By Osondu Ahirika

Watching the growth of the Human Capacity Building vision is now my adopted pet project.

I’m thrilled to announce that Oron Local Government has come to the party.

It was on April 14, 2025, that the ARISE Human Capital Development Strategy was launched by His Excellency, Pastor Umo Eno, PhD, in Akwa Ibom State.

That milestone was considered significant enough to have Vice-President Kashim Shettima personally launch the plan.

His words at the occasion were noteworthy.

He acknowledged Akwa Ibom State as the first in the nation to localise the Human Capital Development vision in its truest form.

He described it as a template for each State of the Federation to replicate.

I distilled that to further suppose, it is a template every Local Government Council in Akwa Ibom should domesticate.

Thankfully, Ibeno and Itu LGAS quickly hearkened to Governor Umo Eno’s plea that the Council Chairmen should invest in HCD for the good of their people.

The Chairman of Oron Local Government Area, Hon. Chief Okon Asukwo Enweme, has made good on his promise.

Prioritising the capacity-building initiatives his administration had since entrenched.

Chief Enweme has enrolled 10 indigenes of Oron for the one-month intensive training course on product manufacturing at the Dakkada Skills Acquisition Centre, DASAC.

Fully paid the 2.5 million Naira fees which cover feeding, accommodation, and training materials for the duration of the training. I’m not surprised Chief Enweme is thus proactive.

It is on record that he appointed over 75 Aides from the five Local Government Areas of Oro nation.

Arguing incontrovertibly, that Oron Local Government is the melting point of the Federal Constituency.

The health and education of his people have been his strong point.

Since assuming office, Chief Enweme sponsored a cervical cancer screening for over 1000 women from Oro nation.

Another 850 people got free eye tests, treatment, and surgery by case merit.

The Oron Council boss graciously bankrolled 200 Oron youths in ICT training in partnership with EDAF ICT hub.

We can’t overstress how important ICT knowledge is in today’s labour market.

He also procured 200 JAMB forms for prospective UTME candidates ensuring they had free preparatory tutorials for the examination.

Chief Enweme has set his sights on the construction of an administrative block. A proposed storey building structure that will house the office of the Chairman, Vice Chairman, and the entire executive council.

In the interim, the Council  Secretariat wears a new look of beautification. With 95 stands of solar street lights lighting up the Council Secretariat preventing recurrent theft and security breaches.

It is now a given that Oron Local Government will have 10 persons who will become entrepreneurs.

At the end of their internship and training. In areas vast, that include:

Manufacturing of agro-allied products and herbicides.

Beverages, confectioneries, and food products.

Car-care products like engine oil, grease, clutch, and brake fluid.

Cosmetics /body care products as well as cleaning products such as bleach, scouring powder, toilet cleaner, etc.

Also, available in the course outline is the manufacturing of detergents – bars, liquid, and powder.

The manufacturing of all kinds of drinks – soft drinks, juice, wines, energy drinks, etc;

Production of fragrances like perfume, deodorants, and air fresheners.

Healthcare products such as broad-spectrum disinfectants, Dettol-type disinfectants, and methylated spirits.

Household products/textile and leather dye. Products in this category include cold water starch, foam/mattress, toothpaste, shoe polish, and candles, which are covered in the choice areas.

Would-be trainees can select their area of interest from these.

Imagine unleashing these 10 persons into the new Oron, given the development surge anticipated in the area courtesy of Governor Umo Eno.

Or have you forgotten? Under Governor Umo Eno’s ARISE Agenda Oron is upswing.

A modern terminal building is ongoing at the Oron Beach.

Concurrent construction of storage facilities, including warehouses, dry storage, and solar-powered cold rooms, to support the fishing industry and ensure the preservation of perishable goods are inclusive.

Governor Eno is building a new cargo jetty, ferry jetty, with marine security force in place.

A modern motor park, shoreline embankment, a 12 lane superhighway in the offing, and the Ibom Deep Seaport promise.

Oron must build human capacity to leverage on these developments snd prevent capital flight going forward.

Beyond that, I can’t help but stretch my imagination to having 10 persons from the 31 Local Government Areas, emerge with expertise in any or all of these vocations.

More of our young people are being taken off the dragnet of social vices and crimes.

Corporate organisations and multinational companies can sponsor people for the training too.

Our Lawmakers can sponsor some persons on this HCD plan as their Constituency project of course.

Akwa Ibom has been set on the right track by Governor Umo Eno. Something great is about to happen.

Ahirika is Head of Media and Advocacy Unit, EARCOM,  Akwa Ibom State.

Vice President Kashim Shettima (left) and Gov. Umo Eno during the HCD launch.

By Etim Etim

Vice President Kashim Shettima visited Akwa Ibom on Monday to launch the second phase of the federal government’s National Human Capital Development programme (HCD); but the visit underscored a few subtexts that require further examination. In the first place, many people, including President Tinubu’s ardent supporters, do not know that the federal government has such a programme, and a lot more would not imagine why Akwa Ibom was chosen for its launch. The expression ‘Human Capital Development’ has been loosely used by many politicians during campaigns, but I’m not quite sure if its significance is well understood.

In the private sector, HCD refers simply to a range of functions that pertain to staff recruitment, training, promotion and career planning and development; but as a government programme, it has far broader scope and connotation, indicating the process of developing skills, knowledge and competencies that enhance an individual’s productivity and earning potential. It therefore involves investments in education; training and health that improve a person’s ability to contribute to economy and society.

The National HCD programme which Shettima unveiled in Uyo is a federal government programme domiciled in the office of the Vice President to promote education, health, nutrition, labour, climate change adaption, clean energy and gender inclusivity.  Over the years, Akwa Ibom State has made significant strides in these areas – Gov. Eno has even incorporated them into his ARISE Agenda – to warrant the VP’s public acknowledgement and endorsement.

The government has been implementing free and compulsory primary and secondary education for over 20 years now. The programme was later expanded to include payment of WAEC and NECO fees for all students registered in its public schools. Every year, the government spends between N600 million and N800 million every year to pay for these exam fees for graduating secondary students. Very few states in the federation have sustained such a policy in the last 26 years. The Eno administration has gone further by remodeling some of the 1,110 primary schools in the state into well-equipped world-class leaning centres. I hope that very soon all primary schools in the state would be of this standard.

How about health? The state has some of the best health facilities in the country. Primary health centres in every LGA are being overhauled and reequipped by the current administration, coming in the footsteps of the last administration which invested heavily in upgrading general hospitals across the state. The outcome of these investments in primary and secondary healthcare was announced by the VP himself.

‘’With an under-five mortality rate of 80, compared to the national average of 110, and with only 3.5% of primary school-age children out of school – far below the national average of 25.6% – your state is not merely compliant with our national vision. You are ahead of the national curve. And I assure you the federal government stands ready to partner hand-in-hand with you’’, the VP said at the launch of the HCD in Uyo.

What this means is that out of every 1,000 under-five children in Akwa Ibom State, 80 die before they reach five years of age. This is a far better performance than the national average of 110. But we should do better. No child in Akwa Ibom should die.  When Obong Victor Attah was governor, his wife Mrs Allisson Attah recognized childhood malnutrition as a big problem in the state. To address this, she implemented a scheme that taught our rural women how to augment infant feeding with protein. In charge of that programme was the late Prof (Mrs) Etuk, a biochemist and daughter of late Dr. Clement Isong.

I interviewed the late Prof (Mrs) Etuk several years ago, and was moved by the ingenuity of Allison Attah in eradicating incidents of childhood malnutrition in the state. Another First Lady later came up with another brilliant idea that further enhanced HCD in the state. Mrs Unoma Ekaette Akpabio introduced a programme that supports women with multiple-births. Any Akwa Ibom woman who gave birth to twins; triplets or more received visits and financial support from the government. I hope this programme is still alive in the Ministry of Women Affairs. My wife was so impressed by this programme that she thought all the other states should emulate Akwa Ibom.

Enter Gov. Umo Eno. Right from inception, this ordained pastor has made it clear that his administration would be heavily tilted towards human capital development and at the core is uplifting the less privileged and the poor. He has established Ibom Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (Ibom-LED) to train and offer financial support to young businessmen and women in different fields. He’s also supporting thousands of artisans and farmers across the state with cash and equipment worth about N5 billion in a massive empowerment programme. This is meant to stimulate rural economy; create jobs and augment standards of living.

But unfortunately, some elite members of the society are displeased with this because they think that it’s a waste of resources. What’s wrong with the government providing assistance to farmers; micro and small businesses operating at the LGAs?   These are the people who produce the food we eat and create jobs for themselves and others, yet, the government is only spending N5 billion of the N950 billion budgeted for the state this year – that’s just 0.5% of the total budget. As I said to some friends, it is better for the government to invest N5 billion on farmers and small businesses across the state than spend that much to purchase high-end SUVs and houses as gifts to some ‘’political stakeholders’’ in Abuja.

Vice President Shettima has commended the governor ‘’for not only adopting the HCD framework but also localizing its operation and placing people in the centre of public policies’’. The VP said Akwa Ibom is the first state ‘’in the nation to localize the HCD vision in its truest form…by adopting the strategies in local government areas’’. I congratulate the state for this achievement.

Etim is a Journalist and Political Analyst based in Abuja.