Imo wears the mask of progress, but behind its polished billboards lies a government that feeds on illusion — and a people sinking beneath the weight of misrule.
The State of Illusion
At first glance, Imo State pretends to be working. The roads glisten under fresh asphalt; roundabouts bloom with ornamental flowers; the governor’s face beams from banners declaring victory over poverty and insecurity. But talk to the people — traders in Douglas Market, students at IMSU, pensioners queuing outside empty banks — and a different portrait emerges. Beneath the décor of development lies exhaustion. Behind every slogan is a statistic that no one in power wants to explain.
Imo’s wounds are not visible from the highway. They live in the unpaid civil servant, the dying school, the trader crushed by taxes, the mother watching her child cough in a hospital without medicine. What has collapsed here is not infrastructure alone, but faith — faith that government still means service, that the state still belongs to its people.
Debt Without Development
In five years, Imo’s public debt has climbed beyond ₦205 billion, the sharpest rise in the South East. Yet there is little on the ground to justify it. The promised industrial parks exist mostly in press statements; the “smart city” projects are skeletal; even rural feeder roads built last year have begun to peel like old paint.
Every month, the state spends more on maintaining government than on serving citizens. Salaries, allowances, and “security votes” swallow what should fund classrooms and clinics. The governor boasts of “massive road construction,” but most of these projects are funded through opaque direct-labor contracts that escape independent verification. The Debt Management Office warns that Imo’s loan servicing now consumes over 70 percent of its monthly federal allocation — a red flag that signals insolvency in any responsible system.
The state borrows to pay salaries, then borrows again to celebrate paying them.
The Vanishing Economy
Across Owerri and Orlu, the hum of small business — the real engine of Imo’s economy — is fading. Markets operate on half their old rhythm. Power outages stretch for days. Transport fares rise while disposable income collapses. Youths drift to Port Harcourt and Lagos, chasing jobs that Imo has stopped creating.
The National Bureau of Statistics estimates unemployment in the state at 41 percent, but the real figure, say independent researchers, is far worse when underemployment is factored in. The result is a society surviving on side hustles and remittances — a fragile lifeline that masks a deeper rot.
Imo’s government often blames “economic headwinds” or “federal neglect.” The truth is more painful: there is no coherent plan. The state has no defined export policy, no industrial clusters, no creative-industry framework, no incentives for small manufacturers. In the absence of structure, what thrives is speculation — land flipping disguised as investment, photo ops mistaken for policy.
The tragedy is that Imo is not poor; it is simply mismanaged. It sits on abundant gas reserves, fertile farmland, a literate workforce, and proximity to two seaports. What it lacks is leadership that knows how to turn potential into prosperity.
Infrastructure by Performance
In the past four years, road construction has become Imo’s official theatre. Every election cycle brings a new “flag-off,” every failure a new renaming. Roads that never existed are declared completed; completed ones collapse within months. Journalists who question cost estimates are branded “enemies of the state.”
Independent monitors have found that more than 60 percent of contracts awarded between 2021 and 2024 remain incomplete or failed quality inspection. Many are financed through emergency procurement, a loophole that allows inflated budgets to pass without scrutiny. Meanwhile, the state’s public works department has been gutted — engineers replaced by political loyalists with no technical training.
Development has become performance art: measured not in durability, but in the number of ribbons cut.
When Fear Became Policy
There is a reason Imo’s streets go silent after dark. The state has lived for years under the shadow of violence — banditry, political assassinations, extrajudicial raids. In some towns, fear has replaced governance as the real organizing principle.
Nowhere is that fear more institutionalized than in the operations of the infamous Tiger Base, the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Imo Police Command. Once created to combat violent crime, it has degenerated into a syndicate of intimidation — accused of torture, ransom, and disappearance. Victims whisper of detention without charge, families of suspects describe midnight arrests, and corpses reappear without names or explanation.
Yet, despite public outcry, the state government continues to fund and defend these operations. Law enforcement has been recast as political theater — punishment for dissenters and a warning to journalists. Under the guise of security, impunity thrives.
For many citizens, safety now means silence.
Schools Without Teachers, Hospitals Without Hope
Officially, Imo has “revolutionized education.” In reality, many schools function on life support. Rural classrooms have no teachers; urban ones are overcrowded. According to the Nigeria Union of Teachers, three in every ten public schools operate with fewer than two qualified instructors. Textbooks and laboratory equipment are scarce. In some local councils, students still learn under leaking roofs.
The story repeats itself in healthcare. Primary health centers are shuttered or skeletal; doctors are underpaid or gone abroad. Once-proud hospitals like the Imo Specialist now operate on generator fumes and goodwill. Mortality rates rise quietly, unnoticed by politicians who measure success by convoys, not clinics.
Read also: Why Captain Iheanacho Is Imo’s Best Hope—Part 1
Governance by Optics
Imo’s current government has perfected the art of appearance. Press briefings replace accountability; slogans replace substance. “Shared Prosperity,” “Hope Alive,” “Rebuilding Imo” — phrases repeated so often that they now function as lullabies.
Behind this pageantry lies a communications machine more funded than the health ministry. The 2025 budget allocates nearly ₦3 billion to “information management,” double what is set aside for public libraries. Social media influencers are paid to amplify propaganda while independent journalists are harassed or denied access.
Governance has become marketing — a contest of adjectives, not actions.
The Diaspora That Still Cares
Across London, Houston, Johannesburg, and Toronto, the Imo diaspora watches with dismay. In 2024, they remitted ₦180 billion to families and community projects — money that now props up an economy the government has failed to sustain. Yet there is no official diaspora policy, no investment bureau, no incentive for collaboration.
Imo’s best minds build abroad what they were denied at home. Their return is no longer an aspiration; it is an act of charity.
But many of them now speak the same name: Iheanacho. To them, he represents the possibility of alignment — a leader who understands global systems but remains rooted in local responsibility. A technocrat fluent in both boardroom English and village reality.
The System of Excuses
Imo’s leaders have grown expert at explaining failure. Federal neglect, court battles, insecurity, sabotage — the catalogue of excuses expands yearly. But the citizens have stopped listening. The markets have no patience for press conferences; the hospitals have no electricity for rhetoric.
Governance is not storytelling. It is arithmetic of courage — the daily discipline of fixing what is broken.
That is where Captain Emmanuel Iheanacho enters the conversation. His appeal lies not in charisma but in competence — the rare ability to convert plans into performance. He does not romanticize the challenges; he organizes them. He speaks of debt restructuring, fiscal discipline, and institutional rebuilding, not to impress, but to instruct.
In a political culture addicted to improvisation, that is leadership in its purest form.
A State Waiting for Balance
Imo’s crisis is not fate; it is human error, multiplied by arrogance. The same hands that broke it cannot fix it. The state is desperate for equilibrium — for a leader who governs by numbers, not narratives.
Captain Iheanacho may not promise miracles, but he offers something rarer: method. A steady hand on a drifting vessel. A voice untrained in populism but fluent in precision.
And if Imo still has the courage to choose reason over noise, it may yet find its way back to the shore.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an internationally acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
👉 https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
