23/09/2025
BEING THE TEXT OF THE BROADCAST SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PASTOR UMO ENO, Ph.D, GOVERNOR, AKWA IBOM STATE MARKING THE STATE’S 38TH ANNIVERSARY – SEPTEMBER 23, 2025.
Fellow Akwa Ibomites.
1. I come to you this morning full of gratitude to God and to you my dear people for the great journey of purpose we have collectively undertaken in the past 38 years.
2. It has been a journey of renewal, of phenomenal growth, of undiluted peace, of the deepening of bonds of unity, kindred spirit and pride in our collective identity. It has been a journey that will gladden the hearts of our founding fathers who had prayed, consulted and dreamed of a homogeneous state of shared values, ethos and drive, but their hope was not realized in their time.
3. Thirty-eight years ago, that dream came alive with the creation of our dear State, the Land of Promise – a land of valiant and resourceful people, Akwa Ibom State.
4. Let me again, on behalf of the Government and people of this great State, thank and celebrate our former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, GCFR (rtd.), for this unique gift. May God continue to bless him with good health, a sound mind and spirit.
5. Thirty-eight years ago, this State, especially the Capital City of Uyo, was for all intents and purposes, a glorified village – a rural backwater bereft of modern infrastructure.
6. Today, thirty-eight years later, our State has become the destination of choice, the nation’s best kept secret. In place of dusty narrow streets, some of which looked like bush tracks, we now have possibly the best road network in the nation. Our people, long thought to be mostly good at performing domestic chores, have all arisen and are holding commanding positions across the world in various professions.
7. Uyo today is home to some of the most elegant housing estates in the nation. A thriving airline, Ibom Air, carries our flag of excellence in the nation’s aviation sector – signposting our ascendancy in that sector.
8. In sports, we are the official FIFA and CAF designated host of World Cup and African Cup football matches. All over the State, the energy is infectious, our people are hopeful, and the sunny disposition on what the future holds is palpable. Our economic fundamentals are strong and resilient as we ARISE together to build a golden future that unlocks our potentials.
9. It has been thirty-eight years of God’s blessings – of lifting up when there appeared to be a casting down, and we should all be very proud.
10. Let me at this time pay my glowing tributes to all our past Governors.
11.These leaders were passionate, determined and focused in moving our State forward, and we should celebrate and honour them for their service to the State, rather than disrespecting or castigating their legacies. We owe them deep respect.
12. Today, we are determined to expand the frontiers of all those developmental gains and prime our State away from dependency on oil to tourism, which is the new black gold.
13. Through our Governance Blueprint, the Arise Agenda, we have reignited our passion in agriculture and the need to produce our staple food so our people may have enough to feed their families and to earn income too.
14. The tree crop development plan which we will soon launch will provide generational and sustainable economic prosperity for our people and restore our place as the nation’s leading oil palm producers. I urge you to participate in this exercise once it is launched.
15. We are providing access roads in our rural communities and have expanded the road infrastructure in the State as we had promised. To date, we have done 771 kilometres of road either commissioned or ongoing across the three senatorial districts – some of these roads were inherited from past administrations on which we have deployed our finisher’s anointing.
16. Tomorrow, September 24th, the Honourable Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, H.E. Barrister Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, CON, will help commission the 15.13km Ikot Otomo–Azumini Road and other internal roads in Ika Local Government Area.
17. Security has been strengthened and just a few days ago, we launched the Akwa Ibom Security Trust Fund aimed at bringing the private sector together in the onerous task of ensuring we remain one of the nation’s safe, secure and peaceful states. We thank our security agencies for their collaborative efforts with us.
18. Our schools and healthcare services remain major areas of attention. We will continue to build model healthcare centres across the State as well as model primary and secondary schools in the three senatorial districts. The emergency we recently declared in the healthcare sector will address the gaps in that sector. We hope to flag -off the construction of our 350-bed Ibom International Hospital along the medical corridor as well as the commissioning of the Arise Elders Care Centre, also along the same corridor.
19. Through our administration’s compassionate interventions, we have built 267 fully furnished and solar-powered two-bedroom flats out of 500 planned for the vulnerable. In addition, our free food distribution programme, drawn from the State’s verified Social Register, is now in its third phase, and we have so far reached over 500,000 households. These interventions are practical demonstrations of our commitment to inclusive growth and to protecting the most vulnerable in our society. Last week, we had our Power Summit and came out with actionable plans to work towards providing electricity for all.
20. We are priming our State as the tourism hub of the nation. Our audacious Arise Resort, which has been celebrated by all who have inspected it, will be commissioned in December and is expected to draw visitors in millions to our State. We are building the 5,000-capacity International Convention Centre, the 200-room Ibom Hotel and Arise City Centre – all located within the Tropicana grounds.
21. The Ibom Hotels and Apartments in Abuja as well as Ibom Towers and Apartments in Lagos – all previously moribund State assets which we have now converted into money-earning ventures – are ongoing.
22. Let me end this broadcast by again appealing to you, my dear people, to remain united, peaceful, and hopeful. As the political season unfolds, I urge us not to allow the flaming passion of politics to divide us. Elections will come and go, but the Akwa Ibom spirit of love and brotherhood will remain. We are running Akwa Ibom United across party lines.
23. I urge our leaders and stakeholders not to engage in spreading damaging or inflammatory rhetoric, but to “ rise beyond ethnicity” and “ build with love our promise land” as our State Anthem has so greatly enjoined us to. We should eschew bitterness in our political engagements and embrace the ennobling ideals of love and unity.
24. I also appeal to our youths not to be used as agents to cause violence, because the law will take its course on anyone who flouts the rules and the sanctity of public peace.
25. Let me again thank our dear President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, for the love he has shown us and the cooperation he has equally extended to our dear son, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, GCON. We pledge our unflinching support to him as he submits himself again in 2027 for Nigerians to return him to A*o Rock to complete his audacious reforms that have already started to bear fruits across the Nigerian economic and social sectors.
26. Let us all Arise to a Renewed Hope for Akwa Ibom and for Nigeria. God bless Akwa Ibom State, God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Happy 38th Anniversary!
