17/08/2026
Who Says Governor Umo Eno Could Not Move Mountains?
By Clement Warrie
May 29, 2023, was not a good day to be sworn in as governor in Nigeria. Many governors, including Pastor Umo Eno, didn’t know it yet, but the country was about to experience a major economic crisis.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, just hours after he took the oath of office, told the nation bluntly in his inaugural speech: “Fuel subsidy is gone.”
And just like that, a forty-year-old economic anchor that barely held the country together was erased in one short sentence.
The morning after was bedlam.
Transportation fares tripled overnight. Fuel prices hit the roof. Food prices soared. In markets and motor parks across the country, you could feel the unease.
For 40 years, fuel price subsidies had acted as a national price anchor, keeping the cost of transportation, food, and everyday services artificially stable, shielding households from the full weight of market forces. Its removal stripped that buffer away overnight.
Newspapers called the removal tone-deaf, and a surgery without anesthesia.
BusinessDay argued that Nigerians were “paying for chronic government failure”, while labour leaders described the timing as “suicidal”.
Yet others argued it was an overdue surgery. The Nation claimed that subsidy was “killing the economy.” Nigerian Tribune columnist Joseph Inokotong in an article titled “Looking beyond fuel subsidy removal, palliatives provision" , published on July 24, 2023 called it a “deft move to stop the age-long hemorrhage, painful, but necessary to stop the bleeding and redirect billions to roads, hospitals, and schools”
There was, however, one curious denominator. Nearly all leading presidential candidates who disagreed on major policy issue before the elections were unanimous that the subsidy regime was a drain on the economy. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party called it “fraud.” Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party flagged it as “an organized crime.”
While the storm raged and most states descended into panic, Akwa Ibom remained steady. Led by a newly elected governor, Pastor Umo Eno, he had anticipated the impact on the people and his response was immediate and visible.
In a jiffy, the Akwa Ibom Bulk Purchase Agency was berthed, fast-tracked through the State Assembly, with N10bn approved by the governor for immediate take-off. Within days, bulk purchases of rice, garri, and other staples followed—stacked to the brim in government trucks and sent straight to local governments and to households least able to absorb the harsh economic impact.
To ensure the food supply reached every family, the Governor, in keeping with his compassionate nature, directed that palliatives be distributed to all Akwa Ibom people across party lines. The move drew applause across the state. But to him, it was the bare minimum of leadership. “We are Akwa Ibomites first, before we are members of any political party,” he said.
What began on March 26, 2024, as a modest rollout of 155,000 bags of staple food across all 31 Local Government Areas has since grown into a sustained lifeline for the people. By Phase Four, launched Monday, July 13, 2026, the scale had multiplied several times over. When the exercise concludes on Monday, August 17, 2026, in Ikot Abasi, about 876,000 households will have benefited.
Even as the state applauded the food intervention, Governor Umo Eno moved again, reinforcing why many believe he was sent to the people for a time like this. He approved billions in teachers’ gratuities and leave grants, and extended a transport boost to civil servants and students to ease the daily cost of commuting.
Beyond immediate relief, the governor had also turned his attention to agriculture, understanding its place not just to development but also to managing economic crisis situations. He procured tons of fertilizer and distributed them to farmers across the state. He didn’t stop there. He made available over N2bn in grants and N1.8bn in agric inputs to over 40,000 beneficiaries.
He might have started off with palliatives, but the goal was to get people back to the farms and secure a bumper harvest every year. And very recently, over N2.5bn has been approved for the procurement of 620,000 hybridized palm seedlings.
Next up, he reached for the youths, starting with multiple vocational training and empowerment programs anchored by Ibom-Led and the DAKADDA Skill Acquisition Centre, DASAC, as well as direct business support and grants to over 5,000 youths to start small and medium-scale businesses. The effort grew so big that by his third year anniversary in office, he had recorded, according to available data, over 96,500 beneficiaries in a multi-layered empowerment and employment scheme for that particular demographic.
From youth empowerment, he began to push into the hinterlands, taking his brand of governance directly to the grassroots. Gathering stakeholders, politicians, civil societies, journalists, youths and women, students and the elderly into a spectacular village square model of governance unheard of in our part of the world, he would later rechristen the model the Townsquare Model to carry his exquisite, personal touch.
By the time the locomotive train of rural townsquare engagements and empowerment completed its tour of the 10 federal constituencies in the state, no fewer than 7,688 rural dwellers had been empowered with startups, business grants, and utility vehicles. Records again show that over N10bn had been expended in the exercise.
The same innovative-leadership instinct showed up in the transportation sector. A fleet of 50 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses, ordered specifically to soften the blow of fuel costs on ordinary commuters, was announced in 2023. In late June 2026, the first batch of buses (20 of them) began arriving from Turkey, with additional units arriving in July and August, bringing the total delivered so far to 40.
“We have just received the first 20 buses. We ordered 50, and they will come in batches. The next step is to get the terminals ready. We have already paid for the tracking devices, and we will install trackers, introduce an electronic ticketing system, and put every necessary facility in place,” the governor said, adding that the project was “part of the gradual emergence of a new era of infrastructure delivery in the state.”
Beyond the buses, the administration kept other economic levers moving. So far, it has delivered over 1,304 kilometers of roads and 41 bridges, while RAAMP (Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project) has completed or is advancing over 72 rural roads across all three senatorial districts, opening up agrarian communities and improving market access.
The infrastructure push extended into housing as well, with 1,048 units delivered, including the Judiciary Quarters, Aviation Village, Grace Estate, and Ewet Luxury Gardens, alongside Commissioners’ and Legislators’ Quarters.
The administration’s reach extended into health care too, with the centerpiece being a 350-bed International Hospital equipped with specialist theatres, an ICU, a diagnostic and imaging center, and specialist consultation clinics. It has also built state-of-the-art primary health centers in nearly every local government area, established a dialysis center and a medical oxygen plant, launched a state ambulance service, and improved allowances for medical personnel.
So, who says Governor Umo Eno could not move mountains?
Three years ago, he inherited a state on the edge of a national economic cliff, with the sudden death of a forty-year-old subsidy regime. And yet, he worked the state through the quagmire without injury.
He rebuilt a state’s confidence in itself, one decision, one intervention at a time, with palliatives that reached nearly every household, gratuities that honored teachers who had waited too long, fertilizer and grants that put farmers back on their land, skills and startup capital that gave young people a reason to stay and build sustainable livelihoods. All this without borrowing a dime!
He took governance to the village square, literally, and let the people he served look him in the eye. He puts roofs over thousands of families, builds hospitals, schools, a world-class tourism facility that has become one of Africa’s elite tourism destinations.
Perhaps no words capture the weight of this record better than those of His Eminence, Ntenyin Dr. Solomon Etuk, Oku Ibom Ibibio and President General of the Supreme Council of Traditional Rulers, Akwa Ibom State, a man who has watched it unfold at close range.
“I am proud of the Governor, not because he is my own son, but because he has excelled in everything he has initiated and beyond. I am so delighted to be an eye-witness of his unprecedented initiatives in the stewardship of our people…” he said

