Let us begin with what is verifiable, not what is whispered in corridors.
The push for ANIM State is real, organised, and current. It is no longer just drawing room speculation. In June 2025, Senator Osita Izunaso said a bill for a sixth South East state, tentatively named ANIM, had passed second reading in the Senate and moved to the Senate Committee on Constitutional Review. By March 2026, South East stakeholders were again in Abuja lobbying for the proposal, with reports saying the new state would be carved from parts of Anambra and Imo, with Orlu proposed as capital. Those reports also quoted Izunaso as saying lawmakers from Imo and Anambra had endorsed it.
This matters because the proposal did not appear from nowhere. It sits on top of an earlier Orlu State agitation. In June 2024, a House bill seeking Orlu State passed first reading. That draft already listed Oguta and Ohaji/Egbema among the areas to be pulled into the new configuration. By late 2025, reporting on the constitutional review public hearing in Enugu said Anim State had surfaced as a broader vehicle and listed LGAs proposed for it, including Ohaji/Egbema, Oguta, Oru East, Njaba, Isu, Nwangele, Nkwerre, Ideato South, Orlu, Oru West, Orsu, Ideato North, and Ihiala. In other words, the map may have evolved, but the strategic target did not: the oil and gas corridor stayed inside the proposal.
That is where the issue stops being sentimental and becomes economic.
Ohaji/Egbema is not peripheral land. It is strategic energy territory. Seplat announced in January 2026 that the ANOH gas project in the Ohaji axis had achieved first gas. The plant was described as having two 150 MMscfd processing trains, LPG recovery units, condensate stabilisation units, and a 16MW power plant. Earlier commissioning reports tied the facility to a broader 600 MMscfd capacity build out. This is not small infrastructure. It is the sort of asset that shapes future royalties, host community leverage, industrial siting, and long term political bargaining power.
So when people ask why Ohaji/Egbema and Oguta matter, the answer is simple: because stripping them from Imo would not be a cosmetic boundary tweak. It would touch the state’s hydrocarbon future, fiscal profile, host community politics, and strategic relevance in the Niger Delta and South-East energy equation. That is exactly why local resistance from the area is politically important.
And resistance there is.
In June 2024, Ogbako Ohaji People’s Forum rejected the inclusion of Ohaji in the proposed Orlu State, saying it reflected “political conquest and selfishness,” not the will of the people, and stressing Ohaji’s ties to Owerri. In August 2025, National Congress of Ohaji Youths also rejected inclusion in ANIM, saying they preferred to remain in Imo State, explicitly citing cultural affinity with Owerri and describing the old political alignment as an imposed arrangement. Vanguard also reported that 22 oil producing communities rejected inclusion in the proposed ANIM State and referenced a May 2025 letter to the Senate President opposing the move.
That creates the first major contradiction in the ANIM campaign: the resource bearing communities most affected have publicly pushed back.
The second contradiction is constitutional. Under Section 8 of the 1999 Constitution, creating a state is not accomplished by press conferences or elite endorsements alone. It requires a request backed by two thirds of elected representatives from the affected area in the National Assembly, State House(s) of Assembly, and local government councils; then a referendum with two thirds approval in the affected area; then support from a majority of state assemblies nationwide; and finally two thirds approval in each chamber of the National Assembly. So any attempt to quietly “carry” communities that are openly objecting is not just politically fraught; it runs into the basic architecture of the Constitution itself.
Now to the politics.
Public reporting shows the pro ANIM side is active, visible, and coordinated. South East leaders and stakeholders met Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu in March 2026 to seek support. Reports quoted Izunaso saying the agitation had backing from political leaders, traditional rulers, local government officials and stakeholders, and that the Imo government had already developed state level infrastructure in Orlu in anticipation of the project. The broad argument from promoters is parity: the South East has five states, while every other zone has six or seven. That equity claim is real and politically potent.
But parity for the South East does not automatically answer which communities should be surrendered by Imo.
And this is where the silence becomes deafening.
In the materials i personally reviewed, there is clear public advocacy for ANIM, and clear public resistance from Ohaji groups. What is far less visible is any comparably forceful, coordinated, public counter position from the broader political leadership of Owerri and Okigwe zones warning about the consequences for Imo if Ohaji/Egbema and Oguta are absorbed into a new state. That absence does not prove compromise. It does not prove anyone was “settled.” It does not prove a secret deal. But it does create a damaging political optic: while one side organises, lobbies, names a capital, and builds consensus, the other side appears reactive, fragmented, or quiet.
That is the real question hanging over Owerri and Okigwe elites.
Are they studying the numbers?
Are they engaging the constitutional process?
Are they defending Imo’s economic spine?
Or are they so consumed by succession games, zoning arithmetic, and access to power that they are failing to see the structural risk right in front of them?
What is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore is the strategic precision of the ANIM lobby: while the public is still being fed vague language about equity and restructuring, Orlu is quietly being positioned for statehood, with reports of a brand new Government House already in place and infrastructure being shaped to support its emergence as a future state capital. Yet, in all of this calculated movement, the people of Owerri and Okigwe do not appear to be carried along, and their leaders are behaving in ways that raise troubling questions. Are they truly informed, or are they merely watching events overtake them? Have they been compromised, settled, or rendered politically timid by the Governor’s studied silence on 2027. Can they afford to keep mute on a matter that could fundamentally alter the future of Imo State? The good people of Owerri and Okigwe zones must begin to call their leaders to order, because if Ohaji/Egbema and Oguta are carved away and the economic spine of Imo is stripped out, then what exactly will be left for them to rule over? This is no longer the time for polite silence or clueless posturing. It is time to ask whether those entrusted with defending the future of Imo are truly awake, or whether they are preparing to sell it out for ambition, access, and temporary political comfort.
Because if Ohaji/Egbema and Oguta are detached, the injury would not be symbolic. It would be material.
It would mean that after almost 24 years in which Orlu’s orbit already benefited politically from the inclusion of these oil-bearing territories inside Imo West/Orlu Zone, the next phase would be even bolder: take the hydrocarbon belt, attach it to a new state project linked to Orlu and parts of Anambra, and leave the remainder of Imo to argue about equity over a weakened asset base. That is not a settled fact of law yet. But it is a plausible political reading of the map now being marketed.
And yes, that should alarm anyone who thinks beyond the next appointment.
The larger implication is stark. If Imo loses core oil-and-gas territory while rival state projects elsewhere in the South East continue to compete for recognition, then the state risks emerging from the state creation debate smaller in strategic value, weaker in future resource politics, and more internally divided than before. Meanwhile, promoters of ANIM would have converted the language of regional justice into a vehicle for territorial and economic rearrangement.
That is why this moment demands more than whispers.
It demands public clarity from: the three Imo senators, members of the House from affected federal constituencies, the Imo House of Assembly, top appointees, business leaders, traditional institutions, and every serious political actor who understands what Ohaji/Egbema and Oguta represent in the next phase of Nigeria’s gas economy.
The facts already on record are enough to justify alarm: there is an active ANIM push, the oil and gas belt is inside the proposal as publicly reported, the host communities have objected, and the constitutional process is hard enough that silence now may become regret later.
So the burden is now on Imo’s leadership.
Not to gossip.
Not to posture.
Not to wait for signals.
But to say, plainly, whether they will defend Imo’s economic heartland, or watch it negotiated away in the name of “equity.”
By Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE 
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