By Dennis Agbo

ENUGU- A former governorship candidate of the Action Democratic Party, ADP, in Imo state, Chief Obioma Akagburuonye has proposed economic and industrial emancipation as the way forward for the Igbo people in the mist of their difficult and hostile neighborhoods in Nigeria.

Akagburuonye advised all Igbo in Nigeria and in Diaspora to embrace the ‘Aku Ruo Ulo’ initiative of home investment as a clear path to self assertion, avoiding clashes with neighbours in the country and restoration of their waning political dignity in Nigeria.

He stated that other cosmopolitan cities in Nigeria have become congested while the south east cities remain undulated and advised Ndigbo to help decongest the already congested cities outside Igbo land by taking their investments back home.

He motivated Ndigbo not to despair, recalling that the Igbo in their past experience in Nigeria transformed and nurtured 20 pounds into factories, thriving businesses, manufacturing plants and into mansions in Asokoro and Banana Island.

Akagburuonye said that the Igbo can still reinvent themselves with proper articulation of their strength, weakness, strategy and leadership.

He gave the advice in a paper he presented during the 2024 convention of the World Igbo Congress, WIC, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United Stated of America (USA).

According to Akagburuonye, “Abuja, Lagos, and the other non-Eastern States are already congested and we need to help them decongest. This can be achieved by developing Alaigbo that is not only conducive but also secure to attract foreign economic investment. Ndi Igbo, when we embrace and imbibe the spirit of Aku ruo ulo, the transition to the new Alaigbo will be rapid.”

Making a SWOT analysis of the Igbo nation, Akagburuonye said that “the greatest strength of the Igbo nation is our enormous human capacity, even if latent. We have a huge population of very resilient people; our population constitutes a vast market yet to be tapped. We also have unarguably some of the brightest minds in the nation.

“By far the major weakness that confronts the Igbo nation is the obvious dearth of any suitably articulated strategy whether in the short, medium or long terms, to unlock the enormous potentials of our people. We are too individualistic in our pursuits that the very indispensable corporate agenda that can make us competitive in contemporary terms are totally absent.

“One clear opportunity is evident; Igboland is economically green. Under such circumstances, innovations come cheap. Hope is also a regularly available opportunity. A major threat to our corporate and even individual existence is a rapidly growing number of unemployed and unemployable youth, rapidly increasing illiteracy and very unscrupulous value system. This is undoubtedly an emergency situation; if we do not as a people act swiftly to arrest this situation; the condition would in no distant time severely encumber us.

“A lesser, though, somewhat significant threat is our hostile neighbourhood, occasioned by the negative perception of the regular Igbo person by our three neighbours. Owing to the fact of our large population and absence of comparatively large arable land, the ordinary Igbo person, in the process of the natural survival instinct, from the old time, grew resilient and determined.

“In the regular Igbo person’s mind-set of his individualist pursuits of livelihood, there is a very defective supposition that egalitarianism and republicanism presuppose that leadership is superfluous. So, we carry on with the old-fashioned and flawed understanding of the philosophy that “Igbo enweghi Eze”. This attitude, in contemporary reality, is as anachronistic as it is defective. It is paradoxical to hope to achieve the desired unity when we are fiercely independent. In an increasingly competitive society, a community without a ‘senior prefect’ is doomed.

“It is very imperative that a strong socio-political apex leadership exits that would have the responsibility of creating this synergy towards enunciating strategies for the actualization of our potentials and corporate missions.”