•Governor Umo Eno
Forget about the multiple awards given to Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State by leading media organisations in Nigeria and beyond. For a moment, forget also about the recent ‘Governor of the Year Award 2025’, presented to Governor Eno by the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF.
For now, let’s go back to the basics to catch a glimpse of how this governor drives his massive and ambitious developmental projects and programmes in his ever-rising sub-national on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.
Perhaps if there is any government structure in the Executive branch of Eno’s Administration more important than the State Executive Council, it must be the monthly State Project Delivery Committee meeting. It is an informal structure, created from out of the blue by Governor Eno himself to suit his hands-on style of leadership.
For two days every month, Governor Eno locks up, nearly round the clock, his entire Cabinet, Delivery Officers along with key political stakeholders inside the premium Banquet Hall of the Government House. Only a brief lunch break is permitted and served on the spot. The duty of the Project Delivery Committee meeting is to critically evaluate the status of each project and programme being executed by the Administration.
It is usually a tense and sometimes unfriendly meeting. No jokes. Every Commissioner, Delivery Officer or Project Supervisor must be on top of his game to meet the high standards and demands of the governor. He must also be able to convince the gathering, with facts, figures, pictures and videos, that satisfactory progress and time lines are being met in each project and programme of the government.
Each Commissioner, sometimes in collaboration with the Delivery Officer, takes turns to make a PowerPoint presentation beamed on a massive HD digital screen for everyone to see. Often, it turns out to be the platform where the capacity and competence of the project and programme leadership is tested.
The presentation shows the status of the project or programme the previous month, the progress accomplished during the month under review, next steps, timeliness and challenges, if any.
The contract sum of the project, mobilisation, project start and end dates, milestones and deadlines must not be left out. The purpose is to transparently plan, coordinate, monitor and track progress together with stakeholders over a specific period of time.
It is innovative. It has succeeded extensively in carrying along a cross section of the state leadership on the aggressive infrastructural development that Governor Eno is spearheading. It has also won the hearts of key stakeholders for Governor Eno, who is perceived as a transparent and inclusive leader that emphasises shared decision-making, participation and teamwork.
“We have never seen governance at this detailed and high level in this state and I have been around long enough to know”, Senator Effiong Bob, the Political leader of Uyo Senatorial District said in the July 2025 Project Delivery Meeting. It was the view that virtually all stakeholders shared at the July meeting.
“This is clearly one of the best ways to harvest knowledgeable inputs into project governance, keep project administrators and contractors on their toes and accomplish your project targets in time for the people who elected you into office.
“This is why Akwa Ibom State will continue to make quantum leaps in all indices of development”, Assam Assam, SAN, former Nigerian Ambassador to Russia, said also in the July 2025 stanza of the State Project Delivery Meeting.
But no one foresaw that the August edition of the State Project Delivery Committee would take a strange dimension.
Instead of gathering stakeholders inside the Government House Banquet Hall as usual, Governor Eno surprisingly moved the all-important meeting to project sites across the state. It was time to see first hand the projects that most stakeholders had been seeing as pictures on screens and publications.
For two hectic days, August 14 and 15, 2025, stakeholders led by Governor Eno, dressed in jeans, casual shirts and faze caps, rolled up their sleeves, jump into several buses that cut down the number of vehicles on the convoy and traversed the length and breadth of the state to inspect and evaluate first hand the actual status of many multi-billion naira projects.
“This is management by working around, MBWA”, the governor told journalists who for two days trailed him to all 23 sites of major projects.
By MBWA, he was referring to a management style popularised by David Warren, the former CEO of Motorola, where leaders intentionally spend time outside their offices to engage with the workforce rather than relying solely on formal communications channels.
In two days of MBWA with key stakeholders, Governor Eno, his cabinet, Delivery Officers and key stakeholders visited the sites of the Medical Village, Ibom International Hospital, the Elderly Citizens Centre, the CNG/Citi Bus Terminal, ARISE Shopping City, Ibom International Convention Centre/Hotel, Judiciary Village, the Security Command & Control Centre, AKBC House, Ibom Model Farm, Ibom Equipment Leasing Company, Ibom Aviation Village, International Terminal of Victor Attah International Airport, Airport Clinic, and the Incredible ARISE Resort, described by many as a “Wonderland”, where a ravaging erosion devastated landscape has been “miraculously” turned into a world class resort and tourism trap.
“You must be able to physically see your projects on the ground, beyond the briefings you are receiving in the office… So, we have visited 23 project sites in two days, and we have not even reached half of the projects we need to see. But the truth is, this gives us an on-the-spot idea of the actual progress we are making,” Governor Eno told journalists at the end of the two-day project inspections.
With the entire state virtually turned into a massive construction site, the ripple effect was noticeable everywhere the governor and his team went.
“In all the sites we have visited, what excited me so much, as you saw it yourselves, is the number of young people that these projects have engaged and impacted positively. “Everywhere we went, we were received by crowds of young men and women working on construction sites, be they engineers, skilled workers or unskilled workers.
“In fact, there is a site where we have female civil engineers as Managing Directors of their respective companies. This gives me that joy that we are simultaneously and gainfully employing our youths, while embarking on many legacy projects…I feel very happy”.
According to the governor: “These projects and the employment they generate… are my rewards to Akwa Ibom people…They are my gifts to the 354,000+ people who voted for me to provide good leadership to Akwa Ibom State… And that’s what we are doing”.
The recent Socio-Economic Impact Assessment of ARISE Agenda, published last month, with the Minister of National Planning and Director General of the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, in attendance, indicates that a total of 49,901 persons have so far been employed in the last two years of Umo Eno Administration. Skilled and unskilled labour employed at various project sites stand at 26,950 jobs, representing 85% employed persons between May 2023 and July 29, 2025.
The innovation of a high level Project Delivery Committee meeting that has increased the pace of project delivery in the state has not only been beneficial to the unemployed youths alone. The entire cabinet of the governor as well as the heads of government departments and agencies have gained enormously from the project delivery meetings.
For one, the project delivery meetings have become the veritable leadership training and mentorship venue for most members of the project delivery committee. Opportunities where aides understudy their leaders abound.
The way the project delivery meetings are run includes several key scenarios and roles that enhance leadership development and organisational continuity.
Equally important, the project delivery meetings provide the opportunity for peer review mechanism, whereby members of the committee assess the work or performance of their colleagues or peers, which helps them to improve and control the quality of work they handle thereafter.
In this milieu, the leadership style of Governor Eno is pivotal and to many, predictable. He is firm and fair. In other words, he is strict and consistent in upholding rules and expectations, but also considerate and accommodating, earning loads of respect in the process.
Said one new Commissioner: “This man is good. I have learnt a lot about leadership in my few months here than all my academic life. He is unique and effective. He breaks the mold. Certainly, a new era of our state is in the making before our eyes. Can you imagine Akwa Ibom landscape when all these projects are completed in a few years’ time”?
