My fellow Akwa Ibomites:
About four years ago you voted for me and my party, the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP). With a great deal of excitement as shown in the weight of your vote you asked me to be your Governor. That excitement was infectious, the feeling was mutual. I accepted the job with great zeal and have pursued the goals we set for our state with missionary zeal. It was a covenant of love. Discharging it was, for me, the labour of love. It wasn’t love unrequited. It was love reciprocated, love appreciated and love acknowledged. I decided that I would do my best for us to have an enduring relationship because we were singing from the same hymn book. During this period we wooed various investors and told them that we were open for business and that we would spread a welcome mat for them. They responded with enthusiasm.
We got planted on our soil more than a dozen industries that have produced goods for our people and jobs for the unemployed. These industries include but are not limited to Pencil and toothpick factories, electrical digital metering, starch and flour mill factories, plastic manufacturing company, palm oil and palm kernel processing factories, rice mills and fertilizer blending plants. As the icing on the industrial cake Africa’s largest Syringe Factory has its machines humming on our soil, in Onna, Eket Senatorial District of our State.
In the area of Health, we have restored our primary and secondary health care centres to a state of good health through upgrading and rehabilitation of their infrastructure. We have trained many health professionals; treated 15, 350 people with eye diseases and performed 1, 150 eye surgeries; we have treated 4, 038 malnourished children and given free medical services to children below five years of age, and to pregnant women and aged men and women.
We have given a big boost to agricultural production based on our belief that everybody needs a full stomach to function efficiently. Our Akwa Prime Hatchery produces 10, 000 birds weekly; we have cultivated over 1, 200 hectares of rice while 48, 000 of our rice farmers are registered for CBN’s anchor borrowers’ scheme. We have distributed 30, 000 hybrid plantain suckers, constructed 36 cassava micro processing mills and procured thousands of bags of fertilizer for our farmers. And now farmers in 28 of our LGAs are cocoa producers with improved high-yielding cocoa seedlings.
With our irrevocable commitment to education we are breaking down the steel walls of prejudice, ignorance and illiteracy and opening a new horizon of hope by building impregnable bunkers that can shield our state from lapsing again into illiteracy. Our philosophy in education is that we must dig the well before we are thirsty. We have supplied thousands of desks to our schools, recruited 5, 000 new teachers, paid N600 million in WAEC and NABTEB fees for our children, provided massive infrastructure and equipment for our free and compulsory basic education programme.
We have paved the paths to various towns and villages, recording 1700 kilometres at the last count. We have constructed more than 40 bridges linking towns with towns and people with people. We have rehabilitated and constructed over 500 kilometres of rural feeder roads to enhance the conveyance of farm products to the cities and city people to their country homes. This is a way of enhancing the symbiotic relationship that exists between villages and towns and bridging the gap between both.
We have given N2 billion as interest free loans to small scale enterpreneurs. We are constructing 10 modern sports centres. We have opened doors of opportunity to our youths by training 20, 000 of them in diverse skills because tomorrow’s hope resides in today’s youths. We have encouraged them in more ways than one to abandon the fruitless life of indolence and embrace the useful life of meaningful activity. We have mobilized them, head and heart, into the Akwa Ibom project so that they can convert their prodigious energy into mountains of achievement for themselves and for our dear State.
We recognize that women constitute an important factor in the development matrix. With their deep concern for societal stability and the welfare of children, my Government with the active support of my dear wife, the First Lady, Martha, we have empowered them in several ways for the benefit of our state. We have given grants to hundreds of widows, financial empowerment to women generally and grants to hundreds of mothers with multiple births. We believe that our State can be highly enhanced if we took advantage of the multi-tasking ability of our millions of women.
My fellow Akwa Ibomites, I cannot list all our accomplishments in this short letter to you. A lot of these achievements have been amply documented and presented on various media for your consumption. My intention here is to express my grateful thanks to you for the support you have given me and my government these past years. It is this groundswell of support that has led to the spiraling pace of development that we have witnessed in the state. We are at the bar of history as we approach the 20th year of our practice of presidential democracy. We in Akwa Ibom State have been lucky to have smooth transitions of eight years each from Uyo Senatorial District to Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District under the able leadership of Obong (Architect) Victor Attah and Chief Godswill Akpabio respectively. I am an inheritor of that smooth transition. Now I humbly ask you based on my acknowledged performance, my unparalleled commitment to the unity and progress of our State and the need for fairness, equity and justice, to give me the opportunity to serve you for another term of four years by voting massively for me in the March 9, 2019 Governorship election. That rotation cycle must not be broken.
We have done a lot in raising the bar of development but a lot still remains to be done. The axe must not rest until the tree has fallen. That horror-filled era of kidnapping and assassinations that preceded my takeover is over. In the last three and a half years we have had an outbreak of peace in the State. For this we are truly thankful to God and you the peace-loving and patriotic people of Akwa Ibom State as well as the security personnel. We will never allow violence to define our state and our people despite the proclivity of some politicians to warlike vituperations.
As we go into the elections the poison of propaganda is at work, but it does not kill the truth that you can find on the ground. Look around and you will find that everything I have told you about our achievements is correct to a T.
I respectfully ask you to give me the chance to do more. We know that there is no royal road to development and we are ready to dig our heels into the ground and do the work for which we are irrevocably committed. Please vote for me. Please vote for PDP. That umbrella will shield you from sun and rain.
Thank you.
Signed
Udom Emmanuel
PDP Governorship Candidate & Governor, Akwa Ibom State
