The Critics’ Year and a Governor’s Scorecard

The Critics’ Year and a Governor’s Scorecard

By Clement Warrie

2025 is ending, peacefully, I should hope. Critics of everything have retreated, and “Area is Calm.”
Yuletide brings a separate quiet, Carols and gentle nostalgia.

Here on my veranda, I sit, without a care in the world, sniffing the air for a whiff of harmattan that’s been playing hide-and-seek.

But the wind is fickle.

Today, it carries unfamiliar Christmas scents—and with them, the amusing recollection of Governor Umo Eno’s worst critics for year 2025

I recall Kenneth Okonkwo. The Nollywood runaway actor.

Okonkwo, by tragic character flaw, is a notorious loudspeaker and political wanderer. There is hardly any major political platforms in Nigeria that he hasn’t rubbed his scents on. From the PDP, to APC, back to LP and currently flying the ADC colors.

However, when Governor Umo Eno defected from the PDP to APC a few months ago, Okonkwo was the first to accuse him of abandoning ship. His linguistically, awkward term “transgenderic”, uttered with intent to sound learned, was interrupted by the governor’s sharp reminder: “You are still living in bondage”

Kenneth Okonkwo would likely not forget the spar. Unlike his literary namesake in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart—a man who stood fiercely for culture and fatherland—this Okonkwo stands for nothing.

My reminiscences are not for nothing. It’s puzzling to me that despite commendable achievement and national recognitions this governor has amassed for excellent delivery on the ARISE Agenda, some critics are bent on undermining his sterling performance.

To be sure, every political year breaks differently. In Akwa Ibom, while construction equipment roared at one end, there was annoying static from critics. But development is measured in projects and lives touched, not in the noise made by critics. As the year ends, one question remains: what matters more? The critics’ noise or the governor’s impeccable record of performance?

Earlier, I realized that the fastest way to infuriate critics is to remind them of the governor’s achievements. They hate it. They hate that he is connecting with the people and impacting lives in ways they wish he didn’t. Above all, they hate hearing the testimonies of beneficiaries from the ARISE multilevel business grants and equipment support programs.

If the budget performance hits 99.9%, they bury it in a footnote instead of giving it a befitting headline. A landmark project like the ARISE Palm Resort, set to be West Africa’s premier tourism destination and create 3,000 jobs for Akwa Ibomites, is ignored entirely.

They cannot bring themselves to mention the Ibom International Hotel, or the Ibom International Conference Centre that’s rapidly transforming our skyline.. The ingenuity behind the development of the entire Shopping City corridor is, in their eyes, an aberration, unworthy of recognition.

Recently, not a single line of praise was written when the governor secured night flights and international approval for Victor Attah International Airport—a historic repositioning of our aviation industry. Not a whimper was heard.

They scoff at verifiable data and statistics, search for financial misconduct and upon finding none, just attack the man.

“Umo Eno is a Pharaoh!” One factional publicity secretary of the PDP shrieked.

His outrage directed not at the cabal of his corrupt party responsible for loss of integrity and territory to the APC, targeted a harmless man, whose only ‘sin’ was refusing to pamper recalcitrant aides.

Okpo’s transgression was resisted with sharp repudiation from commentariat, opinion writers and moral pundits.

Rev. Osondu Ahirika—writer, thinker, and SSA to Governor Umo Eno on Ethical Orientation—wielded his critique as a moral cudgel. “Does empathy, charity, good-heartedness, mercy, and humanness qualify one to be tagged a Pharaoh in the PDP’s factional dialectics?” he wrote

Going further, he wondered how a pharaoh gives 13 months’ salary, distributes food vouchers to 600,000 families in Akwa Ibom state, and builds 300 compassionate homes for 300 vulnerable families. Empower 30,000 Akwa Ibom youths with grant, skill and equipment support. Not to mention the N50,000 monthly stipends to the elderly.

If Okpo’s intention was to rewrite scripture by assigning to Pharaoh attributes the Egyptian was incapable of, we may never know. What we however know, is that, the chap is not fit to untie the shoelace of the man he writes lies about.

“Do not insult anyone,” said the governor. Stressing civility in the engagement with critic, he said. “I knew insults would come from the day I accepted this job. I do not wish for anyone to be insulted in my defense. The minimum standard I require is that you engage with facts.”

Facts are stubborn things the governor believes. As a champion of peace and unity, he knows critics are like lawless guerrillas—They don’t fight fair. It’s brickbats and blunt force for them. But facts wins every time. Facts cancel insults. There are proofs. Reuben Abati is one.

Reuben Abati is no ordinary critic. He is heavyweight, a charging bull who doesn’t just trash talks when upset, but ensures you get the receipts. He has the platform. Two and half years ago, he called governor Umo Eno, “pepper soup governor” in a cruel response to governor Umo Eno’s happy hour comments.

But two and a half years later, he held the most comprehensive document of the governor’s achievements proudly in hand, “The Golden Footprints”, a book compiled by veteran journalist, Anietie Usen, and smiled to the camera.

Abati, unlike the scatterbrained critics loitering Akwa Ibom social media space, is a honest man. He speaks truth to power and bows only to his conviction. He does not capitulate to audio achievements no matter how powerful the interest. To him, seeing is believing.

As night descends where I sit, and the sounds of generators erupt around my neighborhood, I pause to reflect on the words of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, in his famous “Man in the Arena” speech

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”

On 19 December at the Ibom Amphitheater, during the state’s Christmas Carols, Governor Umo Eno, foreseeing the surge in political criticism in the coming year, made his most significant statement to date: “I pray that God will help us… to say what is right, stand by what is right, to leave the naysayers, and to choose the path that will always lead to victory.”