Court restrains Akwa Ibom electoral body from conducting council elections

Governor waits on FG to reopen schools

Akwa Ibom Chief Judge, Justice Godwin Abraham, yesterday, restrained the state Independent Electoral Commission (AKISIEC) from conducting elections into the council areas.

He gave the ruling in a suit filed by Uwem Udoma and nine others challenging the creation of 39 more wards by the electoral body, “with intent to field them.”

The judge, who sat at High Court 1 in Uyo, granted the ex parte motion before adjourning the case to August 31, 2020.

In another development, Governor Udom Emmanuel has said the state is awaiting a new batch of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members before reopening schools.

This, according to him, will give the government a wider spectrum to know where there are teaching gaps for their filling.

The governor disclosed this at the weekend during an interactive session with the people on Akwa Ibom Broadcasting Radio.

He said: “The number of youth corps members usually posted to our state is always quite much and they are well trained, as some of them are first class materials. We are waiting for the new batch of NYSC corps members to arrive and we will use them to fill the gaps created in schools. So, once the Federal Government approves that, we will ring the bell and open our schools.”

Emmanuel, who spoke on the establishment of a school of medicine in the Akwa Ibom State University, said: “We are considering post-graduate medicine to take care of quaternary hospitals in the country. We even brought some medical experts from the United States (U.S.) to help us work on the new education curriculum.

We need to launch medical schools with world best practice in mind. We don’t want to do the so-called African standard so that we can compete anywhere in the world. We need a good foundation to easily build on for the right result.”

On the latest report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that the state has the second highest rate of unemployment, the governor queried the protocol and parameters used by the NBS to arrive at the conclusion.

He,therefore, urged the bureau not to distract him from the focus of discharging quality and excellent services to the people.

He said: “We are the second in foreign direct investment. Every part of the state is a construction site where people go for employment. I inherited more than 100 doctors and today, we have over 400. I attribute this to ignorance. The 16,000 hectares coconut plantation is employing up to 400 people and those in hospitality businesses employ less than 250.

“It is the same statistics they reeled out before the 2019 election. So, maybe NBS had forgotten that elections are over. Statistics have procedures and approaches.”