On 23 September 2025, Akwa Ibom State rolled out the drums to mark its 38th anniversary. The state, along with Katsina, was created by the military president, Ibrahim Babangida. To the best of my knowledge, and for reasons best known to my people, it is the only state in Nigeria that celebrates its creation every year. I find it odd to a very great extent.
There are 31 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Akwa Ibom State; just as we are the seventh smallest state by landmass. The state is 10% the size of Borno State, and slightly less than a third of its sister state, Cross River. I like to joke painfully that, Ini, the LGA I come from, is not in Akwa Ibom State. Apart from Eastern Obolo (up until two years ago when Sterling Global started oil exploration activities there) we are the least developed, very much forgotten rural LGA. Just so you know, I have been to all the 31 LGAs of the state. I am a home boy!
There is not one form of modernity in Ini LGA. Not one good school (public or private). Not one good hospital. Not one good or bad hotel. Not one good police post. Not one good petrol station. Not one good or bad recreational facility. Not one good or bad company or industry. Not one good market. Not one good or bad supermarket. Not one good or bad restaurant.
Odoro Ikpe, the local government headquarters, is so rural you would drive past it without knowing that it is the seat of government in that area. Were Ini LGA in Abia, Osun, Gombe or Kebbi State, this article would not have been necessary because I know that these states are poor. But not so for Akwa Ibom, the third (or, is it second) richest state in the country with petrodollars flowing into it perhaps faster than petrol!
If you have visited Uyo, the state capital, of recent, there is absolutely no correlation between that city and Ini. Uyo is a shining star, a modern rising African city; Ini is in utter darkness, black and black. Uyo is now a merger city, and one of the fastest growing cities in the world (not by population but by infrastructural development and expansion). And it’s just a 40-minute drive from Uyo to Ini. If you get to Ikot Ekpene (the second largest town in the state), you will not imagine that another 20 minutes drive away is a place so bereft of modernity as Ini. Even though the state is a small place in landmass (you can drive to all the 31 LGA headquarters in less than a day), most people who live in the state have never been to Ini because nothing will attractive you there.
We are so forgotten to the extent that during electioneering campaigns, governorship candidates do not dignify us with a campaign visit; they always summon us to our sister LGA, Ikono. Lest I forget, Ini is one of the 10 LGAs in the senatorial district of the incumbent Senate President, Godswill Akpabio. I need to crosscheck but I doubt if he ever visited the LGA for all of the eight years that he was the governor of the state, nor has he been there since he went to the Senate to represent that area and the other nine LGAs.
Even as Senate President, Ini receives crumbs from the table of Nigeria’s No. 3 man. Think about this: a friend of mine who lives in Uyo told me that his part of Uyo is very well lit with solar streetlights, courtesy of the, guess who? The Senate President. When I said that he made a mistake to say that the project came from the Senate President since Uyo is in not his senatorial district, he patiently corrected me that Akpabio’s largess went beyond his constituency! And last month, the President of my village association in Lagos has asked some of us to make contributions toward provision of solar streetlights in the village (in Akpabio’s constituency) this Christmas. I am not saying that Ini got zero solar streetlights from Akpabio’s constituency project but that he ought to have saturated his constituency first, perhaps only. After all, it is called constituency project and Uyo Senatorial district is not his constituency. Sounds like President Bola Tinubu abandoning Nigeria to go develop China!
Ini people are poor, very poor, rural and agrarian with very little help from successive governments. A few years ago, I visited most villages in Ini to donate my first book to all schools in the area. What I witnessed shocked me. I left cursing, crying and shaking. Difficult roads, tattered schools, barefooted pupils, malnourished and hungry looking children, men and women, hopeless youth and all sorts. Visit most villages off the only “good” road to Arochukwu today and you will still be amazed at the state of neglect, suffering and despair in Ini.
On the contrary, Ini LGA is the food basket of Akwa Ibom State. In commercial quantities, we have cocoa, rice, cassava, corn, cocoyam, okra, cucumber and other vegetables, rubber and… We have timber and spring water fish. But guess what? The farming technology and methodology that my great grandfather applied to cultivate his farm 150 years ago are the same we still use today. The yields are poorer because the soil is malnourished; the footpaths ensure some of the yields perish before they get to the market. We even have corked petroleum wells with zero exploration work. It is probable that even Shell and the Federal Government have forgotten about those wells in Ini.
There is just one “good” (I qualify word “good” because it is substandard by the definition of roads we have in other parts of the state) road that leads from Ikot Ekpene, the nearest town, to Arochukwu in Abia State. Most roads (if they qualify to be so called) are no roads at all. Opportunities for young ones are scarce, very scarce.
Ini is so forgotten in the scheme of things in the state to the extent that in a whole year, you would hardly read about it in the local newspapers, even though Akwa Ibom is the undisputed headquarters of global gossip journalism! If you content analyse the local tabloids over a full year period, no more than 1% of their stories would be on Ini; because there is no news or gossip worthy stories from there; except in an election year because of the preponderance of election violence there! Our people are always remembered during elections because they are used as canon fodders.
It was not always like this. In 2007, just before his eight-year tenure came to an end, Obong Victor Attah remembered us and gifted us a General Hospital. The hospital was commissioned by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo. I was at the hospital that day but left for Mbiabet, a nearby village (before the President arrived) where he was also scheduled to commission a large rice plantation. I am not sure the brand new hospital located in my village, Ikpe Ikot Nkon functioned effectively for more than two years before it became something else. This is a general hospital where there is no electricity, no water, no vehicles and where successive medical superintendents refuse to go to work; it cannot be called by that name. Check the records, it is doubtful if the hospital has treated up to 10,000 patients since its inception 18 years ago: that is 46 patients a month. Meanwhile, the people of Ini suffer from all kinds of treatable diseases.
Perhaps with the mind of an architect, Attah was good at citing projects in far flung rural areas with a view to opening up those areas. Ibom Hotel in Ifiayong Uruan, model secondary schools in rural Atabrikang (Ibeno), Oruk Anam, Ikot Akpaden in Mkpat Enin (now converted to a state university), Ini General Hospital in Ikpe Ikot Nkon, to mention a few. Apart from the general hospital and the model school at Atabrikang, all other facilities in rural areas have brought rapid development to those areas.
Apart from the labourers in the general hospital, no staff lives in the LGA. Because the medical superintendent does not go to work, most other personnel stay away from the place. Last month, I drove past it to and fro, and, expectedly, I did not see anyone in the premises. And it was a Friday! Last year, someone I know too well had a surgery at the hospital. He forcefully discharged himself the following day because rain beat him on his hospital bed (I am not making this up; he told me).
Today the hospital is in shambles; totally unusable. Two weeks ago, the state House of Assembly’s Committee on Health was stopped (perhaps through suasion) by the medical superintendent from entering the hospital to see the rot that it is. The hospital has a record of having only two medical doctors!
But there’s hope. Thankfully, the state government has just declared a state of emergency in the health care sector. We, the Ini people are hopeful, very hopeful that since this is a statewide emergency, Ini will not be bypassed as has always been; that the hospital will receive the required attention from at least four prongs: refurbishment; equipping; provision of power, water and vehicles; and, more importantly posting of adequate personnel who will do their fair share of just showing up at work. The people of Itu Mbonuso, Iwere and Ikpe clans (as well as parts of Nkari and Ikono Ini clans) who are the closest to the hospital are too poor to transport their sick ones to the nearest alternative hospital in Ikono. So, if after the end of the emergency period the so-called general hospital in Ini remains as it is, it will give strength to the notion that Ini is probably not part of Akwa Ibom State.
The rice farm? That same day in 2007, President Obasanjo “commissioned” it in the air (as his chopper hovered over the farm). Then came the politics of cheating Ini people. The farm was to have a rice mill but the powers that be in the state decided that the mill would be in Ikono. The youths of the group of villages protested; stating that the mill would add value to their community. When they couldn’t have their way, they requested that it be built at Odoro Ikpe, the LGA headquarters so that the people of Ini could benefit from the farm more. But the oracles said NO and decided to commence construction of the mill in Ikono. The youth proceeded to set the rice farm on fire just before harvest time. We neither had the farm nor the mill.
I have taken risks on many fronts to write and publish this article. But I am positive that it will pay off handsomely for my longggggggg forgotten people. I am hopeful that somehow this article will snake its way through to the attention of the governor, Pastor Umo Eno. I am hopeful that if the governor sees only the headline and the byline (name of its author), he will exclaim: “Oh, I didn’t know that my friend, Akaninyene Esiere, is from this unfortunate LGA; let’s do something about it”. He just might declare an INI MARSHALL PLAN; the type the United States of America declared in 1948 to help Western Europe to recover economically from the ravages of the second world war.
Anything is possible for those who believe. I have always encouraged my neglected people to have faith; that one day God will visit them: How and when, I cannot say. It just might be now and through Governor Eno. If the he allows himself to be used by God to rescue Ini LGA, we will gladly garland him with the title: ETI ENO INI!
And I would be too happy to pen another article which would be aptly titled THE RISE AND RISE OF INI!
October 1!
Today is our Independence Day! We are 65 years old as a nation. We need to behave as a 65-year-old human, and not as a permanent toddler. The continent of Africa and the black race still await our rising. Meanwhile, Nigeria NG, congratulations.
At a personal level, 1 October used to be a great day for me until 1998 when it left with my beloved mother. I didn’t see it coming. Adieu ooo, Mma. Twenty-seven years after, we still miss you.
Esiere is a former journalist!
©️2025
