By: Edifon Abasi-obot
The Akwa Ibom Rural Development Master Plan (AK-RDMP), was recently approved and adopted by His Excellency, Governor Udom Emmanuel in a State Executive Council meeting, is first of its kind in Nigeria. It is not just another project proposal for random distribution of infrastructural facilities across rural areas, that will soon be tagged “defunct”, or an amenities allocation plan for aggrandizement of the politically powerful within a rural community.
The idea of Akwa Ibom Rural Development Master Plan is a blueprint to recreating the village. It basically offers a mosaic of rich data base which captures all gazetted villages in Akwa Ibom State, numbering 2240 as at the time of its compilation, identifies their peculiar socio-economic challenges and infrastructure deficits, with considerations to population density, in areas of key drivers of rural development, such as electricity, potable water, access roads, security and some proffers systematic solutions and special interventions, as basic requirement for the desired rural transformation.It also explores the economic potentials of the rural communities, to harness their productive capacity towards self-sustenance, IGR and economic diversification.
It is a charter defining the compartment of duties and obligations for sustainable rural development between the government and the governed. It initiates peculiar patterns of conversation to systematically address the hitherto prevalent challenge of supposed beneficiaries of rural infrastructure turning around to compromise the same facilities brought to improve their pitiable living condition.
The location of security in the AK-RDMP is such that would assist Akwa Ibom State and indeed Nigeria address the futility of trying to create a safe the urban area when the more vulnerable rural nursery is so porous. It has an inbuilt mechanism for monitoring, evaluation and measurability of its implementation and deficit recovery.
This Akwa Ibom Rural Development Master Plan is the product of a long period of brooding over a possible rural development trajectory to radically transform the abandoned wasteland of sleepy villages characterized by vast greenery, wild chirp of insects, dusty untarred roads, hideous country-side of millions of homes only depending on lanterns at night, into a bubbling behemoth.
It is the brain child of a selfless, public spirited politician who happens to have traversed several strata of the polity; a two-time Local Government Council Chairman, two-time legislator at the AKHA, then Commissioner in the Ministry of Rural Development, though now still serving in the State EXCO as Special Adviser to the Governor on Political, Legislative Affairs and Water resources, Rt. Hon. (Barr.) Ekong Sampson. He is known among his kinsmen as Onomkpkoinam Mkpat Enin and in some quarters as the pivot of the new political era in Akwa Ibom State yet, most appealing is his penchant for community development and altruism.
Barrister Ekong Sampson, a lawyer, writer, poet and seasoned politician, viewed the rural landscape as “the world we try to run away from, but we really cannot, for we all come from the village and must at some point return to its warm embrace or teary fury”, delved into initiating a roadmap to “developing it and clothing it with life”.
As an obvious evidence of the possible outcome of like-minds working together in agreement, the Akwa Ibom Rural Development Master Plan happened to be typical of Governor Udom Emmanuel’s incisive roadmap and without doubt, a viable tool to drive the 5-point agenda of Poverty Alleviation, Economic and Political inclusion, Wealth Creation, Job Creation and Infrastructural Consolidation and Expansion.
It lays a structure to ensure coordinated, need driven and sustainable interventions from external agencies and avoid unnecessary congestion of amenities in some areas while others remain starved.
Barrister Ekong Sampson’s appointment as Commissioner for Rural Development then, was a clear indication of Governor Udom Emmanuel’s ingenuity in identifying square pegs and placing them in square holes, as it climaxed the gestation period of this great vision.
A dream Ekong Sampson had been brooding over, through his years as a Local Government Council Boss, during which he uncommonly chose to live within and with his Mkpat Enin people, as the Chairman of House Committee on Rural Development during his days in the AKHA before coming aboard the Udom Emmanuel led Akwa Ibom State EXCO, to man the rural development component of the State.
It was a great privilege to have worked closely with this genius, in his days as Commissioner for Rural Development, during which out of the abundance of his heart, came frequent mention and comprehensive analysis of this Master Plan concept.
Finding myself besides a man, whose heart was inditing such a magnificent matter, an uncommon deep concern for the vast but neglected rural landscape, I eagerly became the pen of a ready writer.
This, however, was not without the valuable contributions of great friends like Engr. Imeh Imeh of Esues Engineering Ltd., Engr. Meyen Etukudo, SA to the Governor on Power, the Management of AKRUWATSAN and some conscientious civil servants like Elder Samuel Umana Director of the Water Resources Directorate, Engr. Effiong Efiakedoho, then Head of Civil Engineering Directorate, Udoma Akpan of the Ministry of Economic Development, Christiana Udofia and her Community Development field staff, Elsie Assam of the PRS and Unyime Uranta of the Information Unit. Not also forgetting the cooperation of the Honourable Commissioner’s valued aides, Umana Akpan and Aniefiok Ebong.
Great commendation goes to the Honourable Special Adviser to the Governor on Rural Development and Cooperatives, Mrs. Ekemini Umoh, who has exhibited great stateliness in picking up this great vision on assumption office, nurturing, sustaining and fine-tuning it into present day reality, to accommodate the cooperatives components in line with her Bureau’s mandate. Such continuity indicates selfless commitment to governance, policy driven politicking and genuine commitment to the transformation and sustainable development of the State.
Just as the saying goes, that failure to plan is planning to fail, so has the issue of rural development in Nigeria been overtime; a recurrent venture of haphazard programmes, so to say, without corresponding sustainable results.
Government after government, regime after regime, all have in some ways thrown some money into some rural areas across the country, but for want of sustainable rural development framework over the decades, there has not been commensurate progress.
One may wonder why after so many, well-intended rural development projects, by several military and civilian regimes alike, yet lack or very poor state of basic socio-economic amenities still plague our rural communities. One of the answers could simply be that some of these city-born, city-driven but village-bound projects could hardly have addressed the peculiar culture-based, socio-economic needs of each of these rural communities, especially, as they had no lucid framework to sustain them through natural evolutionary processes.
In the light of these, it should be seen as yet another great feat for Akwa Ibom State, that the Governor Udom Emmanuel led administration in the State has birthed the first ever rural development master plan, a leap towards fast tracking rural development in the State. It is no gain saying therefore, the fact that there is more to this government than mere political rhetoric.
Rt. Hon. (Barr.) Handing over the Akwa Ibom Rural Development Master Plan to the then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development, Mr. Goddey Udoidung, after his tenure of service in the Ministry.
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