UMUAHIA – The birthday anniversary of Chief James Chijioke Umeh has come and gone, but the echoes have refused to die down, and at the centre of the echoes is the Secretary General of The Abia Patriots, Mazi Adindu Madumere, who insists Abia has not yet paid full attention to its most unique gift to Nigeria.
Speaking in Umuahia shortly after the celebration, Madumere described Chief Umeh, popularly known as Ike Abam, as a rare Abian whose life has become a classroom for patriotism. Chief Umeh epitomizes patriotism personified, he said, he should be given his flowers now while he is alive. He is a gift not just to Abam, but to Abia and to Nigeria as a whole.
According to Madumere, The Abia Patriots, a non-partisan league of eminent Abians at home and abroad, is deliberately spotlighting Umeh because his philanthropy is not cosmetic, it is structural, sustained and strategic, and that is why Governor Alex Otti himself had to elevate his chieftaincy from Ike Abam to Ike Abia.
The title Ike Abam was conferred on him in early 2021 by the 27 autonomous communities of Abam clan in Arochukwu LGA. In Abam titles are earned, not bought, and it came after his Unubiko Foundation began to rewrite the story of the community. But what started in Abam refused to stay in Abam.
Under Unubiko Foundation, Umeh completely rebuilt Ovukwu Abam Secondary School with over N250 million and rebuilt Onyereubi Comprehensive Secondary School from ruins, sank between 44 and 49 boreholes for the 27 villages of Abam and neighbouring communities to end decades of water scarcity, provided transformers to light up villages, and built and gifted between 30 and 52 fully completed two-bedroom bungalows to widows and less privileged families who had never dreamt of owning a roof.
He has paid medical bills of hundreds of indigent patients at Federal Medical Centre Umuahia, built and donated a Level 2 Primary Healthcare Centre at Ndi Okereke Abam fully equipped with multi-parameter monitors, ultrasound, oxygen delivery system, modern laboratory and pharmacy which is now part of Abia State Government’s Project Ekwueme, rebuilt the 83-year-old colonial customary court built in 1939 at Amaelu Abam which was abandoned by judiciary staff, and in education awarded multi-million naira scholarships including a landmark N300 million grant for primary, secondary and tertiary students across Nigeria, paid WAEC fees for students of Atan Abam, donated N6 million worth of books to the NUJ national and state councils, and gave N500 million to Abia State Polytechnic for vocational excellence.
At the peak of COVID-19 in 2020 he distributed PPEs to all Abam communities and to FMC Umuahia alongside food palliatives and cash, and his intervention and advocacy alongside Rep Ibe Okwara Osonwa was credited for Governor Otti’s approval for reconstruction of the long-abandoned Omenuko Bridge linking Abam to Arochukwu, Ohafia and to communities in Akwa Ibom and Cross River.
It was this statewide spread that made Governor Otti at a public function refer to him not just as Ike Abam but as Ike Abia, and the new name stuck because the philanthropy had already crossed clan borders, earning him The Sun Humanitarian Service Icon Award 2022, African Hero Award at the 15th Voice Achievers Awards 2026 in London and commendation letters from previous administrations.
Mazi Madumere said the lesson from Umeh is simple, patriotism is not press statement, it is what you do with your resources when government cannot reach everywhere. He does not wait for government budget, he builds a school, he does not wait for emergency, he builds a hospital, this is what we mean when we say Onye aghala nwanne ya, be your brother’s keeper, Abia Patriots celebrates him.
He called on other well-to-do Abians at home and in the diaspora to emulate the Unubiko model of targeted intervention aligned with SDGs on poverty, education, gender equality, clean water and strong institutions, noting that Umeh has shown you can be wealthy and still be humane, that Abia needs a thousand Ike Abias, but must start by celebrating the one it has.
