In the backwoods of Emeabiam, a community nestled between the Uramurukwa and Otamiri rivers, stretches about 1,260 hectares of rubber plantation. Deep inside the estate, many of the trees remain untapped, their bark drying and peeling. Some still bear faint scars of past tapping, but there are no spouts, cup hangers, or collection cups to channel and gather latex.
This is not because tapping was temporarily suspended, the trees had become unproductive, or maintenance was underway, but because activity on the plantation has dwindled significantly over the years. In several sections, pests have begun to eat into the ageing trees, while thick bushes have overtaken large stretches of the estate.
This location was formerly known as the Emeabiam Rubber Estate, one of three major rubber plantations in Imo State established by the Premier of Eastern Region during the first Republic, Michael Okpara, whose administration aggressively promoted plantation agriculture as a strategy for export earnings, industrial raw materials, rural employment and regional economic development following Nigeria’s independence in 1960. Through the Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation (ENDC), the government acquired vast areas of land for rubber, oil palm and other crops across the region.
Rubber trees inside the Estate
The Emeabiam estate, located in Owerri West Local Government Area of Imo State, emerged from an arrangement in which community leaders leased 1,260 hectares of communal land to the regional authorities. Emeabiam comprises two autonomous communities- Emeabiam and Umuokpo–each of which was said to have contributed portions of its ancestral land for the project.
While residents of Emeabiam say the arrangement came with promises of development, employment and shared prosperity, there is little publicly accessible documentation today clearly outlining the exact terms of the agreement.
The good old days
When the estate was fully operational, Ugochukwu Stevenson, a member of the community, said that production followed the standard plantation structure in which both liquid latex and solid rubber forms were obtained from the same tapping process. The estate had tappers, latex processors, machine operators, transport workers and administrative staff, numbering over 2000 in its workforce. There were different camps where workers who came from outside Emeabiam lived, with electricity and water.
Although the estate was largely state-driven, British expatriates provided technical assistance and processing technology. Reginald Anaemeotu, a native of Emeabiam, worked at the estate as a tapper. He told this reporter that he and other workers would tap the trees at night or early morning. He says he was one of the best at the time. According to him, proceeds from rubber production were partly remitted to the government, while a portion was reinvested into maintaining the plantations and sustaining operations.
Reginald worked at the estate as a tapper
“After tapping, the latex is collected from the trees using a tapping spout, cup and hanger and transported to a processing facility”, he recalled. “There, chemicals are added to thicken the liquid into solid rubber.”
He explained that the thickened material is then milled into sheets, dried, and prepared for onward transport to factories where it undergoes further processing. At the time, each worker had over 300 tree stands to tap as their daily task. Anaemeotu said he was later moved to another section of the plantation and asked to increase his output due to his outstanding performance.
“I was now handling over 600 trees alone; the trees were in their thousands and were being maintained,” Akpan recalled. “I would arrive around 10 p.m., after eating at home, with a headlamp and a cutlass because nighttime was when the latex flowed best,” he recalled. “When I slice the tree, the rubber would begin to flow heavily. I would tap from tree to tree until about 4 a.m.” The containers were always there.” As other colleagues were tapping, I was already collecting latex and taking it to the factory.”
Dunlop and Michelin, which had begun manufacturing tyres in Nigeria shortly after the country’s independence, used latex harvested from Emeabiam and other Rubber Estates in the country for their work. Beyond tyres, rubber derived from Emeabiam and other locations was used by various manufacturers to produce Footwear, rubber mats, moulded carpets and conveyor belts, among other rubber products.
Emeabiam in Owerri West, Obitti, and the Umuekwune Rubber Estate in the Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area reportedly accounted for about 35 per cent of Imo State’s Gross State Product at their peak, playing a major role in employment generation, rubber exports, and rural development.
The decline
The estate remained under government control and continued to operate as a state-managed enterprise after the Nigerian Civil War. But with the creation of Imo State in 1976, the ownership and oversight of the plantation were transferred to the new state government. By the late 1980s, management of the plantations had been consolidated under Imo Rubber Nigeria Limited, a state-owned agricultural company incorporated on June 5, 1989 (RC 132156).
“That was when the problem started,” Anaemeotu said.
Pests are also destroying the trees
He said that private individuals approached the government with promises to generate greater revenue from the estate, and the state government handed it over to them.
“They were only interested in their pockets and less about managing the estate. There has been no reinvestment in replanting, maintenance, or processing infrastructure. The government’s decision to privatise the estate was wrong”, he declared.
Stevenson said that the development deepened local grievances and that community members have continued to raise concerns over a lack of transparency, exclusion from decision-making, and the absence of tangible benefits from the continued use of their lands.
Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics at Akwa Ibom State University, Sunday Akpan, said that the 1970s oil boom also contributed to the neglect of traditional agricultural sectors such as rubber, a sharp drop in investment, and infrastructure decay.
He explained that the import substitution policy (an economic strategy where a country seeks to reduce its reliance on foreign goods by producing them domestically), which was the “spending plan” for the oil boom at the time, prioritised urban manufacturing like the establishment of automobile and electronics assembly plants, heavy Industries like iron and steel mills, petrochemical plants, and large-scale cement factories and urban staples such as textiles, breweries, and flour mills.
“The government used massive oil revenues that could have gone toward rehabilitating ageing rubber plantations to finance these urban industrial projects,” he said.
Trees continue to dry inside the estate
As a result, Imo state shifted away from state-led agricultural models toward privatisation. This led to the erosion of the institutional clarity that once sustained Emeabiam estate at Inception. Successive administrations maintained the trajectory.
Privatisation controversies
Court records in Attorney General of Imo State & Anor v. Imo Rubber Estates Ltd & Ors (2019) indicate that Emeabiam Estate underwent an attempted commercialisation process in which shareholding was allocated to private interests. According to the records, a private firm, Vitalis Services Ltd, registered on 22 June 1990, with registration number RC 151463, acquired a majority equity stake while the state retained a minority stake.
The Imo State Government had set up an Interim Board in January 1991, led by industrialist, Ferdinand Anaghara, whose son, Anaghara Obinna, is a Director at the company. The committee had a 5-year mandate to transition the asset into a private placement scheme. However, the state government argued that the privatisation was never executed or finalised and that the asset remained a state-owned enterprise.
When contacted, Cosmas Nwabueze, former Imo State Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, confirmed the attempted commercialisation of the estate. He, however, said that the company involved wanted to convert it to private ownership, and so, the government took it back and handed it over to the Ministry of Agriculture.
The Court of Appeal, led by Justice Mbaba (JCA), re-established the corporate principle that once a company is incorporated, it becomes a distinct legal personality separate from its shareholders. The court clarified that day-to-day management belongs strictly to a lawful board of directors rather than state executives. However, it ultimately ruled in favour of the Imo State Government, having found that the post-1991 commercialisation process was never legally concluded or approved by the government.
With Chief Anaghara now late (having passed in 2007) and his immediate family members unreachable, this reporter was unable to secure his side of the story regarding the controversial commercialisation of the Emeabiam estate. This reporter visited Plot C-16, Independence Layout, Enugu, the office address of Vitalis Services Ltd, but did not find any traces of the company. A search on the website of the Corporate Affairs Commission shows that the company has been struck off.
Bushes take over Emeabiam Estate
When this reporter visited the plantation, large sections from its entrance had been overgrown with bushes. Logs of rubber trees cut down for firewood were seen at different locations.
Anaemeotu alleged that at night and during the day, people from outside the community come to cut down these trees and carry them away, often with the approval of the individuals handling the estate. The trees are also used forfurniture.
Entrance into the Estate
Members of the community said that the state government no longer cares about how the estate is run but what it benefits from the arrangement. In 2002, a fire reportedly razed large sections of the estate, with officials at the time alleging sabotage and pledging to investigate and penalise the perpetrators, but more than two decades later, there is no public record of any investigation into what caused the fire.
For young people in Emeabiam, the collapse of the estate represents not just economic loss, but a missed opportunity for large-scale job creation. Many of them engage in sand mining, while a few of them are commercial motorcyclists.
This is reflective of unemployment in Imo State, which has consistently ranked among the states with the highest unemployment rates in Nigeria, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Anaemeotu said that each time the contractors managed to come and tap, they engaged a few individuals in the communities whom they felt could constitute a threat to their operation.
Logs of rubber trees cut down for firewood
No benefits to host communities anymore
Eze Ike, the village head of Olokwu, one of the host communities, said that the original lease for the estate carried expectations of sustained compensation, employment, and reinvestment. He said that the estate once had a landlord association, made up of members drawn from each of the four communities upon which the estate sits. These individuals interfaced with government and estate managers. They advocated for compensation and unfulfilled promises tied to the original land agreement.
Ike says communities no longer receive any form of compensation
When it began operations, Ike said that the government always paid certain amounts of money as compensation to communities and also asked leaders to bring people to work on the plantation. However, for years now, nothing has come in from the estate. Ike says that the government has not come to inform the community that work has stopped at the plantation or that there is a new arrangement.
“We don’t know if they are paying anybody, and it is not getting to us,” he said. If they have, they should come and show us. We do not regret giving out our land for the plantation, but we feel neglected because we are entitled to compensation for our land.”
He told this reporter that several politicians have visited Emeabiam to make promises about reviving the estate and carrying the community along. At best, he said, those have been campaign promises.
Chinedu Amadi, a member of the community, said that if families had used the land for farming, it would have been better for them. He said that the contractors do not even maintain the road leading from the estate.
He insisted that even if the government handed it over to any contractor, the best thing would have been to inform them about the arrangement in place. He alleged that some individuals in the community might be sabotaging the general interest.
“We have held a protest to express our pain,” but nothing has changed.”
In the absence of any benefits, he said that community members occasionally enter the estate to cut down dry rubber trees for firewood. Also, this reporter observed that some portions have been cultivated by families.
Another section of the Estate
Contrary to claims by Eke and Amadi, the former commissioner, Nwabueze, said that the government pays owners of the land their statutory entitlement every month of about N250,000.
“There is no month they don’t receive what is due to them from the company as social responsibility. But we also work within the limits of our resources because you have to consider the level of operation. If we were supposed to be doing 200 tons monthly but are now doing 10 or 20 tons, you don’t expect the same benefit.”
Unsuccessful revival attempts
Successive administrations have pledged to revive the plantation, all to no avail. Sources say those have been mere political promises, as there have been no verifiable modern budgetary injections. In July 2019, for instance, the administration of Emeka Ihedioha set up a committee to recover, restructure and to re-establish the Imo Rubber Company, including the Emeabiam Estate. The essence, according to him, was to help create employment opportunities and improve the internally generated revenue (IGR) base of Imo State. However, his administration was removed from office following a Supreme Court judgement in January, 2020.
Under the administration of the current governor, Hope Uzodimma, available evidence also shows a pattern of recognition, recovery attempts, and policy engagement around the Imo Rubber Estate, even if these actions have not translated into full-scale revival.
In 2020, for instance, government officials conducted on-site inspections of the Emeabiam estate and uncovered that it had been taken over by “unauthorised actors”, prompting a crackdown on illegal operators and arrests linked to rubber theft and diversion of revenue. The intervention formed part of a broader directive by the governor to audit the status of state-owned industries and investigate why key assets were no longer generating income.
During the presentation of the 2023 budget proposal to the Imo State House of Assembly on December 20, 2022, Governor Hope Uzodimma stated that the Rubber Plantation Industry in Imo State had suffered major setbacks due to neglect from previous administrations. “The state government is poised to reposition our Rubber Estates at Obitti-Ohaji/Egbema, Emeabiam, Owerri West, Umuekwune in Ngor-Okpala and make them the Rubber Industry hub of the South East”, he said.
In 2021, community leaders, estate management, and government officials held meetings to “chart a way forward” for the estate. At the policy level, the Imo State House of Assembly in 2026 passed resolutions urging the governor to review, recover, and revitalise moribund state assets, including the Emeabiam estate.
An analysis of Imo State budget documents since the administration began revealed that no budgetary allocation was made for the Emeabiam Rubber Estate. Available budget performance records further indicate that even where allocations were made for rubber-related projects, there were no recorded releases.
Between 2019 and 2022, the Emeabiam Rubber Estate or the rehabilitation of another rubber estate, was not included in the state’s budget. While the state earmarked ₦300 million for a Rubber Development Scheme at Obitti Rubber Estate in 2023, budget performance documents show funds for the project were not released. Similarly, in 2024 and 2025, N300 million was budgeted for the establishment of a rubber plantation estate, respectively, but no funds were released.
Plantation is still functional, but not at the optimum level
Nwabueze said production continues at the plantation, but not at an optimal level. He said that there are over 200 state-employed tappers who work on the plantation.
“When I came in, I started paying them N300 per kg from N120 they were receiving formally”, he claimed.
“Every month, they harvest, and they sell the Latex and whatever they generate is remitted to the government; if it were not functional, we cannot be paying the tappers.”
More trees for firewood
He said the government was looking at the possibility of a public-private partnership arrangement to make the plantation more functional.
“A lot of investors are currently coming, indicating interest in the plantation, but the government is still waiting for the best investor with the capacity to add value”, he said.
Responding to questions about the near-derelict condition of the Plantation, Nwabueze noted that the scale of the plantation would require substantial financial investment. This is as he claimed the plantation generated more than N100 million since he took charge of the estate.
He, however, declined to state for how long he has been managing the estate, saying that information was unnecessary.
A national economic loss
The untapped potential of the rubber plantation in Emeabiam extends beyond the loss of economic opportunities for Imo State. Despite being the world’s 12th largest producer, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Nigeria continues to import substantial amounts of rubber.
Between 2015 and 2024, the country consistently imported four to ten times more rubber and rubber-based products than it exported, including $3.65 Billion in imports and $522 million in exports. In 2024 alone, Nigeria’s Rubber-related imports were valued at $324m. In the same year, the country only exported $81.3m worth of Rubber.
These figures underscore what experts describe as a structural trade imbalance in a sector where Nigeria holds a clear comparative advantage, with output largely stagnating between 145,000 and 159,000 metric tonnes in recent years.
For instance, despite an estimated 18 million hectares of land suitable for rubber cultivation, only about 200,000 hectares, roughly 1.1%, are currently in use. More than 80% of these plantations are managed by smallholder farmers, according to Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso, Director-General of the Nigerian Raw Materials Research and Development Council.
The exit of multinationals worsened collapse
Akpan said that the exit of multinationals, Michelin (2007) and Dunlop (2008), from Nigeria further crippled the local rubber and tyre manufacturing sector and ultimately the rubber estates in Nigeria. For decades, the two companies were the primary domestic off-takers for Nigerian rubber, consuming about 70% of the country’s raw latex.
However, both companies faced economic pressures that made local manufacturing unviable in the 2000s, driven by high production costs from epileptic power supply, poor infrastructure, and unfavourable import tariffs that favoured cheap imports.
Trees are drying up and falling inside the estate
“The situation transformed the country into an import-dependent market. And so, there was nobody to buy the latex again. What we now have are small processors that couldn’t trigger meaningful investments in the sub-sector. Unless we have a major buyer and processor, there will be no growth in the rubber industry.” Many people now rely on synthetic rubber from petrochemical production,” Akpan said.
Akpan says he does not see any realistic possibility of reviving the sector because of the enormous capital investment required, which, according to him, many state governments are unwilling or unable to commit. He added that rising population density and rapid infrastructure development have further complicated the situation, as states can no longer easily allocate vast hectares of land for large-scale rubber cultivation.
“Many states do not even prioritise the agricultural sector, and you can see from their budgets. Many of them depend on federal allocation to even pay salaries. They introduce policies but hardly implement them.”
By Arinze Chijioke
This report was commissioned with support from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) under a journalism support initiative funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy
(Ripples)