Gov Eno Inaugurates Chairman’s Lodge, Model Primary School In Eket

By Bassey Nkponam
EKET 
The Akwa Ibom governor has inaugurated the official residence built for the chairman of Eket Local Government Council, Mr Akaninyene Tommey, alongside  a Model Primary School in Idung Offiong, both in Eket Local Government Area. 
The lodge initiated, built and furnished by the State government, is to be replicated in the 31 local government areas of the State. 
The State governor, Pastor Umo Eno, while inaugurating the lodge, expressed delight over the completion of the project.  
Eno recalled his administration’s promise to build lodges for the 31 local government chairmen in the State, noting that the one inaugurated will serve as a prototype for contractors to replicate across the remaining 30 local government areas.
“We have not asked you to bring money from your votes so that you don’t short change your people. As a State government, funding of these projects is ready and intact. And, we have never and will never tamper with the allocation to our local government councils,” he said and charged council chairmen to endeavour to live within their community to effectively feel the pulses of their people. 
Eno acknowledged with satisfaction the achievement of the Eket Local Government Council chairman, Mr Akaninyene Tommey, and the competition among the local government chairmen in areas of projects initiation, urging them to ensure the competition enhances more of their capacity.
While also inaugurating the Model Primary School at Idung Offiong, the governor lauded the teachers for their good job, and urged the people to take proper care of the school facilities.
He spotted a school boy who led a group of other pupils to render a welcome song in his honour, and appreciated the boy with an offer of employment to his mother as a teacher following the boy’s request.
“On my interaction with the little boy, he said ‘Your Excellency, my mother has NCE, but she has no job to take care of us. So please, give my mother a job’. He sounded so intelligent and refined. So, I direct that his mother be employed immediately by the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB”, he declared.
The Eket Local Government Council Chairman, Tommey, in his welcome remarks, thanked Governor Eno for delivering life-touching projects across the 31 local government areas of the State within his two years in office.
Tommey appreciated the governor for strategically citing the school in the rural area to enable the people at the grassroots benefit from the project which has complemented the rural development component of the ARISE Agenda.
The commissioner for education, Professor Ubong Umo, highlighted the strategic components of the projects and thanked the governor for providing a master class facility that will help mould Akwa Ibom children for the future, describing Governor Eno as a model of projects exhibition among all sub-nationals in the country. 
Giving an overview of the Chairman’s Lodge Project, the commissioner for local government and chieftaincy affairs, Mr. Frank Archibong, described the newly-completed project as a product of one of the governor’s campaign visions to provide befitting lodges for all council executives in their local governments and bring governance closer to the people at the grassroots. 
Archibong saw the gesture as the hallmark of his second anniversary in office, and congratulated Governor Eno for leaving an imprint of development in every local government and ward across the State.