Igbariam Farm Settlement… A Life Behind Modernity

Michael Ọkpara, the Premier of Old Eastern Region, built farm settlements across the region, ostensibly for no other reason than the fact that food is a basic necessity.

These farm settlements represent the hallmark of Eastern Agro dexterity, and puts a reasonable question mark on the hypothesis that “it would take the North to feed the South” of Nigeria, especially the Southeast. This a debate for another day. However, the Ọkpara experiment is an abandoned success story.

Generations of Igbo Leaders after Michael Okpara have continued to pauperize Agriculture, making it so unattractive in spite of its indispensability. I visited Village 2 Igbariam yesterday as part of my Research effort on a critical education related subject. Just as it was 3 years ago when I visited Villages 1 and 3, there is no significant effort to usher in modernity to these all important citizens.

The entire Igbariam Farm Settlement is without Electricity. Access roads are a story for another day. The Primary schools there are decrepit, and everything about the place is so “unAnambra”. The buildings there are still as Michael Ọkpara built them over 50 years ago.

Generations of Children born there are condemned to a life behind modernity. If Anambra must succeed at rural development, it must begin by ushering our brethren in Farm Settlements into, at least, the first phase of modern life.

— Mazi Ejimofor Opara writes from Awka, Anambra State.