Igbo Community Development: Okafor and Onuachu broke the jinx of darkness.
The community of Umuota was agog on Tuesday, 22nd December, 2020 when electric light was seen for the first time in her history.
The elation can never be overemphasized as elderly men were walking happily to one another’s houses in jubilation, mothers were raining blessings on the duo messiah, Chike Okafor and Paul Onuachu, while youths were not left behind as they were scrambling for their phone chargers to charge their phones in their houses with electric light for the first time in history. Phone calls were also sporadically made to contact relatives in different parts of the world that Umuota village has been given electric light by Chike Okafor and Paul Onuachu.
Onuachu is a 26 years old Imo State born football player. He hails from Umuota Agbaghara Nsu; a village in Ehime Mbano Local Government Area of the state. Currently, Onuachu plays for both the Super Eagles of Nigeria and Genk FC of Belgium. As at the time of writing this article, he holds the record of scoring the top fastest goal in Nigeria’s international football history and the fourth fastest goal in the history of international football in the world, when he scored within 9 seconds of Nigeria’s clash with Egypt on the 26th of March, 2019. This sole goal of his that gave the Super Eagles of Nigeria victory over Muhammed Salah’s Pharaohs of Egypt broke the record of Nigeria’s inability to win Egypt for a long time of about thirty years. Furthermore, as at the time of writing this article, he tops Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski and other footballers as the highest goal scorers in the 2020/21 football season in the Europe’s top leagues.
Onuachu’s village, Umuota Agbaghara Nsu is located in Ehime Mbano Local Government Area of Imo State. The village is the food basket of both her immediate and distant neighboring communities. It has a very rich and fertile land that attracts people from diverse communities to scavenge the area on daily basis. Such farm produces as palm fruits, cassava, maize, yam, cocoyam etc. are among the agricultural staples produced massively therein. But in the light of the foregoing, the village can hardly be accessed as there is no road network. Other such social amenities as health centers, electricity and so on were lacking. All efforts to get the attentions of the various governments never materialized.
Consequently, the villagers have for more than twenty years resorted to tasking themselves through contributing levies and collectively selling their farm produce to raise money to electrify the village. In August and September 1990, few electric poles were bought. But these could not go anywhere.
By 2015, there was a rekindled ray of hope when Hon. Deacon Chike Okafor remembered this community that was forsaken by successive governments.
Then, Chike was vying to represent Okigwe South Federal Constituency in the Nigerian National Assembly. During his campaign that year, he gifted the community with a 33KV transformer and the sum of Two Hundred Thousand Naira to assist in the project. This single act was the first of its’ kind in this village as the only dividend of governance in this area before then were cups of rice, salt and bars of soap that politicians would always share during electioneering. But like the incident of 1990 mentioned above, this philanthropic gesture was still far from being enough as the villagers continued to task themselves to actualize the goal of getting electricity.
Fortunately, by August, 2019, the village’s youth president, Comr. Innocent Eke got a call from Mr. Uchenna Onuachu; the senior brother of Mr. Paul, informing him that Paul directed that an estimate of what it would cost to give the village electricity should be forwarded to him immediately. This was done without delays and within days, crop of electrical engineers were shipped to Umuota Agbaghara Nsu. Within few weeks, the entire community took a new look as both electric poles and wires punctuated everywhere for the first time in her history. But the work could not be completed before the surge of Covid-19 took over the world. By the time lockdowns were relaxed in Nigeria, Paul ordered the workers to get back to work without further delay. This resulted to the joy on 22nd December, 2020, when light was seen for the first time in the history of the village.
This 2021, UGOAMAKA is encouraging all Igbo illustrious sons and daughters to unite, pick a project and do in their community.
Ndewonụ.
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