

Okpara achieved this feat because of the vision, vigour, patriotism and incorruptibility which he brought to his leadership of a multi-ethnic region. This fostered inclusion and even development. Some of the projects built during his era are still serving the people, unlike these days when politicians build roads and bridges that collapse within six months.

Okpara was so selfless that he did not own any property or plot of land in Enugu, the regional capital, though he generously allocated land to others for development.

The Okpara lecture and others that honour leaders like Azikiwe, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and others, are means by which we immortalise our founding fathers and celebrate their virtues for the emulation of the current and future generations. They must be encouraged.

We are disappointed that only Governors Uzodimma of Imo State and Bassey Otu of Cross River State, among the Eastern Governors, showed up at the event in person. Others sent “representatives”, while the rest were aloof. Uzodimma also exploited the occasion to advertise his achievements as a “disciple” of the Okpara model of leadership.

We hope those who pledged generous amounts towards the building of the Okpara Leadership Centre will honour their names to complete the centre “within one year” as Uzodimma promised.

It is befitting that future Okpara lectures be held in the Okpara House in Umuahia.