₦airaland Forum

As at 2010

A few months ago we lost over 3 yrs worth of data on nairaland due to unforeseen circumstances, the thread that featured the beautiful roads in Akwa Ibom was wiped out totally, Since then i have been inundated with lots of private mails for nairalanders to bring back that thread. I have been busy these past months and have not spent as much time on Nairaland.

Today i have decided to bring back some of the pictures that were on that thread. This thread will not be as robust as the former one as that was a product of many years and many contributors, as such some of the images are lost forever. I have mined the images from several pro Akwa ibom Nairalanders who have contributed immensely to the propagation of the image of the state worthy mention are dnaijaguy,Aquafinna, Atouke, Rossike etc whose images i have borrowed in resurrecting this thread.

It is a well known fact that as at 2006 the FMWH put the total motorable/in good condition roads within Akwa Ibom State at 300km. As at 2010 3yrs into the life of the administration of Gov. Godwill Akpabio, the road network was doubbled to about 700km and counting and most of the roads were expanded, dualized and beautified.

As at 2013 the State government had increased the road network from 700km in 2010 to 1200km and counting thereby making Akwa Ibom State one of the few states in the federation with the optimum road networks.
As at today, the state government has not rested on its oars but is continuously building more roads worthy of mention is the ultra modern Goodluck boulevard that was recently commissioned by Mr president, the ongoing dualization of Ikot ekpene/aba road, which has reached advanced stages, the Etinan to eket dualized highway, and the Eket to ibeno dualized highways, etebi enwang road and many others that are at several stages of construction.

Irrespective of political bias, this is a success story that needs to be told, indeed it is a Nigerian success story, for very rarely have we seen such focus and dedication to infrastructural renaissance in this country.

This thread will focus mostly on roads even though Nigerians already know by now that tha AKSG has excelled in other infrastructures like 5 brand new general hospital that are completed and put to use and the soon to be completed specialist hospital, A bi-campus state university that will graduate its first set of students next year, over 4000 class room buildings across the state primary and secondary schools, 38 bridges, 3.7km of underground drainage in the state and counting. An International standard airport with and MRO, and many other life changing projects.

Gov. Akpabio commissioning the road network of the state polytechnic.

shota: ..

They are the ones that are willing to join their brothers to form a state. Why do you want to hold them down ? Why do you want them to remain in Akwa Ibom and suffer. They are not Efik so let them go . Amnesty is for ex militants and every recognized militant camp benefits from it. Amnesty is not for every Ijaw youth but for those who were involved in some form of militancy. You are not an Ijaw man and you are not an Obolo Ijaw . The Obolo Ijaw people want to join another state and you can not stop it. It is called human right. Any other group in that same Akwa Ibom can also decide to join Cross River if they want. This is human right. You can not stop Obolo Ijaw from being part of an OIL RIVERS state if the government is creating it. So stop wasting your time and be proud of your EFIK self and leave the Obolo Ijaws alone.

okay we will shall see. four years is not long a long time, president jonathan if elected will have 4 years to implement the recommendations of the conference, there is no need shouting i can bet you that not even one village from Akwa Ibom will be part of any new state.
in your ignorance you keep referring Akwa Ibom as efik, thats why fools like you probably think you can steal Akwa Ibom land as they did bakassi. Akwa ibom will resist any attempt to annex any part of its land.

From your ignorant rant i have concluded that you do not know what you are talking about, and you are not ijaw, but just a trouble maker. we aint going anywhere and ranting in nairaland can no state create. watch the next four years and see the ijaw expansionist wet dream remain exactly what it is.

shota: Obolo , Kalabari, Ibani, Engenni are the Eastern Ijaw clans gearing up to be natives of the proposed OIL Rivers State. No Efik, Ibibio, Annang, Igbo or any devil can stand on our way unless there' ll not be any form of state creation in Nigeria. No inch of Ijaw land would remain in Akwa Ibom state. Obolo is an Ijaw clan and Obolo land is an Ijaw land. The good non Ijaws that migrated to OBOLO land to live with / among the Obolo Ijaws should not take the good hospitality of the Obolo Ijaw natives for weakness any more because the entire Ijaw nation and especially the eastern Ijaws are now ready to defend the lives of every Obolo Ijaw and their land . Enough is Enough. The Ijaw nation also deserves to be a united nation just as every other Tribe.

If you were on ground you would have known that the so called ijaws in Eastern obolo are a minority in that LGA just as we have minority ijaw settlers from the Atlantic coast of Akwa ibom to the cross river banks of the state. settling in Akwa Ibom territory does not make any of that land to be ijawland and the majority of the people of eastern obolo are not of ijaw ethnic group. Even among the obolos only few families will agree that they are of ijaw ancestry especially the Obolos of Akwa Ibom.

When people like you speak of a place that they lack knowledge of, your naivety oozes.

Its no longer the military era where people were partitioned into states without their consent by military fiat, Now there is a constitutional provision on how states can be created in Nigeria, go read the constitution and familiarize your self with it especially the aspects of state creation and not be carried away by the recommendation of a conference which is nothing but a recommendation! which if it ever were to be implemented will still be subject to the constitutional legislative provisions.

Because the president is Ijaw, Whom we Akwa Ibomites love and support anyways does not give the ijaw expansionist the right to arbitrarily arrogate undue powers to themselves, especially that of state creation which is a pure legislative affair in this democratic dispensation.

Even states where a majority of people(aborigines) are asking for will never see the light of the day not to talk of the so called oil rivers which is just a figment of imagination of ijaw expansionist that lacks the backing of the majority aborigines of the area.
an oil rivers state that include any parts of present day Akwa Ibom state will remain a wet dream of fringe groups like the one whose propaganda you espouse.

philips70: Quite certain any heavily industrialized nation have some kind of power challenges. Mind you SA is in Africa and Nigeria have long been priding herself as the giant of Africa and recently taunting others with the biggest economy stuff via a rebased GDP. If you know the level of transparency, integrity and thoroughness it takes to generate and sustain a MW of electricity you will know where am coming from and give SA due recognition in this area.

No one is denying that in the short term that SA generation capacity is higher than that of nigeria, but SA energy sector is wholesomely own by the SA government and we know how inefficient govt. parastatals are and already as i pointed out earlier the SA energy sector is under a lot of strain presently and in the long term it future dosent look so bright.

Secondly SA also uses nuclear reactors to generate part of its electricity a technology i would prefer is kept out of Africa espercially in light of the nuclear dissaster that occured in Japan recently,and also SA depends largely on coal for its energy, which is not entirely environmentally friendly.
Nigeria, on the other hand in the short term:Its energy sector looks bleek because of low generation capacity, But in the long term Nigerias energy future looks brighter than SA because Nigeria has successfully unbundled/privatize its energy sector which will make it more efficient than the Government ran SA energy sector. and the choice of fuel for nigeria energy is gas which is not only environmentally friendly but is a resource that Nigeria has in Abundance,Nigeria is one of largest reserve of gas in the world.
And if in the future Nigeria also decides to utilize the not so environmentally friendly fuel ie Coal for power generation, Nigeria also has large reserves/deposits of coal that it can tap cheaply.

So my point is for you to be objective in your analysis of energy sector in both countries and not just regurgitate statistics that favour your myopic analysis.

shota: Senseless man, read their publication and see if they made sense. They did not deny the existence of the Obolo. They are only saying they own the land and not the Obolos. How can Onitsha people own Asaba land where Asaba people live. The Obolo people are not Efiks but Ijaws period and their farm land and fishing land belong to them. It is already part of the Oil Rivers proposed state so Efik people can cry blood if they want.

You only remember they are ijaws when you want to annex their lands, but when it involves issues that count like sharing the booties like the Presidential amnesty program they are excluded. Can you name just two eastern Obolo people that benefited from the amnesty program?
You think that Akwa Ibom people are stupid? we can all see through the facade of the oil rivers politics and how our people will be treated in an ijaw majority state and hence we dont want a part of it. we are comfortable in AKS as is.

I was part of the negotiating team from the riverine /oil bearing communities from Akwa Ibom during the presidential amnesty program. and what transpired during that negotiation left a sour taste in the mouths of Akwa Ibom contingent. we saw firsthand how our ijaw brothers view us from Akwa Ibom and what a union with them will entail. that why we dont want a part of the so called oil rivers state. We wish the ijaws Goodluck in creating as many states as they want including the so called oil rivers but no part of present Akwa Ibom state will be a part of it.

GENDER, SCIENCE AND EMPIRE: THE QUA IBOE MISSION, 1887-1900

Elaine Doyle

In 1927, Samuel Alexander Bill, on furlough from the Qua Iboe mission in
south-eastern Nigeria, spoke to an audience in Belfast about his first experiences of
missionary life. He remembered, with some warmth and good humour, his early
struggles to establish the mission in the late 1880s, in remote and sometimes
inhospitable surroundings. A handwritten copy of his speech survives in the mission
archives at PRONI, Belfast. It is peppered with personable details and anecdotes, one
of which is sampled below. Bill explained:

[b] I forgot to say that about building the church, when we had the frame work up,
the women came, and their part of the work was to cover over with clay, and
smooth it over with their hands. The boys would not touch that, because it was
not their work. It was women’s work, so we must get women, so it was a job
getting the women to put this clay on this house.
There was a chief called Egbo Egbo at that time, he was not a Christian,
but he was an inquirer, and he had 10 or 11 wives, and this man used to come
very often to the Mission House, and so we spoke to him about getting the walls
covered over with clay or mud. He was building a new house not far from the
Mission House for himself, and he had got the house nearly finished, but he did
not know how to make a door, and so I said, if you send your wives to put the
mud on our house, I will make the doors for your house, so Egbo Egbo was very
glad, and thought this was a good bargain, and so he sent his wives to put the
mud on he walls, and I went to make his doors. It did not take me very long,
and they thought he had made a very bad bargain, and that it was not nearly so
much as he had done for me.1 [/b]

Bill told the story in passing, as a slight but droll digression from the main thrust
of his speech. However, given the theme of this collection, it carries particular
interest. This brief tale brings together interlocking anxieties of gender and science, as
they were played out in an imperial context. Consider the concerns at the root of this
story.
One finds the protagonist, Bill, negotiating gender roles in a society he is
unfamiliar with; only women may cover the frame with clay. So too, however less
prominent, gender underwrites his own role in the story. By his telling, Bill had both
impressed the local population by his carpentry, and easily outwitted them. Bill chose
to cast himself in a conspicuously powerful role, and one in which his own abilities as
1
‘Early days in Qua Iboe’ – speech by Samuel A. Bill [1927], D/3301/HA/1, Public Record Office of
Northern Ireland [PRONI].

read the full article @ https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/QUEST/FileStore/Issue3GRFSpecial/Filetoupload,55493,en.pdf