Uyo — On the second day of a three-day working visit to oil-producing Akwa Ibom state in South-South Nigeria on Saturday, President Olusegun Obasanjo fielded pointed questions from local residents about poverty and lack of infrastructure in the state.
Before the lively, interactive session, presidential spokesperson Remi Oyo encouraged attendees to be free with their questions, saying that such encounters were the best way for the president to know the problems of citizens without the interference of government bureaucrats. A cross-section of people, including artisans, teachers, market traders and professionals, took advantage of the opportunity.
Journalist Bassey Udo, Iquo Akpan, a widow, and female traditional ruler, Obong Grace Ekanem, queried the president on the fate of an abandoned multi-million dollar aluminum smelter plant in the state, on ways of improving yields from cassava, a local staple, and on improving the quality of fish harvests. Several speakers asked the president to channel more resources that could be used for economic development to Akwa Ibom's popular governor, Obong Victor Attah, who last year led an oil- state governors' campaign for rights to share revenues from off-shore wells.
Complimenting the questioners for the substantive exchange, Obasanjo also applauded a resplendent Obong Ekanem, who confessed that she wore her finest traditional gown for the event. The president had a caustic rebuke, however, for secondary school teacher, Victor Edward, who said his pupils had a 40% success rate in the last school certificate exams. "You should be sacked, 60 out of 100 students in your class failed," the president scolded, before letting him ask his question.
From the town meeting, Attah escorted Obasanjo on a tour of projects awaiting commissioning or under construction, including a housing project in Uyo, the state capital, partly funded by Shelter Afrique. Most of the projects visited, however, were outside the town. Some are roadworks constructed with funds from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the intervention agency established by the federal government to help provide infrastructure to the oil-producing impoverished Niger Delta states. Others are projects funded by the Attah administration.
One people-touching project on the tour was the Ibom Rice Company in Onna, initiated by Mobil Producing Company Unlimited in conjunction with Midland Rice of Arkansas in the United States. Susan Eshett, a Mobil spokesperson, told journalists that Mobil has invested $5.5 million in the project, which it hopes to in the near future hand over to Midland and the community. The project has so far seen the planting of rice in 525 hectares out of a projected land area of 4,000 hectares.
President Obasanjo also commissioned a computer and science laboratory block newly built by the state in Government Secondary School, Eket, before inspecting the site of the proposed International Airport, in Okobo, a few miles from the capital. The planned airport is a central feature of the Attah administration plan to create a local tourist industry.
