WRITTEN BY PROF. IFEANACHO ORAJAKA
The Oko Community, the Oko Polytechnic Community and indeed the entire people of Old Aguata Union,

OAU of Anambra State deeply mourn the departure of our hero and colossus, His Excellency, Chief Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme GCON (IDE AGUATA)
While we mourn the estate of high court of altruism and architect of development, we also have reasons all round this to thank the Almighty God for the gift of Dr. ALEX Ekwueme to us. IDE is a blessing from God to his people. We celebrate ADE AGUATA and we celebrate the life he lived, which touched millions in most positive ways.
IDE Aguata initiated the building of Aguata community Grammar School, now Aguata High School, the first community-owned school in Aguata zone. Less than three years of his return from overseas study, he came back with a bag full of academic laurels in arts, science and law. Ever since 1961, IDE’s imprint was virtually on every development in Old Aguata Union- the Aguata Post Office; Aguata Civic Hall; the Federal Polytechnic, Oko; the Federal College of Education (Technical), Umunze; Oko community hospital that served  the entire zone shortly after the civil war.
There is also the Pals Breweries that created thousands of jobs to our people. All the federal high ways in our sub-zone have never received attention except on Dr Alex Ekwueme’s intervention. IDE Aguata established trust fund, which today boasts of producing graduates in the forty-five communities of old Aguata in the 1960s and 1970s.
Dr Alex Ekwueme endeavored to ensure that virtually every family in Oko has a graduate. He provided scholarships for all and sundry-Oko people, Ndi Aguata, Eastern Nigerians and beyond. While we celebrate IDE Aguata for what God has used him to do among his own people, we are proud of IDEs accomplishments in the South East, nay Nigeria.
IDE Aguata became Nigeria’s Vice President before his forty-seventh birthday, just nine years after the civil war and did a marvelous job for us. The personnel content of that regime, the emphatic infrastructural statements in the South-East zone, just then emerging from the civil war, are all eloquent pointers to IDEs unparallel patriotism. They include the Federal University of Technology, FUTO Owerri; Seaport and Metallurgical Training Institute, both in Onitsha; the Multi-billion naira lower Niger Irrigation Project at Ifite-Ogwari and Omor, Ayamelum local government area; creation of Anambra/Imo River Basin Authority; Dualization of Enugu/Onitsha and Enugu/Portharcourt expressways; Onitsha/Otuocha/Adani road, new 9th Mile Ubolloafo/Otukpo road, Oba/Nnewi/Uga/Aroudizuogu/Okigwe roads to mention but a few, all within four years.
At the national level, neither by might nor by power but by share mental and intellectual prowess, IDE Aguata was able to leave his foot prints on the sands of time. Was it at the 1995 National Constitutional Conference, where his minority report gave Nigeria her present six geopolitical zone structure or was it his formation and leadership of G34?
Ekwueme was the founder and first national chairman and first chairman, Board of Trustees of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Who will know that IDE AGUATA was the founder of today’s Ohanaeze Ndigbo? IDE was a silent achiever; humble, unassuming, honest, consummate humanist and exceptionally cerebral.
Dr. Ekwueme perfectly feats the mindset of Shakespeare, when centuries ago, he wrote “The elements are so mixed in him, that nature will stand up and say, “here was a man, here was a Caesar, the great IDE AGUATA. When comes such another. Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Ide, we mourn you, we celebrate your life and times, we love you, we adore you and we say. Adieu Ide Igboland, Adieu, the Greatest of the old Aguatans. May your good soul find rest in the Lord!

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