•Governor Umo Eno and Abraham
ANIETIE USEN, Uyo reporting
It was about 9pm on Saturday, February 1, 2025, and darkness had engulfed the sprawling, rustic countryside of Nsukara, in the outskirts of Idu Uruan, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.
Almost everywhere was pitch dark, starless and quiet. But Abraham, a 14-year old orphan and Junior Secondary School student was desperate to read in preparation for an upcoming test the next morning at the Comprehensive High School, Idu Uruan.
Luckily, there was a lone solar streetlight nearby which usually attracts lots of insects including the harmless like moths and the harmful like gnats. But Abraham didn’t mind the inconvenience. Village boys are as tough as a nail.
With his notebooks, pen and his cousin, he sat on the bare dusty street, under the streetlight preparing for the test in Social Studies, a subject that is not his favourite. His turf is in a different field, not Social Science and he knew he had to prepare double for that test.
“My favourite subjects are Maths and Basic Sciences and I always read more to avoid poor marks in Social Sciences”, Abraham told me to justify his nocturnal adventure under the streetlight.
The streetlight shone very brightly over Abraham that night. But luck also was soon to shine on him.
A man walked past the streetlight that night and became curious about the bookish boy. Incidentally, the passerby was a journalist. He pulled out his mobile phone from his pocket and made a video of Abraham reading under the streetlight in an hour he considered too late for a little boy.
“I was touched by his serious-mindedness against all odds and surprised that a little boy of his age would brave the night to read under a streetlight when his age mates were sleeping at home”, Pastor Idongesit Okono, a TV reporter with African Independent Television, AIT, told me.
The journalist who has covered and reported the activities of many governors in Akwa Ibom State knew just what to do with the video. Immediately, he forwarded the video to Governor Umo Eno, a man he had interviewed many times and had interacted with long before he became Governor.
“I knew this governor is blessed with a heart of gold especially for the poor and he would certainly not ignore such a pathetic scene”, Okono told me.
Okono was right. Moments after Okono sent Abraham’s video to the governor, the governor responded precisely at 10:12pm. “Oh Jesus! We must install a solar light in their house. Please help me identify him. I will send my people to come, install solar lights in his house” the governor said in his WhatsApp message to Okono.
The journalist went to work immediately. The next day, he tracked down Abraham in a modest, unpainted bungalow, surrounded by farms, where the little boy lives with his aunt. Quickly, he gave the governor feedback that he had found Abraham.
It was on Sunday, February 2, 2025, at 9:53am when the governor reacted to the feedback in a message to Okono.
“Thank you sir. Please let’s tidy up this young man’s business. Please contact Prince Umoekpo, my Special Assistant on Humanitarian Services. I have directed him on what to do” the governor said, in another message to Okono.
“Where the word of the king is, there is power”, so says the Holy Book. By February 13, 2025, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, Umoekpo had carried out the governor’s orders and work was in progress in the house. Installation of solar lights with three solar panels was completed and Abraham does not need to read with streetlight anymore. It was a Valentine’s gift, so to speak. The solar-powered water borehole was in progress; so was the preparation to renovate the house, as the governor ordered.
The news that the governor had seen his video reading under a streetlight was melody in Abraham’s ears.
“I was shocked and very happy”, he said, his voice rising for the first time during my interview with him.
“I am 100% happy that the governor saw the video and 100% happy that he has provided our house with solar powered electricity and borehole water. He is a very good and very kind person…” he said about the man he only sees his pictures on billboards and posters.
For her aunt and caregiver, Nsima Cletus Effiong, the news meant the world to her.
“Right now, it is like the governor himself has visited us in this house…This boy has been a good boy. I am the one training him from primary school till now. He normally goes to read under that streetlight because we don’t have good electricity in this village. See how God has used him to bless us”, she said.
Abraham’s parents are no more. Unlike his mother, Abraham said he did not grow up to meet his father and has no memory of what the man looked like.
In 2014 Abraham’s aunt, Nsima Cletus Effiong, stepped into the shoes of her late elder sister and became the mother to Abraham along with her own three children. Abraham knows no other mother except her beloved aunt.
The fair skin aunt is a pleasant, hardworking vegetable farmer, planting water leaf and pumpkin leaf in any unused space in the neighborhood. That’s her only means of livelihood for the family since her husband died in April 2020. She said she makes about N30,000 or thereabout in a month from her vegetable farm.
Unless you are told, you wouldn’t know the difference between Abraham and the woman‘s biological children as they are completely integrated like siblings.
When I visited the village, they were not home, only to return later, wearing the same uniform to hug me, sit with me and laugh as I interviewed Abraham.
Ironically, Abraham has not gotten the result of the test that made him read under the streetlight that fateful night. The reason is that like his last term examinations result which has not been released, he has no money yet to pay for examination material fee, which is N800 (Eight Hundred Naira) only.
Abraham’s aunt told me she cannot afford the N800 examination material fee for now lest the family starve. “Food comes first. As we say it in this village: ‘the food you have in your stomach is what enables you to carry the load on your head’. The money I make from my small farm is barely enough to feed the children. But it is better than folding my arms and doing nothing at all…” she said.
Surprisingly, Abraham said he eats at least twice a day. To the question about his favourite food, his cousins giggled in anticipation of the answer.
“Sir, anything we have in the house is my favourite food”, he said to the laughter of everybody in the family.
Looking too serious-minded for his age, Abraham said he is focusing on doing well in school and becoming an electrical engineer in the future. It is the reason he doesn’t have many friends in the school.
“Sir, that is my only friend in the school”, he said beckoning to a taller handsome boy, his classmate, Ikechukwu Amadi, who was an earshot away.
Ikechukwu said he loves playing football but Abraham “read books all the time, which makes him a more brilliant boy”.
But Abraham countered quickly and said he only stopped playing football because he gets tired easily and that doesn’t make him more brilliant than Ikechukwu.
“I am not the most brilliant boy in my class but I am trying to be… ”, he said with a rare smile playing on his lips.
Abraham would love to see the governor one day at least to shake his hands for a job well done.
“I will tell the governor that I am glad for what he has done for me and my family, and that God will bless him and open more doors for him in Jesus Name”, Abraham said.
The prayers immediately gave up Abraham as a Church Boy. Happily, he said he is a chorister in the Sanctified Mount Zion Church in the village.
For this poor family, life is less than absorbing, which is a polite way to say that life is hard. But they looked undaunted. Their prayer every morning is not for cars, houses, visas and other exotic things that city people pray for. Theirs is a simple prayer: “Lord, give us this day, our daily bread”.
