When the South-East Development Commission (SEDC) was signed into law in July 2024, it marked more than the creation of another federal agency; it represented the formal recognition of a long-suppressed regional question and a promise that the South-East would finally be approached with intention, coordination and justice.

Predictably, expectations were high, perhaps unavoidably so, given the decades of agitation that preceded the commission’s birth and the depth of infrastructural, ecological and economic deficits it was designed to confront.

Lessons from the South West

The South West did not stumble into regional coherence by accident. From the days of the old Western Region under Obafemi Awolowo, development was approached as a collective project, anchored on long-term planning, institutional coordination and shared imagination.

From free education to industrial estates, farm settlements and regional infrastructure, the South West understood early that regions that plan together grow together.

Even in the Fourth Republic, that instinct has endured. Bodies like the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission, whatever their imperfections, are built on the same logic: that regional competitiveness requires vision, coordination and patience.

The South-East, by contrast, has largely operated in silos, with states competing rather than complementing one another, and development thinking often reduced to short-term projects rather than shared strategy.

It is against this historical backdrop that the SEDC must be understood — not merely as a project-implementing agency, but as a platform for rebuilding a regional development mindset that the South-East once had and gradually lost.

What the SEDC has actually done

Much of the current criticism of the SEDC rests on the assumption that the commission has received and expended vast sums of money without visible output.

That assumption is misleading.

The SEDC is still in its institutional formation phase. Contrary to circulating claims, it has not yet received full programme funding comparable to older commissions. What has been released so far has largely gone into staffing, institutional setup, stakeholder engagement, planning and coordination — unglamorous but unavoidable groundwork for any serious development institution.

Under its managing director, South-East Development Commission, Mark Okoye, the commission has focused on one thing many critics appear to discount: rallying the South-East around a shared development conversation.

This is not accidental.

Rather than rush into scattershot projects that replicate the failures of past interventionist agencies, the SEDC has chosen to prioritise regional alignment — getting governors, federal actors, private sector leaders, civil society, youth groups and the diaspora to sit at the same table.

That process has culminated in the South East Vision 2050 (SEV2050) initiative, a long-term planning framework designed to articulate where the region wants to be in 25 years and how to get there.

This is precisely how serious regions plan.

Vision before bricks and mortar

One of the most damaging myths in Nigerian public discourse is the idea that development begins with contracts rather than imagination.

Every region that transformed itself did so by first expanding its sense of what was possible.

Japan imagined industrial rebirth after defeat. Singapore imagined global relevance without natural resources. Dubai imagined itself as a crossroads of capital and ambition.

In Nigeria, the South-East itself once did this. Under Michael Okpara in the 1960s, the region imagined itself as productive, industrial and self-reliant — and for a brief period, became the fastest-growing economy in the world.

The SEV2050 process is an attempt to recover that mindset.

Its four-day stakeholder forum, scheduled for February, is not a “jamboree”, as some critics have alleged, but a structured planning exercise designed to do what the South-East has not done in decades: define outcomes before constraints, ambition before allocation.

The forum’s design — technical deep dives, political alignment, stakeholder validation and implementation architecture — reflects global best practice in long-term regional planning.

Critically, it recognises that infrastructure follows imagination, not the other way round.

Dispelling the rumours

It is also important to separate verifiable facts from rumours.

There is, as of now, no published audit report establishing that ₦5 billion or any other sum was misappropriated by the SEDC. Allegations, however loudly repeated, remain allegations until investigated and proven.

Equally, claims that the commission has no strategy are contradicted by publicly articulated planning documents, stakeholder engagements and the emerging SEV2050 framework.

This does not mean the SEDC should be immune from scrutiny. On the contrary, transparency, performance benchmarks and public communication must improve. Development institutions survive on trust, and trust must be earned continuously.

But scrutiny should be anchored in facts, not frustration.

The bigger question

The real question confronting the South-East is not whether the SEDC is perfect — no institution ever is at birth — but whether the region is finally prepared to do what successful regions do: think long-term, act collectively and resist the temptation to cannibalise its own institutions at the first sign of delay.

By 2050, the South-East can be an industrial powerhouse, a hub of innovation, a magnet for diaspora capital and world-class talent — the Japan of Africa in ambition, if not geography.

The question is not whether this is possible.

The question is whether the South-East is willing to align its imagination, leadership and institutions today to make that future inevitable tomorrow.

If imagination precedes policy, and policy precedes projects, then the SEDC — imperfect, evolving and contested — may yet prove to be the most consequential institution the region has built in a generation.

Uzoma Osunkwo, a public policy analyst, writes from Umuahia.