GOV ENO AND THE IMPACT OF BOTTOM-UP DEVELOPMENT

GOV ENO AND THE IMPACT OF BOTTOM-UP DEVELOPMENT⬆️
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By A N I E T I E U S E N✅
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♦️ Professor Udeme Udofia, a specialised environmentalist at the University of Calabar and a known advocate of good governance, believes that Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State is a master strategist, a deep thinker and a go-getter, who is highly skilled at creating long-term plans to achieve specific goals.

♦️ Not everybody agrees with the young professor, who is currently on sabbatical in ExxonMobil (now Seplat Energy Producing Nigeria Unlimited), Lagos.

♦️ But the number of those who think like the brilliant professor within and outside Akwa Ibom State are rapidly increasing, perhaps exponentially.

♦️ Engineer Aminu Mohammed, the National Coordinator of the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, RAAMP, was in Akwa Ibom State, in May 2026. His mission was to commission the 11-kilometre rural road constructed by the Governor Eno Administration in partnership with RAAMP and the World Bank.

♦️ Governor Eno was not at that occasion because of some National engagements outside the State. But that did not stop Engineer Mohammed from speaking his mind. “We have 19 States implementing these projects nationwide, yet Akwa Ibom State has continued to distinguish itself through the quality, pace and strategic execution of its rural access and agricultural road infrastructure”, Engineer Mohammed said, sounding almost like Professor Udofia.

♦️ According to the assessment by the RAAMP boss: “What we are seeing in Akwa Ibom State is not just road construction, but a deliberate commitment to rural connectivity, economic inclusion, agricultural development and sustainable grassroot impact”.

♦️ This was a convincing testimonial based on first hand experience. It was actually a tiny fraction of the intimidating credentials that Governor Eno has garnered for himself and Akwa Ibom State in the last three years.

♦️ To many in the audience, the endorsement by RAAMP sounded like a script from the playbook of ARISE Agenda. But Engineer Mohammed is not a dramatis personae in the real-life documentary known as ARISING Agenda. He was just an independent evaluator
of an economic blueprint that is fast becoming a national brand.

♦️ Yet, for those who were directly involved in the historic governorship election campaigns that brought Pastor Eno to power in 2023, who heard about ARISE Agenda at every campaign stop as a mere campaign manifesto, the accomplishment of ARISE Agenda today is nothing short of a dream come true. It is today a story of manifesto to manifestation.

♦️ Without any doubt, the campaign season that gave birth to the ARISE Agenda represented different things to different people. Many would remember it as a season of brickbats, mainly because of the 45 complex and overlapping court cases that sought to stop Pastor Eno from becoming the governor.

♦️ Others would rather remember that 2022/2023 campaigns for the unprecedented outpouring of support for a rare pastor in the race which eventually won him a landslide victory.

♦️ Yet, many more would remember that the historic Umo Eno campaign was issue-based and overflowing with hardly familiar scholarly terminologies and phrases, surprisingly floated by Pastor Eno, who displayed so much depth and insight in development issues,

♦️ At virtually every campaign stump, he spoke with flair and passion about ‘connecting the dots’ of development in Akwa Ibom State, reaping the ‘low-hanging fruits’ and deploying a ‘bottom-up approach’ to guarantee the needed socio-economic mileage for the State. .

♦️ Usually, political campaigns in Nigeria are not known for depth on socio-economic issues or as the best avenues for scholarly exposition and jargons, but Pastor Eno never missed any opportunity to tell Akwa Ibom people that these scholarly approaches embedded in his ARISE Agenda, would guide the State to the promised land.

♦️ Three years down the road, there is apparent consensus among Akwa Ibom people that the Umo Eno Administration is precisely a script from the playbook of ARISE Agenda, where development dots are being connected, low hanging fruits are being harvested and above all that Governor Eno’s approach to the development of the State is just as he promised: “bottom-up”.

♦️ Victor Bassey, a development consultant and public sector advisor with Mercer Consulting Limited has tracked the progress and trajectory of development in Akwa Ibom under Governor Eno. “He started unusually by giving priority attention to rural communities and underprivileged people: building houses, called compassionate homes for the homeless in rural areas, constructing rural roads, building model schools and model health centres, supporting SMEs in every local council and went to the extent of appointing Personal Assistants to the Governor from all 368 wards in the State.That’s actually unheard of and unorthodox in any climes I know” Bassey said.

♦️ According to Bassey: “I remember a colleague who walked up to me in a conference here in Uyo to say ‘Vic, won’t this your pastor-governor find some legacy projects to take up instead of rural roads, rural health centres, rural primary schools and rural everything… ’. I confess I was at that time similarly concerned”?

♦️ Given the appetite of Akwa Ibom people for landmark projects, coupled with the enviable pedigree of the previous governors of the State, that sentiment about ‘legacy projects’ was widespread, even among Governor Eno’s aides and associates.

♦️ The Governor was even quoted to have told one of senior aides pointblank that ‘God sent me to the poor, rural people of this State who have long been neglected and not to you big men who have enjoyed every government for many years”.

♦️ But his sharp focus on rural development was beyond his mindset as a rural pastor, who lived for long among rural people. It was a deliberate, well documented and rigidly implemented bottom-up strategy in governance.

♦️ Prince Eke Edebiri, a consultant to many development agencies in Nigeria says a bottom-up approach in government is “a governance and policy-making model where decisions, initiatives, and solutions originate from local communities and citizens, and flow upward to state or federal authorities. It empowers local actors, prioritizes grassroots participation, and ensures policies directly reflect the unique needs of the rural people”

♦️ For Governor Eno, this started with the ‘needs assessment’ of rural areas or what experts call participatory rural appraisal, PRA, conducted at his request even before he won the Governorship nomination. Soon after he was sworn-in as the Governor, he requested political stakeholders to meet with their communities to identify projects that best addressed the immediate needs of the people, vis-avis projects imposed on the people by the government.

♦️ That was the official inception of the bottom-up approach in the Governor Eno Administration. It was followed up by ‘Ibom Dialogue’ and later by what he called ‘Town Square Meetings’, where the Governor personally visited all the 10 Federal Constituencies in Akwa Ibom not just to meet thousands of rural people, not just to donate SME equipment and grants, but also to formally receive from each constituency its ‘Needs Document’, a compilation of priority infrastructural and socio-economic gaps in the 10 constituencies.

♦️ Rural roads, hospitals, schools and agro-based inputs topped the list of the Needs Documents. That was the fillip for the ultra modern and world class model primary schools and model health centres, complete with teachers and doctors quarters, across the State.

♦️ “What has impressed me most is the number of modern primary schools the Governor has built and rehabilitated…He deserves commendation for the high quality primary school, I have seen here”, American Consul General in Nigeria, Will Stevens said after inspecting the remodelled Christ the King (CKS) Model Primary School in Uyo.

♦️ In terms of high quality primary health facilities, what Nigeria’s Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Mohammed Ali Pate, saw and commissioned in Akwa Ibom State, March 1, 2025, amazed the minister and his entourage.

♦️ Said the minister: “I want to say that today has been my best day since I assumed office under this Administration as the Minister for Health and Social Welfare. I am glad to see a government that is for the people, working with the people in a unified manner to address urgent needs…

♦️ “These are strategic investments that directly touch the lives of the people… I am sure that the quality of the lives of Akwa Ibom people will be much better. I have seen fantastic alignment of health projects and I urge you to encourage your colleagues Governors in the country to emulate what is happening in Akwa Ibom State”, Pate said on Saturday, March 1, 2025, after he commissioned the Akwa Ibom State Medical Oxygen Production Plant (AKSMOPP) in Ituk Mbang, Uruan LGA, the Akwa Ibom State Emergency Medical Service and Ambulance Systems (AKISEMSAS) in Uyo, the New Dialysis Unit at General Hospital, Ikot Ekpene, as well as the New Model Health Center, off Uyo Village Road.

♦️ In three years only, Governor Eno is constructing more than 1,304 kilometres of roads mostly in rural LGAs outside the capital city. Said Anna Bjerde, the World Bank Representative in Nigeria, on May 8, 2026, while commissioning the 11km Owot Uta-Nung Oku-Edeobom road: “Today’s commissioning is more than the completion of a road. It is a concrete step towards transforming rural lives… Akwa Ibom through the leadership of Governor Umo Eno has pursued a clear vision to improve connectivity, economic opportunities for rural communities and ensure that infrastructure leads directly to agricultural productivity “.

♦️ So far, the Umo Eno Administration has built 31 model health centres in all 31 LGAs, renovated eight General Hospitals, all outside the capital city of Uyo; constructed a brand new hospital also in rural Ukanafun LGA and increased the allowances of healthcare practitioners, apart from building well-furnished and solar-powered quarters for doctors posted to rural health centres.

♦️ On schools, 121 rural primary schools have been built or remodelled to meet modern standards. It is a holistic focus and priority given to the bottom rung of the society, which has won the Governor many prestigious national and international awards, as one of the best governors in Nigeria.

♦️ This approach to governance and the visible impact it has created in rural Akwa Ibom is the reason President Bola Tinubu in October 2025 honoured Governor Eno with the ‘Award of Excellence in Sustainable Development and Community Empowerment.

♦️ The bottom-up approach in governance by Governor Eno is not limited to rural infrastructural development alone. Since May 2023, Governor Umo Eno’s focus on Human Capital Development, HCD, and empowerment of the less privileged across board have been described severally as ‘unrivalled’ by observers and analysts.

♦️ He has equipped individuals in the rural and urban space with the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to improve their personal productivity, organizational efficiency, and societal contributions. It goes beyond formal education to include continuous training, mindset shifts, and creating supportive environments that foster sustainable growth.

♦️ On vocational training and youth empowerment alone, a total of 96,519 beneficiaries, mostly from rural areas, have been equipped with various technical skills and skills vocation in only three years.

♦️ Now, as Governor Eno begins the fourth and final year of his first term, with his eyes firmly fixed on his second term in 2027, he has switched attention more to the upper echelon of the society, meeting the social, economic and even psychological needs of a fast developing sub-national, that is already making a mark as one of the most stable, peaceful and viable entities in Nigeria.

♦️ Ongoing landmark and high profile projects, which are already attracting national and international attention include the extraordinary ARISE Palm Resort, the sophisticated Medical Corridor projects including the 350-bed Ibom International Hospital, the 5,000-capacity Ibom International Convention Centre, the 200-room Ibom Internal Hotel and the sprawling ARISE Shopping City, Aviation projects that include expansion of Ibom Air fleet /International routes l, the completion of the first-in-West-Africa Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul, MRO, workshop, Airport Specialist Hospital, Aviation Village, Maritime Jetty and two ferries, Ibom Deep Seaport, to mention a few.

♦️ Some of his critics worry that he is biting more than he can chew, but his admirers think otherwise. They point to his high level of financial prudence and political marksmanship and the discipline to focus entirely on precise goals. “These are the hallmarks of strategic planning and execution under a smart, strong and trusted leadership”, Professor Udofia insisted.

♦️ Status reports on these remarkable projects show that while some have taken off steadily, others are nearing completion or due for commissioning soon.

♦️ The majestic ARISE Palm Resort, which has been constructed in the last 18 or so months is a wonderland even to international visitors, more so because it is built on the ruins of 71 hectares of erosion ravaged and deserted landscape. Some journalists have described the resort variously as ‘indescribable’, ‘mind-blowing’ and as an ‘amazing outcome of vision’.

♦️ But it is what international figures and diplomats say about the resort that deserve more attention. “This magnificent Resort is a shining embodiment of vision…It is a world class leisure and tourism wonder rising from a massive reclaimed erosion site. It is a proof that impossibility is nothing when purpose leads the way”, Holger Knaack, a German business leader, and Chairman of Rotary International Foundation, said.

♦️ Ambassador Elsie Attafuah, a Ghanaian diplomat and the UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, shares the same views with the German business leader. “Seeing the Arise park project firsthand has been an eye-opening experience. The level of planning and execution is incredible and commendable. I sincerely hope to be part of this great transformation that is unfolding in Akwa Ibom State”, she said.

♦️ The immediate impact of these massive construction site which Akwa Ibom has become is direct and indirect job creation, which the State Office of Statistics, SOS, has put 1.9 million.

♦️ But when the ‘dots’ of these multifaceted and multi-billion dollar projects are fully connected in the coming five years, the bigger picture of making Akwa Ibom the serene tourism capital of Nigeria would be fully visible to all, complete with all the ‘low-hanging fruits’.