Akwa Ibom Governor, Pastor Umo Eno, has concluded arrangements aimed at establishing the Youth Development Centres across its 31 local government areas of the state, with facilities intended to support ICT, vocational training, creativity and entrepreneurship.

The State Commissioner of Information, Aniekan Umanah, in a brief made available to journalists in Abuja, explained that the centres
will not be the buildings but the livelihoods and businesses they will help create, meaningful human capital that would make training lead to productive economic participation.

Umanah, who spoke at the Governor’s Centenary Lecture of the Yoruba Tennis Club on August 6, 2026, said it was an opportunity to place the question of democratic governance before an audience deeply familiar with Nigeria’s political, economic and institutional challenges.

According to him, it becomes the philosophical foundation of his lecture, adding that Nigeria must move beyond the idea that democracy is sufficiently defined by elections, as elections are essential because they confer legitimacy, but the real test begins after the ballot boxes are closed.

“For the ordinary Nigerian, democracy is not experienced only at a polling station. It should be experienced at the hospital, in the classroom, on the road to the farm, in the market and in the cost of feeding a family. If democratic government cannot reach those places, public confidence inevitably begins to weaken.”

The Information Commissioner further explained by identifying Gov. Eno’s five practical pillars of good governance: accountability, transparency, participation, the rule of law and equity, and these are familiar terms in governance literature, but he sought to give them practical meaning through examples from Akwa Ibom.

“His argument was that democratic values must move from constitutional language into administrative habits, calling for democracy that delivers institutions, opportunity and dignity for all and sundry. Democracy has to be felt in the daily life of the citizen before it can be fully trusted.”

He therefore maintained that a community may value a particular road, health centre, classroom or water project more urgently than an official in Uyo might realize; bringing citizens into the planning process therefore improves not only democratic participation but the quality of development itself.

“It’s renewed when roads are completed, classrooms function, doctors are available at the hospitals, young people find meaningful work, farmers receive support and a small business survives. In these, good governance is not an abstract political theory but is a daily accumulation of small proofs that government can work.”

“The Governor has paid more than ₦88 billion from an inherited gratuity obligation of ₦111 billion; constructed more than 461 Compassionate Homes for vulnerable families, business grants and support for farmers and entrepreneurs, as they cannot be separated from the welfare of citizens.”

Umanah, however, argued that economic space created at the national level can become infrastructure and opportunity at the state level, and this connection between national policy and state-level delivery should form an important part of the development agenda.