“Imo is wealthy enough to power its homes, build world-class universities, establish gas-to-power plants, fertiliser factories, petrochemical industries, and generate jobs that would rival Dubai’s service economy. Instead, millions of its young people wander after graduation, clutching CVs moving from city to city, country to country, in search of the dignity of work”
Gas is taken from the belly of Imo, yet the taxes are paid in Lagos. Governor Hope Uzodinma’s lament is not mere politics; it is a cry against a structural order designed to keep some rich in resources but poor in reality.
Now consider this: Timipre Sylva once revealed that Imo alone holds over 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. To put that in perspective, if Imo were a sovereign country, it would rank among the top 10 nations on earth in gas reserves, ahead of giants like the United States and even Nigeria itself. That is not speculation, it is arithmetic.
And yet, in this same land where trillions of cubic feet of gas sleep beneath the soil, millions of young men and women wander after graduation, clutching CVs moving from city to city, country to country, in search of the dignity of work. They are nomads in a state that should be an oasis.
This is the paradox: Imo is wealthy enough to power its homes, build world-class universities, establish gas-to-power plants, fertiliser factories, petrochemical industries, and generate jobs that would rival Dubai’s service economy. Instead, the state depends on allocations trickling down from Abuja, allocations that are often less than what a single gas shipment earns on the high seas.
If Imo had the freedom of a country, it could stand tall in OPEC meetings. It could set terms of trade, dictate prices, and channel revenues into its communities. Roads would not remain gullies; hospitals would not lack beds; graduates would not roam like strangers in their own land.
But as things stand, the structure binds the hands of Imo, just as it does to many resource-rich states across Nigeria. The people watch their inheritance drained away, while the dividends are counted elsewhere.
The question then is not whether Imo has enough gas to stand as a nation; the question is whether Nigeria has the moral courage to restructure itself, to allow those who bear the burden of extraction to also taste the fruit of development.
Until then, the irony remains: Imo is one of the richest lands on earth, but its sons and daughters are among the poorest, left to wander in search of a future buried beneath their own feet.
