Many people today praise and commend Sam Mbakwe, but I don’t think he should be praised. It has been exposed. He needs to be questioned and drilled with questions. I do not believe in praising people any longer. Sam Mbakwe or any key member of his family should be drilled with questions.
If you pay attention, you’ll see why I demand any member of Sam Mbakwe’s family to be questioned. This can’t be taken again. Never! Let me tell you a story.
Some years back, a man governed Imo State – the old Imo State. His name was Chief Dr. Samuel Onunaka Mbakwe, fondly called Dee Sam. He was the first democratically elected governor of Imo State during Nigeria’s Second Republic. According to reports, he remains deeply revered for his visionary leadership, developmental drive, and commitment to grassroots empowerment.
This man, governed from October 1, 1979 to December 31, 1983. That is four years and three months. Not a decade. Not two terms. Just one term.
The old Imo State was massive, it covered the territories of today’s Imo, Abia, Enugu, and Ebonyi States combined. He was governor of all of it. And he didn’t have the kind of oil revenue today’s governors enjoy.
Despite financial constraints and federal government neglect, Mbakwe’s ability to mobilize resources, including communal contributions, showed his capacity for creative governance.
In fact, despite not being part of the ruling party and facing financial challenges from the federal government, he was nicknamed “the crying governor”, not because he was weak, but because he was visibly moved by the suffering of his people. He cried, and then he built.
Now, no story captures Dee Sam’s spirit better than the Sam Mbakwe International Airport. It was the first state-owned airport in Africa, built through local community efforts and financial contributions from Ndi Igbo. Think about that for a moment. The federal government wasn’t going to give him an airport, so he went to the people.
He mobilized them. Such was Mbakwe’s ability to inspire and galvanize that he once mobilized most of his followers to the site of the airport project to work manually and patriotically towards its realization, which then seemed like climbing Mount Everest.
Today, that airport bears his name. It is a monument to what collective will and purposeful leadership can achieve.
Dee Sam, understood that a people who cannot feed themselves cannot develop. So he built farms, not small token farms, but serious, large-scale agricultural enterprises.
He built the Avutu Poultry Farm in Obowo which was once the largest poultry farm in West Africa, providing employment and a steady supply of poultry products, contributing to both the local and regional economy.
He also built the Ada Palm, the Adapalm plantation in Ohaji/Egbema/Oguta, which became the biggest palm plantation in the entire South East and South South, processing palm produce at scale and employing thousands.
He also built the Golden Chicken Poultry Farm in Ukwa, in present-day Abia State, another large-scale agricultural investment, extending his vision beyond Imo’s heartland into the wider old state.
Dee Sam truly separates himself from those who govern with press releases. He established over 100 industrial and commercial enterprises across Imo, Abia, and parts of Ebonyi States.
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These were real factories, real jobs, real production. Let’s name some of them:
- The Amaraku Power Station — the first state-owned and independent electricity generating station in Nigeria, because he knew industries couldn’t run on wishes.
- The Aluminum Extrusion Industry in Inyishi, designed to support the construction industry with locally produced aluminum materials.
- The Resin and Paint Manufacturing Plant in Aboh Mbaise, which had the potential to generate significant revenue for the state. This made Imo State home to the first paint manufacturing industry in the South East.
- The Imo Glass Industry, the Standard Shoe Industry, and the Nsu Ceramic Industry, meaning people in the old Imo State wore shoes made in their state, from glass manufactured in their state, living in buildings tiled by their state’s ceramics.
- A paper mill where books and toilet paper were made. Then, schools in the region could be supplied with locally produced books.
- The Paper Packaging Industry in Owere Ebiri Orlu, and the Imo Newspaper Limited. Media was brought under productive state investment.
- The Imo Tiles Industry at Nsu in Mbano, following the discovery of commercial quantities of kaolin, clay, limestone, and alumina in Okigwe and Mbano, projected to generate billions in income annually.
- The iconic Concorde Hotel in Owerri, an international-standard hotel that became a landmark of Imo’s hospitality industry.
Under education, he did a lot. Let’s have a look
In 1981, Sam Mbakwe set up Imo State University, with the campus located in territory that was later ceded to Abia State in 1991 and re-christened Abia State University. But the vision didn’t stop there. He also established the College of Technology Nekede, today’s Federal Polytechnic Nekede, a hub producing engineers, technicians, and innovators, as well as the College of Agriculture Umuagwo, a solid foundation for agro-based development and youth employment.
He believed educated people were the real infrastructure of any state.
Development that stays in the capital is not development, it is decoration. Dee Sam knew this. He spearheaded statewide rural electrification and water projects, initiating about 169 regional water projects, and prioritized road construction across the state while developing the Owerri Capital City Master Plan.
Some of the quality roads built in Aba and other parts of the eastern region during his administration are still standing today, while roads built several years after him have long disappeared. That tells you everything about the quality of his governance versus the governance that came after.
His initiatives extended to essential services, including public water access, the electrification of nearly every community, and the creation of Nigeria’s most advanced urban drainage system at the time.
After reviewing all of this, one question becomes impossible to avoid: if Sam Mbakwe could do all of this in four years, with less money, under a hostile federal government, governing a state four times the size of today’s Imo, what exactly is the excuse of those who have governed for eight years and left nothing behind?
The truth is this: four years is not the problem anywhere. Lack of vision is the problem. Lack of commitment is the problem. Prioritizing personal enrichment over public good is the problem.
This is a wake up call for leaders in Africa.
Mbakwe’s tenure was not about aesthetics, token projects, or personal enrichment. It was about laying down structures for mass employment, productivity, and regional pride.
He didn’t build things to take photographs with. He built things to last. He built things to work. He built things so that the children of the old Imo State, in what is today Imo, Abia, Ebonyi, and parts of Enugu, could have a future that wasn’t dependent on oil money from Abuja.
His achievements have not been equalled by anyone, talk less of surpassed.
Decades have passed. Multiple governors have come and gone. Some have had more money, more peace, more federal goodwill. And yet, when people in the South East want to point to what good governance looks like, they still point to a man who served one term and was removed by soldiers in 1983.
That is either a tragedy for those who came after him, or the highest possible tribute to him.
Four years is enough. Sam Mbakwe proved it. The argument was settled in 1983. We just need leaders who have read the file.
SAM MBAKWE or any member of his family, needs to questioned on how he achieved this.
God bless his soul.
Alvan Chinaka
