By Chinedu Anselem Nebeife
The inability of the south-east geopolitical zone to craft an effective and sustainable response to her development question over time has systematically crippled the zone, reducing her socio-political and economic prospects to mere illusions and fleeting wishes.
This sad reality has resulted in a despicable situation of arrested development all over the zone. A trip across Igbo land confronts one with a community whose environment is ravaged and her infrastructures dilapidated. A zone whose people are imprisoned in their land and mind by the painful chains of years of hopelessness in the face of the enormity of the challenges posed by a lack of sustainable development agenda.
But since the assumption of duties as the Director General of the South-East Governor’s Forum (SEGOF) by Distinguished Sen. Uche Ekwunife, CON, the development challenge in Igbo land seems to be receiving due attention, given the strategic direction she has steered the affairs of the Forum.
First, on assumption of duties she understood the need for the Forum to have a befitting office and for it to transmutate to a legal entity in order to be an effective player in the local and global matrix.
So, she facilitated an office complex in the Igbo coal city of Enugu, to serve as the Forum’s headquarters. Further, she set machineries in motion to register the Forum as a legal entity, to enable it engage meaningfully with both local and international development partners.
Haven done that, she nurtured the enabling environment for the Forum to emerge as a unifying and large spectrum collaboration platform for Igbo stakeholders. This goal required that she had to demystify and transcend the divisive barriers of political partisanship and religious affiliation in order for it to be realised.
Then again, she used the instrumentality of the Forum to get the governors of south-east to buy into a Fifty Years Marshal Development plan for the region. This plan, which amongst other goals is focused on turning the zone into a composite economic block in other to leverage on the economy of scale, is aimed at serving as a guiding compass in the Forum’s determined and decisive quest to set the region on the path to peace, progress and prosperity.
As an expert in strategic development, Iyom, as Sen. Ekwunife is fondly called by her followers and admirers, understands that every meaningful development thrust and endeavour has to align with the intrinsic instincts and impulse of the people. This mental model compelled her into setting an agenda for the reformation of the ancient Igbo Apprenticeship System, to make it more consistent with the realities and demands of the now. In this regard, she intends to use the reformed apprenticeship system as a tool to foster an ecosystem where prosperity is broadly shared, and where all and sundry can seek and attain upward economic mobility.
As a matter of fact, one can go on and on, as a research of the activities of the SEGOF under Iyom reveal a list of endless strategic initiatives all purposed at resolving the development question in Igbo land.
Given the challenging demands of attaining these bold and lofty Initiatives, one wonders where Iyom gets her motivation and strength from.
Apart from her deep and abiding faith in God, distinguished Sen. Ekwunife is a leader with an overwhelming love and sense of empathy for the people. And it is this enduring trait that fuels her tireless advocacy for the people’s welfare at every point in her political trajectory. It is also the reason her personality and career commands dumbfounding followership. No wonder her opponents and detractors lose sleep at the mere mention of her name.
Iyom belongs to that rare breed of leaders who motorise the dials of development and energise the winds of change like a hurricane.
Focused, courageous and determined, she sets goals and always achieves them. And it is for the sake of this goal-getting attitude of hers that a shiny rainbow of hope has emerged on the Igbo horizon of development.
In all of these, one thing is certain; SEGOF is answering the development question in Igbo land with a well crafted Marshall Plan and other strategic initiatives.
What’s more, with Iyom driving the affairs of SEGOF, ndi Igbo can comfortably go to bed knowing that a caring and competent hand is ensuring their future!
