This would be my third consecutive article on my home state of Akwa Ibom. Given the length of the article, this would be a two part series. This article has been long in coming. The immediate trigger was a news story in the Premium Times of 10 August 2026 titled “Akwa Ibom budgets N26.91 billion for hotel renovation, temporarily shuts down facility”.
I have followed events in my state very closely since 2000 and can speak from an informed position. Happenings in the last twenty years there have made me question the essence of government.
Thankfully, we have a compass. Section 14(2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) provides three fundamental principles:
a) Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria, from whom government derives its powers and authority.
b) The security and WELFARE of the people shall be the PRIMARY purpose of government (emphasis mine).
c) The participation of the people in government shall be ensured.
Following from here, particularly Section 14(2)(b) that defines the purpose of government, can I honestly conclude that the welfare of the people of Akwa Ibom State has been well served? Certainly not.
I will expatiate. Since oil producing states in Nigeria started enjoying the 13 per cent oil derivation funds, Akwa Ibom State has been awash with petrodollars. Apart from Delta State, we come tops in the monthly remittances that go to the 36 states from the federation accounts. And the tap has been flowing ceaselessly for more than two decades now. The state’s monetary flow bumped up with the ceding of the oil wells that previously belonged to the sister state of Cross River following the World Court ruling on Bakasi. Furthermore, the savings from the fuel subsidy and the devaluation of the Naira have brought in more money to state governments. As an index, the state government has received from the federation accounts N3 trillion since the current government came into power late May 2023; no small amount by any measure. This is exclusive of its internally generated revenue. Pointedly, I can authoritatively state that the Akwa Ibom State Government is stupendously rich. Is it the same for the people of the state?
Anyone who had known the physical state of development of the state at the start of this century and compares it to what obtains today would agree with me that a lot of physical development and transformation have taken place in the state. Much of this is within the Uyo and Ikot Ekpene axis.
Apart from Abuja and Lagos, Akwa Ibom has the best road network in the country. Many roads are well built by competent contractors. Some of the major ones are dual carriages. Uyo, the state capital is a beautiful and an emerging city. But that is where the story seems to end as far as touching the lives of everyone in the state is concerned.
Much of the resources of the state are devoted to providing comfort and luxury to the rich who constitute less than one percent of the citizens. The 2006 census put Akwa Ibom State at 3.9 million people; current estimate is 7 million. Majority of them are in abject poverty though the state government swims in money. The estimated GDP per capita of N1.7 million is skewed because of the number of oil and gas companies operating in the state. Average income per month is well below N140,000 (teachers in many private schools are paid well below the national minimum wage of N70,000).
Apart from the few oil companies and universities operating in the state, there is hardly any organization where 200 or more people are gainfully employed outside of the state civil service. Two and a half decades after ceaseless flow of petrodollars, Akwa Ibom is still a civil service state.
Where The Rubber Meets The Rock:
Since the Senator Godswill Akpabio’s government, the state has always been on the fruitless and wasteful efforts of attracting foreign and domestic investors with nearly none coming. During the government of Mr. Udom Emmanuel, the state government decided tragically to take over the job of private investors by building many industries. Because it had long been established that government has no business in running businesses, I wondered what magic that government was going to perform.
Since the military regime of Ibrahim Babangida, this theory was proven right and the government did the right thing by selling (privatising) almost all commercial enterprises. Name them: banks, newspaper houses, petroleum marketing companies, hotels, insurance companies, cement companies, etc. The ones the federal government could not or did not sell just stopped working. Name them: petroleum refineries, steel rolling mills; mining companies.
Akwa Ibom State government had a lot to learn from the failures of the federal government in running commercial enterprises so as not to venture into the same mistake but refused to do so. The Aluminum Smelter Company at Ikot Abasi; The Newsprint Company at Oku Iboku are dead because the federal government established and ran them. If the state government thought these companies failed because they were established by a distant federal authority, the failure of the previous state government companies should have taught her a lesson; but it refused to learn. During the second republic when Akwa Ibom was still part of Cross River State, the then governor Dr. Clement Nyong Isong, a renowned economist and former central bank governor, established many industries; some of which were in present day Akwa Ibom. I will mention some of them: Champion Brewery in Uyo, Sunshine Batteries and Biscuits Company in Ikot Ekpene, Qua Steel in Eket and Peacock Paints in Etinan. Then these companies were a necessity because the state neither had the citizens who were entrepreneurial nor financially capable. This also speaks for the whole country which explains why the federal government was establishing companies everywhere. Government then was the only engine of development, industrialisation and employment.
None of the aforementioned companies exist today apart from Champion Brewery, simply because it had been privatised. Peacock Paints, now called Ibom Paints, is still managing to exist because the current government of Pastor Umo Eno spent N500 million to revamp it; this was after the government of Mr. Emmanuel had earlier revitalized it ten years ago with over N500 million.
Armed with this history of failure of government in owning and managing commercial enterprises, one would have thought that government would concentrate on creating enabling environment for the private sector to do what it is best suited to do. This strategy would have freed up government to concentrate on what it is constitutionally burdened to do: take care of the welfare of its citizens.
Alas, what we have seen is the return to the beaten path of government being the father and driver of capitalism in the state. I stand to be corrected, but I am not aware that any of the industries that the various administrations, especially the immediate past one of Mr. Emmanuel built just few years ago survives today. Namely: the Syringe company (touted as the best in Africa); the coconut refinery (we kept hearing that it would replace crude oil in the state); the flour mill (died even when that government was still in power). The automobile factory never took off. Put together, several trillions of Naira of Akwa Ibom people’s money flushed down the drain. The state owned anchor insurance company always goes back to government for recapitalization so as to escape bankruptcy.
One can hazard several reasons why these companies die but there is one overarching reason: It is government money that is being used to build them.
Successive administrations in the state have also developed the penchant to build other wasteful structures that ought to have been handled by the private sector. One of these is hotels. The government of Obong Victor Attah started with the Ibom Hotel and Golf Resort, completed by the government of Senator Godswill Akpabio.
The hotel is huge and beautifully built. But the clientele has not been there relative to its size and sophistication. I am aware that at completion, the kitchenwares and furnishings in the hotel were more sophisticated than hotels of same standard in Lagos and Abuja.
The primary client of the hotel has always been its owner: the state government. During Akpabio’s tenure, the hotel was very popular nationwide. Many conferences and workshops used to be held there. But it was a gimmick: the state government used to pay professional bodies and associations to come host conferences there. Tell me, how many quoted companies have held their annual general meetings in that hotel since inception just under twenty years after?
The management of the hotel has changed hands very quickly. In less than two decades, the Dubai based management just contracted would be the fifth to manage the hotel; each coming with name change and attendant brand recognition challenges. The hotel, just as other commercial entities of the state, since inception has not been able to stand on its own. Virtually every year, government votes funds to keep the hotel open. Whether it is in direct funding or taking up some capital projects on behalf of the hotel such as the N26.9 billion renovation work. Shouldn’t the hotel be not only self sustaining but also generating revenue for the state? Or is it a social sector investment?
The owner of the hotel is also its number one enemy. The same state government has a 14-storey, 200 room hotel in the heart of Uyo, the state capital, called Ibom International Hotel, set for commissioning perhaps this month. It was started by the Akpabio government. The current government is finishing the hotel along with a 5,000 seater International Convention Centre and a shopping arcade at a very tiny sum of N249 billion. As if the government of Akpabio was elected to build hotels in the state, the same government, a few kilometres from the Uyo hotel, built an 11-storey 146 room hotel in Ikot Ekpene, now called Four Points by Sheraton in the centre of the town. The hotel has consistently recorded very low patronage. I can bet that the state government is subsidizing its existence.
As if ownership of these three hotels, which are financial drainpipes of the state, is not enough, the current government of Pastor Eno has just announced near completion of a hotel resort by name Arise Palm Resort, in the heart of Uyo. It comes with a golf course even though the 196-roomed Ibom Hotel already has an 18 holes golf course. Again, this multi billion naira hotel is owned by the state. Put together, the Akwa Ibom State government has four sophisticated hotels with 560 rooms. Tell me, does this make sense in a state where average monthly income is the price for a night stay in these hotels?
The state’s investment in the aviation industry is another kettle of fish. The state is so touchy about the airport and its airline, Ibom Air, so much so that it’s the equivalence of the proverbial hot potato if one elects to critique it. The state is both the owner of the airport and the airline. In a way, one can say that it is the owner of the car that built a garage to park its car.
Apart from a privately arranged flight handled by Atedo Peterside’s ANAP JET which does a twice weekly flight to the airport, the state airport is 100 per cent serviced by the state airline. Majority of the passengers are government officials and politicians, most of who lean on the state government for existence. The new terminal recently completed is a beauty to behold; and passengers are made to pay for its maintenance at a rate higher than charges in other airports in the country. Because Ibom Air is the only commercial carrier plying the route, its charges from and to Lagos and Abuja are the highest in the country, per hour flight. At over N200,000 per hour for economy, no civil servant in the state below the rank of a deputy director who relies solely on his or her salary can afford a return flight ticket…
The airport, just as the airline, is still dependent on the state to keep it in business more than seven years since it was established. The airline has just received its latest aircraft ordered by the Udom Emmanuel government from Canada. So, the state is spending trillions of naira of Akwa Ibom people’s money to subsidize the lives of the one percent of the one percent of the citizens of the state just in the aviation space. You will never know the costs that the state has sunk into the aviation industry. Neither the airline nor the airport managements have published their financial statements since inception for the Akwa Ibom State people to know how their companies are faring.
Esiere is a former journalist!
