Gov. Umo Eno: Measuring Progress, Deepening Impact – Beyond the Rhetoric

Gov. Umo Eno: Measuring Progress, Deepening Impact – Beyond the Rhetoric

By Daniel Etokidem

On Thursday, August 7, 2025, at the Banquet Hall of Government House, Uyo, the Economic Adviser to the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Dr. Mrs. Uduakobong Inam, will undertake the public presentation of the *Socio-Economic Impact of the ARISE Agenda in Two Years, with the theme: Measuring Progress, Deepening Impact.

This year’s presentation promises to be not just informative, but revealing and reassuring, following the Akwa Ibom State Government Quantitative Data Perspective Performance Report of May 29, 2023 – May 29, 2024, which she earlier presented at the State Executive Council meeting of July 2, 2024, to mark the Governor’s first year in office.

Last year’s report showed an administration that, in just twelve months, achieved the following:

* 2,984 people benefited from various agricultural programmes.
* 100 public secondary schools benefited from agricultural inputs.
* 30 public primary schools benefited from agricultural inputs.
* 600 elderly people were beneficiaries of the AKSG’s financial support to elderly persons.
* 2,195 persons in the multidimensionally poor category were scaled up through various government programmes.
* 4,600 skilled and unskilled persons were engaged in various sectors across the state.
* 229.411 km of roads, 14 bridges, and 3 underground discharge drainages were constructed.
* 37.7 km of feeder roads were constructed in rural communities.
* 16,522 patients benefited from AKSG-sponsored free medical healthcare.
* 48,797 students benefited from payment of 2023/2024 SSCE fees.
* 4,603 beneficiaries emerged from AKSG’s entrepreneurship schemes.
* 3,583 state/local government retirees were paid benefits to the tune of ₦18.234 billion as of May 2024.

To ensure that these data are factual and scientific, with globally acceptable parameters for data collation, monitoring, analysis, and evaluation, and to proffer a permanent solution to the menace of wrong or faulty data about the state from international or national statistical bodies such as the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which were not in tune with the reality on the ground, the Governor, in line with his visionary and foresighted leadership, established, through the instrumentality of the law, an Executive Bill sent to the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly: A Bill for a Law to Establish the Akwa Ibom State Bureau of Statistics and Akwa Ibom State Statistical System and for Other Matters Connected Therewith.

This bill, which passed through First Reading on September 8, 2023; Second Reading on September 12, 2023; Public Hearing on September 20, 2023; and Third Reading/Passage on September 22, 2023, was assented to by the Governor on December 13, 2023.

This birthed the Akwa Ibom State Bureau of Statistics Board, and on Thursday, February 13, 2025, Elder Nse Ekefre was sworn in as Chairman, alongside Dr. Godwin Mbang Timothy, Mr. Enefiok Peter, Mrs. Otuikor Joyce Mizpah, and Dr. Emmanuel John Ekpenyong as members.

The Board also includes, as Ex-Officio Members, the Commissioner for Economic Development or his representative; the Commissioner for Finance or his representative; the Chairman, Statistical Association of Nigeria, Akwa Ibom State; while the Akwa Ibom State Statistician-General serves as Board Secretary.

All these are a conscious, meticulous, systematic, scientific, and visionary approach conceived and implemented by Governor Umo Eno to ensure that data released and related to the state are accurate, reliable, verifiable, foolproof even when probed, and serve as a guide for future developmental planning.

As the people of Akwa Ibom and development partners look forward to the Economic Adviser’s Public Presentation of the Socio-Economic Impact of the ARISE Agenda in Two Years, with the theme: Measuring Progress, Deepening Impact, it promises to be not just a gathering for fanfare, but one where facts take precedence over speculation, science overtakes anti-science, quantitative and qualitative data overshadow assumptions, and governance nullifies politics.