Akwa Ibom State Governor, Pastor Umo Eno, has appointed one personal aide from each political ward in the state, making it a total of 368 appointees.

These appointees are to serve as liaison officers between the state government and their respective wards.

Qualified appointees must be residents within the ward and must be politically active.

The Governor, however, appealed to the faithful of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state to remain calm and committed to the party.

He assured that more opportunities are available for deserving members to contribute their quota towards the realisation of the A.R.I.S.E. Agenda blueprint and the overall success of the administration.

Governor Eno addressed his Executive Council members, political stakeholders, top government functionaries, and a cross-section of the people of the state who congregated for the October edition of the Monthly Covenant Service held at the Banquet Hall, Government House, Uyo.

He hinted that the 368 appointments were the first in a series of his determined efforts to ensure an all-encompassing government, as promised to the people during his electioneering campaign.

He mentioned the 4000 appointments across all units for the Neighbourhood City Watch Programme, as well as the 40 appointments for the Songhai Model Farm Programme, as pending opportunities to accommodate indigenes of the state.

He noted that the appointees were as qualified and deserving as those who couldn’t make it, adding that the issues raised by those who couldn’t make the list were genuine.

He solicited understanding, explaining that the appointments could not accommodate everybody in the first instance.

In furtherance of his administration’s disposition to inclusivity, Governor Eno announced his readiness to meet with stakeholders from the 31 local government areas of the state to share ideas on modalities to best implement the proposed one-project per local government initiative.

“On Monday, we’ll be holding our stakeholders’ meeting in the evening at 4 p.m., with each local government bringing 20 people.

“I trust that the leaders will not go and take people from one household and call them stakeholders. Please, I expect at least one ward leader to be on that list, plus critical people. Everybody, again, cannot be on that list.

“Why are we doing this? It’s just to be able to share what we plan to do in each local government area in three months.

“So we want to throw it open for you to go back home, think, and within the week tell us the real needs to enable us to look at them, be it school, hospital, water, or a market project. But it must be a rural development project,” he stated.

The Governor announced that the stakeholders’ meeting would be followed by an all-women meeting, then a meeting with the male and female youths separately with him to further enhance grassroots involvement in his government.

He congratulated the Akwa Ibom people on the 63rd Independence Anniversary of Nigeria and prayed for wisdom from the leaders to make Nigeria better.

“Nigeria has been independent for 63 years, and I trust God that the older we grow, the better we’ll get, and the days ahead will be good for us.

The Bible enjoins us to pray for those in authority. Let’s pray for the president, for our state, and for the governor, for wisdom, because wisdom is needed to navigate a lot of things, and it is the principal thing.

“I want to thank all of you for coming and wish you a happy Independence Day celebration,” he remarked.

Earlier, the State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Bishop Christian Nyong, in a homily titled “Peace Be Still”, culled from Mark 4:37–39, expounded that life is a journey, and at various points in the journey, storms arise in the forms of troubles, disturbances, agitations, and the invasion of our peaceful atmosphere.

This, he said, every human is prone to, irrespective of status or level of attainment.

The cleric exhorted that no trouble of life is insurmountable to God’s people, as God has endowed them with the power to speak as Jesus did to the wind and cause peace to swallow up any situation.

He admonished the congregants to believe in God and activate the power of God in them in the face of afflictions. (Nigerian Tribune)