If there is one thing that sticks out like a festering sore, it is the consistent failure of those elected or appointed from our zone to deliver the true dividends of democracy. This, to a people and a zone that gave many of them their very first financial lifelines, their first opportunities, and their first platforms in life. Instead of giving back, they turned their backs, trading gratitude for greed and betraying the trust of the very soil that raised them.
We are always quick to heap blame on the state and federal governments, but what about our own? What about those elected and appointed from Owerri Zone? What happened to all the constituency project allowances allocated over the past 26 years? Where are the schools, health centers, roads, and empowerment programs those funds were meant to deliver? And beyond elected officials, what has been the tangible input, contribution, or effort of our sons and daughters strategically placed in ministries, departments, agencies and parastatals? Have they leveraged their positions to uplift their people, or have they, too, been content to line their pockets while their communities decay?
Though these failures are not exclusive to Owerri Zone, I can only speak from the reality I see daily, within my zone and my immediate surroundings. It is here that the neglect is personal, the betrayal is familiar, and the pain is lived.
Since 1999, as Nigeria’s Fourth Republic unfolded, Owerri Zone has consistently sent its sons and daughters into public office, some got appointed through politics. Yet, nearly three decades later, the burning question remains: what do we have to show for it?
Where are the good roads that should connect our villages to the state capital? Where are the functional schools and colleges that should empower our children with education? Where are the well-equipped hospitals and health centers that should serve the poor and vulnerable? Where are the job-creating industries or legacy projects that could stand as monuments of vision? What we have instead are personal mansions, foreign education for their children, and private businesses funded with the sweat of the people. Owerri Zone deserves better than this cycle of selfishness and neglect.
The inner villages and localities of Owerri Zone lie in shambles, surviving only through community effort and private sacrifice. Most communities are practically cut off, left to fend for themselves in the absence of basic infrastructure. Yet, those we elected or celebrated into high office sit back, amassing obscene wealth at the expense of the people, doing nothing to ease their suffering. The irony is damning: even the roads leading to their ill-gotten palatial homes are impassable, swallowed by erosion and neglect. It is a symbol not just of failure, but of a curse, So called leaders who enrich themselves at the expense of the people while the land that birthed them wastes away in silence and decay.
In the history of our zone, we have not been blessed with leaders whose footprints can be called truly impactful. Instead, we are left with a painful catalogue of wasted opportunities, self-enrichment, and betrayal of collective trust.
The Empty Scorecard
Where are the schools they built?
Where are the modern roads that open up our communities to commerce and industry?
Which hospitals or health centers stand today, fully equipped, as monuments to their vision?
Where are the enduring scholarship programs that lifted the children of the poor?
What legacy projects exist for history to remember them by?
The answers stare us in the face, none, or very little worth mentioning.
Personal Wealth, Public Poverty
Instead of transformational projects, what we have witnessed is the privatization of public wealth. The political careers of most Owerri Zone leaders can be summed up in one bitter truth:
They built their first houses with the sweat of our people.
They used public office to marry, raise families, and train their children abroad.
They launched personal businesses with the very resources meant to develop our communities.
They emerged from office richer, while the zone remained poorer.
They should, at the very least, show gratitude to the same society whose commonwealth they plundered, and begin to give back.
The Tragedy of Enablers
But the fault is not entirely theirs. We, Ndi Owerri, enabled them. We campaigned for them, celebrated their appointments, and defended their failures. Our silence and docility became their license to loot. The tragedy of Owerri Zone is that we have consistently mistaken access for impact, appointments for achievement, and survival for success.
A Call for Reckoning
As we approach another political cycle, the choice before us is stark:
Do we continue this curse of recycling and elevating proven self-serving and greedy elected or office holder politicians who see office as a ticket to personal elevation and agrandisement, or do we finally demand leaders who will write their names in history with bricks, mortar, and enduring legacies?
Owerri Zone cannot afford another 26 years of empty promises, pothole politics, and legacy of neglect. If we fail to confront the truth now, we will condemn yet another generation to poverty under the shadow of greedy, unaccountable leaders.
Owerri Zone must rise to ask: are we cursed with leaders, or are we simply cursed with our own silence?
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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