By Clement Warrie
On Saturday, November 15, Governor Umo Eno stood before his 783 aides in the Government House Banquet Hall. It was a first-of-its-kind meeting. The hall was jam-packed and thick with unavoidable tension from the recent dismissal of two aides for flouting basic administrative rules, a move the opposition PDP took to town crying “bloody murder.” Sensing the unease, the Governor spoke solemnly. “From the day I took this job,” he declared, “I knew the insults would come. And they have. I am prepared for the storm.”
The governor’s words were soothing, conciliatory, and to many of his aides, utterly surprising. They had hoped for a call to arms but were met instead with a disarming anticlimax.
When the governor spoke again into the microphone, all doubts were dispelled. “I do not wish for you to insult anyone on my behalf,” he calmly admonished. Then, framing the plea with a higher purpose, he invoked Michelle Obama’s famous creed: “When they go low, you go high. The least you can do is engage with the facts.”
At this point, one clearly thought the governor was done but he wasn’t. What followed next was a pointed anecdote.
He described a soldier whose car was rammed by a reckless Molue bus driver in the thick of Lagos traffic. The bus driver simply took off, weaving and bouncing away through the clogged streets. Angry, insulted, and unwilling to let the injury slide, as is common with soldiers, the man ordered his driver to give chase. He was determined to teach the “bloody civilian” a lesson.
But then, something dramatic happened. As they pulled up behind the bus, ready for a confrontation, the orderly drew his boss’s attention to the graffiti scrawled across the vehicle’s dirty backside: “Lefam for God.”
Needless to say, the soldier got the message. The audience, in turn, got both a lesson and big a big laugh.
But whether or not the critics in Akwa Ibom is ready to join hands and build Akwa Ibom or pursue a pointless vendetta against a man who chose to not sink with PDP is another story altogether. Truth be told, if there ever was hope for the PDP, that hope evaporated at the APC’s home-going event held across the 369 wards penultimate weekend. An event political pundits agree has put the final nails on the PDP’s coffin.
The village boy, Anietie Usen, called the home-going weekend a “scorched earth strategy to take over all existing political structures of the PDP, which had dominated Akwa Ibom politics emphatically for 26 years since the return to democracy in 1999.”
Also weighing in, Arc. Iniobong Orok, the immediate past chairman of Nsit Ubium, analyzed the situation like the architect he is. “The APC’s political framework,” he stated “has been so effectively constructed that the PDP now finds itself structurally marginalized”
Yet, against the string of projects and development brought about by governor Umo Eno, a coalition of detractors have emerged. It comprises spurned PDP loyalists, political gadflies, and rented vuvuzelas. But the man is undeterred. He recognizes that the critics’ aim is not to engage in debate but to derail progress, pursue vendettas and sow chaos. So quietly, he continues to work, building a legacy that will outpace the noise.
As a father and a leader, Governor Umo Eno’s philosophy is built on accountability and respect for the people. This perspective allows him to see past the noise of politics, recognizing that a great deal of criticism is mere theatrics intended only to extort power and relevance.
The case of Daniel Bwala, one of president Tinubu’s spokesman offers timeless lessons. Until his appointment, Bwala was a loud and fierce critic of the man he now serves. In fact, Daniel Bwala was so loud he claimed in 2023 that voting for APC is “like going to the night of a thousand laughs.” He even dismissed Tinubu’s win as “a selection and a joke”
Confronted on Arise TV by the petulant and rambunctious Rufai Useni about this volte-face, Bwala, who now occupies office 101 at the Presidential Villa, had seemed momentarily flustered, yet would go on to deliver a classic political deflection saying, “The role of the opposition is to oppose the government and de-emphasize its strength.”
But Rufai Useni is no ordinary TV host. Perhaps, one of Daniel Bwala’s mistakes was attempting to appear clever when predator-Rufai was on the hunt. The host went for Bwala’s jugular. “Do you still stand by the insults you hurled at the President? And why are you serving a government you called “a night of a thousand laughs? Are you now part of the JOKE?” The questions landed like physical blows. For a moment, Bwala’s face wrinkled, his famed intellect and mental rigor short-circuited. Feeling instantly dehydrated, he called for a bottle of water.
“When I criticized the president,” he said when he had found his voice, “I was an outsider looking in. But when I joined his government, I decided to pay attention to his manifesto.”
That was how Daniel Bwala came to his own judgment as surely as most critics of Governor Umo Eno would.
I repeat.
Someday, and that day may soon come, the critics of Pastor Umo Eno will raise their own trumpets, and of their own volition, join the multitude in paying tribute to the man for the outstanding, and numerous life-changing projects he has brought for Akwa Ibom people. His words, as always, are these: “I wasn’t elected to answer to critics; that’s their job. Mine is to put in the works, and answer only to the people,”
