Akwa Ibom State governor, Umo Eno, has appointed one personal aide each from all the political wards in the State, totaling 368 appointees, to drive the ARISE agenda of his administration.
Those appointed are to serve as liaison officers between the government and their respective wards, hence qualified appointees must be residents within the ward and must be politically active.
The governor, however, appealed to faithful of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the State to remain calm and committed to the party, assuring that more opportunities are available for deserving members to contribute their quota towards the realisation of the A.R.I.S.E. agenda blueprint and overall success of the administration.
Governor Eno was addressing his Exco members, political stakeholders, top government functionaries and a cross-section of the people of the State, who gathered for the October edition of the Monthly Covenant Service held at the Banquet Hall, Government House, Uyo.
He hinted that the 368 appointments are the first in the series of his determined effort to ensure an all-embracing government as promised to the people during his electioneering campaign and mentioned the 4,000 appointments across all units for the Neighborhood City Watch Programme, as well as the 40 appointments for the Songhai Model Farm Programme as pending opportunities to accommodate indigenes of the State.
He noted that the appointees were as qualified and deserving as those who could not make it, adding that issues raised by those who couldn’t make the list were genuine and solicited the understanding of the importuned, explaining that the appointment could not accommodate everybody in the first instance.
In furtherance of his administration’s disposition to inclusivity, Governor Eno announced his readiness to meet with stakeholders from the 31 Local Government Areas of the state, to share ideas on modalities to best implement the proposed one project Per Local Government Initiative.
“On Monday we’ll be holding our stakeholders meeting in the evening by 4 pm with each local government bringing 20 persons and I trust that the leaders will not go and take people from one household and call them stakeholders. Please I expect at least one ward leader to be on that list, plus critical people. Everybody, again, cannot be on that list.
“Why are we doing this? It’s just to be able to share what we plan to do in each Local Government Area in three months. So we want to throw it open for you to go back home, think and within the week tell us the real need to enable us to look at them be it a school, hospital, water or a market project but it must be a rural development project”, he stated.
The governor announced that the stakeholders meeting would be followed by an all-women meeting, then a meeting with the male and female youths separately with him to further enhance grassroots involvement in his government.
He congratulated the Akwa Ibom people on the 63rd Independence anniversary of Nigeria and prayed for wisdom upon the leaders to make Nigeria better.
“Nigeria is 63 years since independence and I trust God that the older we grow the better we’ll get and the days ahead will be good for us. The bible enjoins us to pray for those in authority. Let’s pray for the President, let’s pray for our State and the governor, for wisdom because wisdom is needed to navigate a lot of things and it is the principal thing. I want to thank all of you for coming and wish you a happy Independence celebration”, he remarked.
Earlier, State Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Bishop Christian Nyong, in a homily tagged “Peace Be Still”, culled from Mark 4:37-39, exposited that life is a journey and at various points of the journey storms arise in forms of troubles, disturbances, agitations and invasion of our peaceful atmosphere.
This, he said, every human is prone to, irrespective of status or level of attainments.
The Cleric exhorted that no trouble of life is insurmountable to God’s people, as God has endowed them with the power to speak as Jesus did to the wind and cause peace to swallow up any situation and admonished the congregants to believe in God and activate the power of God in them in the face of afflictions.