Come Thursday 30th December 2021, the Team Make Ogbunike Great (TMOG) will rally the Ogbunike people to its inaugural public outing in what promises to be a redirection for one of Anambra’s most resourceful and dynamic towns.
The highlight of the event is a lecture titled “Illicit drugs addiction: A source of insecurity” to be delivered by frontline scholar, Onunkwo Chuma Martins of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra state.
The TMOG has existed as a virtual gathering of Ogbunike sons and daughters from diverse backgrounds. The body founded by Ogbuefi Dr. Harris Udokamma Chuma-Odili popularly known as Ogene Igbo primarily sets out to rethink the place and fortune of the Ogbunike communities of over 2million people. The overwhelming feeling around the time the TMOG was formed was that the Ogbunike hadn’t received a fair deal from Anambra state, in spite of its ample contribution to the economy of the state. The event Ogbunike Youths Summit seeks to weave the vision and mission of the TMOG, foregrounded by revival, into the discourse of the way forward for Ndi Ogbunike as enunciated in the buzz around Anambra vision 2070.
The condition of the Ogbunike cannot be divorced from the general state of decrepitude. The truth be told, there is none for whom all is well in Ogbunike. The trouble with Ogbunike knows neither religion nor class. The agitation by different pressure groups is fallout of the tendency of being at the receiving end in Anambra.
Again, Ogbunike is on the march to visibility, as Team Make Ogbunike Great (TMOG) led by Dr. Harris Udokamma Chuma-Odili has founded a people renaissance movement.
The TMOG, which is today Ogbunike’s formidable socio-cultural organization, is galvanizing the Ogbunike people onto the path of progress.
The ongoing transformation of the Ogbunike from obscurity to visibility is the product of the vision and verve of the founders of the TMOG who are mobilizing the people far and near and harnessing their resourcefulness and intelligence.
The TMOG saw education as the tool that will emancipate the Ogbunike people and position them advantageously in Nigeria. It thus founded Ogbunike Youths Education Empowerment Scheme to remedy the educational disadvantage of the people. It awarded scholarships to deserving sons and daughters to study in Eastern Polytechnic Porthcourt, and Estam universities.
Dr. Odili, who envisioned a new dawn for the Ogbunike and assiduously labouring for it, is receiving tremendous support from great sons and daughters of Ogbunike both at home and in diaspora. The seed he planted is growing and his lieutenants are pushing the dream of Ogbunike greatness in their hearts and stubbornly working for its materialization.
During the first and second republic Ogbunike reached commanding heights in every sphere of human endeavor in Nigeria and beyond. The likes of Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, Dr. Edwin Onwudiwe, Igwe John Ositadimma Umenyiora, Prof Ilochi Okafor Senior Advocate of Nigeria SAN former VC Nnamdi Azikwe University, Bishop Mike Okonkwo, Bishop Dennis Isiuzo, Bishop Christian Efobi, and many others became giants in Nigeria’s economic, corporate sectors, academic and religious circles.
Unfortunately, the Ogbunike now talk about the foregoing like folktales prefaced with “once upon a time”. The Ogbunike have fallen into bad times.
Insecurity, unemployment, urban squalor, broken infrastructure, poor education and health facilities, abrasion of moral cum cultural values, youth restiveness, poverty, exploitation, marginalization and deprivation by the successive governments. There is pervasive gloom and the Ogbunike have taken to lamentation for so long.
As the TMOG summons the town to the inaugural event it is doing so without leaving the Ogbunike Progress Union behind; and the President-General, Comr Emma Ikegulu will lead his exco members to the event. It is hoped that issues that will engender a renaissance for the Ogbunike will spring forth so that the ideals of old that fired the Ogbunike imagination will be reborn and Ogbunike shall evolve a Strategic Agenda and march on to assume its rightful place, politically and economically, in the Anambra of our dream.
TMOG Media Release (c)2021