At Christmas
marvel that Amokwe is part of a South Easter Nigeria where nearly everyone is king in his own compound and over his family and personal staff? To see this sort of thing in a place where hollow, pointless and absolutely ridiculous self-affirmation is the norm, as well as the bane of group cohesion and progressive ideas?
Unlike what obtains in many villages, towns, local governments and states of the South East, places where competition and fat egos drown out the desire for public good, has created a template that is worthy of emulation. The Dallas chapter of Amokwe Progressive National Organization (APNO and US chapter), Amokwe Development Foundation (ADF) are working together and complementing each other. In doing this, they are not just organising empty public ceremonies and releasing communiques on community development, no! They are now towing the path of folly, like the World Igbo congress that is convened annually in the US, as a “speaking opportunity platform” for Igbo leaders who are yet to distinguish between public ceremonies and substantive interventions with measurable impact. The motivators and sustainers of the Amokwe spirit recently had a very successful APNOUS/ADF convention Dallas, with results that people at home are seeing almost immediately. is re-inventing the old Igbo, and indeed Nigerian, spirit that made a community into one people. All the projects conceived, or executed, here are designed and driven on the principle that the common good is the greatest guarantee of lasting happiness and sustainable well-being. There are no predators, scavengers and scammers here. None who tries can get a foothold, either. The old virtues of basic honesty, general goodwill, and a sense of justice and inner decency still operates here. It should be able to still carry the people much further, if it has brought them this far; notwithstanding the fact that we are in a land with vanishing, or at least speedily decaying, values. And they are not taking anything for granted, either. Eternal vigilance helps to minimize deviance and mischief.
If you take away the occasional, and barely meaningful, government interventions in the area you will see that the Amokwe Progressive Union (APU) of the 50s and 70s left a mark that in now impossible to erase. This community is what it is today because the efforts of concerned individuals who were either lucky to be strategically placed in government, or had valuable connections in government circles and therefore were able to attract development projects to the town, were replicated and translated into a group philosophy. The “think home” mindset of their people of means has been driving multidimensional development in the town. Come and see the spirit of brotherhood, of community, of love and goodwill for the town and her people, as well as a disposition to channel and administer the fruits from the love and goodwill with utmost honesty, wisdom and efficiency.