- By Uche Nworah
I once drove by this 2 – storey building at Unubi, Anambra state on my way to a friend’s Ozo title taking ceremony. The house which surely has seen better days looked deserted with its gate wide open as if begging for visitors to come in, just anyone to warm its cold chairs or to sleep on the moth infested beds.
It’s gate pillars have been reduced to mere obituary poster display stands.
I couldn’t help but stop to snap and to ponder at the Igbo man’s dilemma. We will toil in the city and go home to our villages to build mansions that we only sleep in few times in the year.
In this case, I wondered what had happened to the man that built this house, surely this mansion must have been the cynosure of all eyes and the envy of neighbours in its best days.
Today, the same mansion stands alone, looking derelict like an abandoned ship washed ashore. Many thoughts confronted me, could the man’s children be living abroad? In far away America, UK etc and do not plan to come and settle in the village anymore? Typical of today’s Igbo children in the diaspora.
How can Ndigbo unlock the trapped wealth locked away in assets such as this that dot the Igbo landscape?
Surely, these are foods for thought. To build a palatial mansion in the village or to just build a modest compact home? Onye na nke ya!
