LEADERSHIP Governor of the Year 2024: Pastor Umo Bassey Eno

Umo Eno is the fourth civilian governor of the 37-year-old Akwa Ibom State since the return of democracy in 1999.

A pastor in his All Nations Ministry International Church, Eno is the most surprising of the governors in the political trajectory of this era.

Described as the “Golden Boy” because of his fair looks, Eno moved from the pulpit after he was discovered his leadership ingenuity by his political mentor, Mr Udom Emmanuel, into mainstream politics, first as the commissioner for lands.

When the immediate past Governor Udom Emmanuel was about to exit office, it did not take him too long to discover his successor, despite other desperate contenders on the queue.

With baited breath, the people, who were expecting one of the many known choices, were shocked to their marrows at Eno’s unveiling as the candidate of the ruling party.

Thankfully, he was readily accepted, not only by Christendom and close allies of the ex-governor, but also a large swathe of the voting public spread across the 7.2 million Akwa Ibom population. There were, of course, some mixed feelings, owing to his relative newness to mainstream politics.

A lot of politically-motivated allegations, including his framing as ‘uneducated’, were hauled at him from opponents aimed at cowing the Man of God away from an unfamiliar terrain of politics, but he weathered the storm admirably like someone whose leadership was divinely ordained.

His Surprise On Sitting On Governor’s Stool

Among those, friends and foes alike, who never dreamt of him nearing the governor’s stool, not to talk of sitting as the presiding officer, was Umo Eno himself.

On the day of his inauguration, May 29, 2023, the governor told everyone who cared to listen about his humble beginnings: growing up in the Barracks with his police-father and his industrious mother who took up the gauntlet of single parenthood at the passing of his father, and the burden of taking care of younger siblings transferred to his shoulders.

“I used to hawk soft drinks at the airport in Lagos, even while schooling,” he recalled amid tears. “If anyone had told me I would become governor, I would have asked the person to go and see the doctor, perhaps he was suffering from a deep bout of malaria or hallucination.”

Today, the man who rose from all the entanglements to become a tourism icon of the hospitality industry and nicknamed “The Governor of Royalty” after his Royalty Hotels has become the governor of Akwa Ibom State in reality.

True to his political mentor, Udom Emmanuel’s assurance—“that the man who will come after me will do greater things than me”—has become a reality.

Under the administration’s Agriculture, Rural Development, Infrastructure, Security and Empowerment (ARISE) Agenda, food security, social empowerment, job creation and effective security management have continued to make the state a haven for tourists, visitors and investors, boosting the Internally Generated Revenues (IGR) of the oil-rich Niger Delta  state.

Governor Eno’s performance has so much endeared him to Akwa Ibom people and to the centre despite the state being run by an opposition party, to the admiration of the President Bola Tinubu, Senate President Godswill Akpabio and others across Nigeria, thereby dousing the political feuds that had over the years denied Akwa Ibom several federal projects and other freebies from the centre.