Build infrastructure through community self-help (the 'Imo formula') — Sam Mbakwe

Total tracked

Kept

Partial / mixed

Broken

Kept

Partial / mixed

Broken

In progress

Development

Build infrastructure through community self-help (the 'Imo formula')

Kept

The promise

To match state funds with organised community contributions and use them to build roads, water schemes, hospitals and industry across Imo State.

Assessment

Mbakwe's administration is credited with an unusually intense capital programme for its resources — hotels, an airport project at Owerri (later named after him), water schemes, the Adapalm oil-palm estate and Avutu poultry among them — much of it delivered via matched community labour and money. The approach became a widely cited model of state–community co-financing.

Education

Establish a state university

Kept

The promise

To give Imo State its own university.

Assessment

Imo State University was founded in 1981 during his term. After the 1991 creation of Abia State it became Abia State University, Uturu, and a new Imo State University was established at Owerri in 1992.

Governance

Serve a full elected term

Broken

The promise

Implicit in his 1979 election and 1983 re-election as governor of Imo State on the NPP platform.

Assessment

Mbakwe was re-elected in 1983 and removed by the December 1983 coup, then detained by the military authorities. Widely known as the 'Weeping Governor' for publicly protesting federal neglect of the Igbo south-east, he is still invoked in Imo as a byword for a builder-governor.