Akan Tommey’s Accusers: Reframing Progress as Failure Through Falsehood and Propaganda

Akan Tommey’s Accusers: Reframing Progress as Failure Through Falsehood and Propaganda

In public service, blackmail rarely thrives where governance is weak. It flourishes where results are inconveniently strong, visible, measurable, undeniable, and unmatched. More often than not, those who descend into blackmail do so not because nothing is happening, but because too much is happening, far beyond their expectations. Unable to applaud progress, they manufacture controversy, hoping sentiment will succeed where facts have failed.

It is therefore worth asking: is exceeding expectations the real offence of Akaniyene Tommey’s administration in Eket Local Government Area? Has prudence, structure, and visible development become an uncomfortable mirror for a brand of politics built on entitlement, quiet deals, and routine sharing? That discomfort, perhaps, explains the desperate attempt to reframe discipline as neglect and progress as failure through falsehood and propaganda.

Let us be clear. In Eket Local Government today, politics is governance in its truest sense. No one is “owed” outside the framework of law. Resources are not missing; they are visible.

Historically, Eket has defined leadership through tangible legacies, not rhetorical promises. Just as Obong Samuel Atang constructed the stadium later remodelled under Governor Udom Emmanuel, the Akaniyene Tommey administration has completed and commissioned the 5,000-capacity Eket City Hall. This is not a monument to personal ego, but a durable public asset; an institutional investment designed to outlive its initiator.

Adjacent to it, the Smart Legislative Complex is steadily rising, envisioned as a modern, serene, and functional space for effective legislative work and informed deliberations. Together, these projects signal a deliberate shift toward strengthening governance systems rather than indulging personal comfort.

The ongoing remodelling of the Council Secretariat is less discussed, yet equally significant. Conceived as a smart and efficient administrative hub, it reflects the true stature of Eket Local Government “idung mfia anwe” not merely in words, but in productivity, dignity, and order. Notably, many of those often described as being “owed” by the administration are, in reality, contractors actively executing these projects.

The implication is simple and powerful: public funds are being deployed where the public can see them, use them, and verify their value.

Beyond infrastructure, economic intervention has been deliberate and measurable. The ₦50 million SME Grant Scheme, disbursed to 500 entrepreneurs, remains unmatched in scale within the state. It was neither a press stunt nor a selective handout. It was a conscious policy choice; opportunity over patronage, productivity over dependency.

Even in youth engagement and community cohesion, the administration rejected tokenism. The revived Eket Chairman’s Football Tournament where ₦5 million was approved and made avialable for the winners, ₦3 million for first runners-up, ₦2 million for third place, and ₦200,000 support for every participating team set a benchmark no local government has come close to challenging. It was never about politics or frivolity, but identifying and grooming talents, and as well as bonding Eket people for a shared benefit of progress and development.

Against this backdrop, the latest allegation making the rounds is that councillors and supervisors are unpaid, a claim that is curiously loud online and conspicuously silent offline. No councillor has spoken. No supervisor has come forward. No name, no document, no evidence. Only faceless narratives pushed by political outsiders who neither live with the consequences of governance nor possess the courage to own their claims.

This is where the blackmail collapses.

If anyone is owed, let them speak. Let them step into the daylight, not hide behind borrowed social media handles. Governance leaves records. Payments are traceable. Lies, however, survive only in anonymity.

Mr. Akaniyene Tommey, Executive Chairman of Eket Local Government Area, has chosen a difficult but consequential path; deploying resources into enduring public assets rather than appeasing private expectations. That choice has produced visible development and, predictably, resentment. History is familiar with this pattern.

In the end, noise fades. Records remain.

And when the dust settles, what will endure is not the blackmail of the moment, but the infrastructure, empowerment programmes, and institutional reforms that now define the Akaniyene Tommey administration; clear, concrete, and impossible to erase.

So, let it be known that no barefaced blackmail or any campaign of calumny will deter Mr. Akaniyene Tommey from leaving a positive mark on the sands of time in Eket Local Government Area.

Edet Edet lives in Eket Local Government Area.