IMO STATE, RICH, BUT POOR; AN ESSAY ON DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION IN THE FACE OF ABUNDANT RESOURCES, 1976 – 2011

Abstract

Beginning from 1976 when Imo state was created out of the defunct East Central State of Nigeria as was the case with many states of the federation, the new state was inevitably faced with problems of underdevelopment. Consequent upon this, successive administrations, both military, civilian, and private business operators boastfully and vainly claimed that efforts by way of economic and political policies had been initiated to bail the nascent state from the clutches of avoidable poverty. These initiatives such as free primary education, encouragement of state wide sanitation exercise and its enforcement by sanitary officers popularly known then as Nwole Ala, scholarship programmes and stable political environment which guaranteed reduced insecurity and confidence in political leadership. According to the successive military leaders in the state, these were parts of the grand strategies to steer the state away from imminent underdevelopment and place her on the part to prosperity. Unfortunately, these lofty initiatives could not substantially translate into, or trigger the much expected or desired leap in economic fortune of the state through sustained industrialization, which would have brought about development and improvement in quality of life for Imo citizens, rather what obtained was persistent reduction in quality of life and underdevelopment occasioned by massive de-industrialization in the face of abundant human and material resources. In view of these, the present paper opines that the weak economic condition to which Imo State was subjected within the time under review was caused by myriads of factors which were both political and economic to which the state was plunged by the successive military administrations in the state. To achieve the studies’ set objectives, thematic, historical and analytical methodologies were adopted as emphases were laid on both primary and secondary sources of data.