By Abdulrauf Aliyu
There was a time when the South East of Nigeria was synonymous with excellence. It was the cradle of post-independence industrial ambition, a region where the likes of Michael Okpara envisioned and executed grand regional plans – farm settlements, industrial clusters, and a state-driven economy that rivalled others in Africa. The spirit of ingenuity that produced the Biafran refinery during war, the Aba shoe industry in peace, and intellectual output from the University of Nigeria Nsukka once made the region a reference point. Today, however, that same South East is trapped in a tragic contradiction: it has the talent, the capital, the diaspora, and the will of its people, yet it is led—more often than not—by a class uninterested in actual governance.
The 2025 Phillips Consulting State Performance Index (pSPI) provides cold, unvarnished evidence of this decline. Of the five South Eastern states, only Abia showed any meaningful progress—leaping from 36th to 10th in the national rankings. Every other state in the region either stagnated or declined. Imo, once hailed for innovation in health and education, it now languishes at 31st. Anambra, long thought to be a model of private sector strength, ranks a shocking 34th. Ebonyi, with its burst of infrastructure spending, fails to translate that visibility into citizen satisfaction. And Enugu, once dubbed the “capital of the East,” now swims in the shallow waters of mediocrity.
To understand how a region so rich in human capital and historic resilience could descend into such poor governance, one must look beyond data. It requires a deep interrogation of political culture, elite behavior, and the decline of public accountability.
In The Republic, Plato warned that when the love of honour is replaced by the love of wealth, states decay. The South East appears to have reached this tipping point. Power is now pursued not as a means to serve but as a means to accumulate. State houses have become fortresses of isolation, where governors are rarely seen, and when they speak, they offer little more than slogans. Meanwhile, the basic functions of governance—sanitation, transport, security, youth employment—are outsourced to chance, luck, or God.
Consider Imo State, where a turbulent political environment has stifled policy continuity. While it previously made gains in infrastructure and human development indices, its current ranking reflects a failure to maintain momentum. Public perception is dismal. The streets are choked with waste. Civil servants grumble about unpaid entitlements. And what should be a thriving intellectual capital in Owerri now reads more like a city resigned to broken promises. In governance, regression is never neutral. It creates new forms of injustice. It crushes hope.
Anambra, often cited as the entrepreneurial hub of Nigeria, suffers from the myth of its own potential. Its people are industrious; its diaspora is wealthy; yet the state itself cannot seem to organise governance beyond media optics. The 2025 pSPI ranks it among the worst in citizen perception. The roads remain cratered. Security has deteriorated. And the absence of strategic state-wide planning belies the private wealth that flows through Onitsha and Nnewi. It is a classic case of private success sitting awkwardly beside public failure.
Enugu, with its rich history and cultural gravitas, suffers from a form of arrested development. It ranks 20th nationally—not terrible, but not impressive either. The state continues to run on the fumes of its civil service economy, with little innovation in job creation or infrastructure reform. As one walks through Independence Layout or Trans Ekulu, the signs are subtle but sobering: once-thriving estates are now ill-maintained; public buildings age without restoration; and youth energy dissipates into migration or street-level survival. The state, like a faded aristocrat, survives more on memory than merit.
Ebonyi perhaps offers the most perplexing case. It has built roads, overpasses, and other visible infrastructure. Yet its pSPI performance suggests that citizens do not feel the impact in their lives. This disconnect is crucial. Development is not the number of flyovers but the number of lives changed. Health outcomes, school completion rates, and public trust—these are the true currency of progress. Ebonyi’s leadership, past and present, may well have chased visibility over impact. And visibility, unaccompanied by utility, becomes little more than concrete without conscience.
Abia, to its credit, has achieved something close to a miracle. From being the worst-ranked state in 2024, it now ranks tenth. It did not discover oil, nor did it receive some federal windfall. What it discovered was leadership—plain, unvarnished political leadership. The state improved in both objective data and citizen perception. This means things were not only done, but people saw them being done. There is now a growing sense of order in Aba. Salaries are paid on time. Public engagements are more frequent. Citizens report a new culture of responsiveness from local government. While much remains to be done, Abia has proven a timeless point: performance is not about what you have, but what you do with what you have.
Yet, even Abia’s progress cannot lift the region alone. The tragedy of the South East is that it once set the pace for others. Today, it is merely surviving. The reasons are not mysterious. The region is gripped by elite insularity. Political succession is rarely merit-based. It is a marketplace of loyalty, not competence. Campaigns are built on symbolism, not substance. State assemblies, meant to be checks, function as ornaments. Civil society, once robust, is weakened by political patronage and fear.
The region’s intellectuals, who should be shaping policy and strategy, have been either co-opted or silenced. Where are the think tanks? Where are the public service reformers? What passes for policy discourse in the South East is often theater—a staged announcement, a ribbon-cutting, or a choreographed town hall where dissent is a stranger.
The South East is not short on potential. It is short on structure. The diaspora remits billions but lacks organised channels to influence governance. There is no regional masterplan, no economic corridor binding the states together, and no harmonised education or healthcare strategy. The political class, fractured and provincial, appears too consumed with self-preservation to conceive of a collective renaissance.
And yet, history offers both warning and encouragement. The Italian city-states of the Renaissance era declined not because they lacked brilliance, but because they refused unity. Florence and Venice could have led Europe, but their rivalry condemned them to irrelevance. The South East may face the same fate if it continues to act as five isolated fiefdoms rather than a region with a shared destiny.
The pSPI is not a perfect instrument, but it is a useful one. It has made transparent what many tried to ignore. If taken seriously, it could become the spark that forces change—from citizens who now have evidence of neglect and from leaders who might still fear legacy.
The South East does not need another hero. It needs a generation of governors who will act with the urgency of our ancestors, who built roads, founded schools, and planned beyond their tenures. What is needed is not noise but competence. Not charisma but character.
Until then, the region will remain what it currently is: a gifted land ruled by men afraid to use their gifts.
