Yinka Yusuf, Akwa Ibom People and the Final Insult 

I have never come across a man who can translate the Akwa Ibom expression, akpayayak into English or any other European language for that matter. The closest I have come is that it is a wake up call and determination that what happened in the past must not and cannot happen again. For the purpose of this piece, let me translate it as never again.

In the past few days, the internet has been trending with the matter of  the Rev Yinka Yusuf, a Pentecostal crusader, and his insult of Akwa Ibom people. Yusuf wanted to stage a one million man crusade in Akwa Ibom State. It turned out the programme date clashed with that of another crusade planned by a Kenyan prophet. The state government and the local Christian association asked him to shift the crusade by one week. He refused and protested. In the process, a video emerged of him literally insulting the people of the state as being poor (despite the wealth of the state government) with a crab mentality.  He repeated the stereotype of Akwa Ibom state being providers of houseboys, housemaids and cooks to the federation of Nigeria. He blamed this on ancestral curses, for which he needed a crusade to break.

Without mincing words, Rev Yinka insulted Akwa Ibom people. He showed himself as a man bankrupt of wisdom.  Anietie J. O. Ukpe  has already dealt with the flaws in his communication, so there is no point wasting time on that. For a man of his standing, he should know that not everything can be said. An outsider must respect other people’s sensibilities. Had he been an Akwa Ibom man, the matter would have been seen as a tirade of introspection.

One cannot imagine his flawed use of the tongue. It is possible that the Reverend has not taken time to read what the Bible teaches about the tongue. I will avail him of the Sunday School notes from my baptismal classes in the Qua Iboe Church. The relevant portions are: Ephesians 4:29: ‘Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen’. This exhorts us to speak goodness all the time. Proverbs 21:23 exhorts us to guard our mouth: ‘Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble’. James 1:19 exhorts us to ‘Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Finally, we will give account for every careless word spoken (Matthew 12:36)

For us, Akwa Ibom people, we must interrogate what Rev Yinka said, if there be truth in it. First, he said the people are houseboys and cooks. The stereotyping is wrong. Why did he not talk of the Akwa Ibom State of Godswill Akpabio, Umo Eno, Ray Ekpu, Akpan Ekpo, Ufot Ekong or Jason Jackson?

Second, he said the people are poor despite the state receiving the highest allocation. Here, he is correct. According to the available statistics (2022/23), Akwa Ibom State has the highest level of multi dimensional poverty (MDP) in the South South region at 71.3 per cent of the population.  According to UNDP, multidimensional poverty measures the overlapping, non-monetary deprivations an individual or household experiences simultaneously, beyond just low income. It includes lack of access to health, education, and basic infrastructure (e.g., sanitation, water, electricity), providing a comprehensive view of poverty.

In simple terms, this means that Akwa Ibom State has not been able to optimally deploy the resources available to it to change the fortunes of the greatest possible number of its people. The state of affairs, for a state that consistently budgets at least $1 billion a year, with a population of under six million, and one of the smallest landmass in Nigeria, is to say the least, appalling.

The reasons are not far-fetched. Akwa Ibom is a civil service state with little or no industrial activity. You need industries to create jobs. The success recorded so far has been in the service sector (tourism and aviation). Although successive governments have invested heavily in infrastructure from roads to power, they have lacked the creative tools to turn the state into an industrial economy. The previous government tried to do it but lacked sincerity. They created audio industries which only drained public funds but stood no chance of survival. Imagine locating a flour mill away from the coast when the source of raw material is imports.

The second problem is the absence of an entrepreneurial class. Akwa Ibom’s wealth has been an economic boom for the political class. The trouble is that people in that class have no way of multiplying the wealth available to them to trickle down to the rest of the population. Forget the occasional empowerment. It is simply giving a man fish instead of teaching him how to feed. The political class uses their wealth to create dead assets. These are fixed assets which yield no returns on investment (ROI). Imagine a man with two children building a two-storey 14 room mansion. In a little time, the children move to school abroad. The mansion which was already underutilised becomes empty. That same money in the hands of an entrepreneur is enough to build a pure water factory which can employ up to 20 people. The best the politicians do is invest in hotels and petrol stations. I am yet to see any of them grow beyond that level.

It is the failure by successive governments to midwife an entrepreneurial class that is at the root of the state’s low industrialisation. If the scheme by the present government to support small and medium scale enterprises is not politicised, it will make a lot of difference.

The third point Rev Yusuf made is that we have a crab mentality. I have personally made this point. We are where we are because we hate to see the progress of our brothers and sisters. The typical Akwa Ibom man thinks like a village head. If he sits on the floor, nobody must sit on a chair so the other person would not be taller than him. We undermine one another in ways that leave outsiders perplexed. Last December, as the keynote speaker at the NUJ Press Week, I made this point.

‘One of the obstacles to the attainment of the common good for our people is our mindsets. In Hebrew, there is a word ‘firgun’, which means a state of exceeding happiness over another person’s progress. In German, there is a word ‘schadenfreude’, which means a state of rejoicing over another person’s misfortune. We do not have the former in our language. We have the latter, ‘idiok esit’. It is our place to reorient our people from ‘idiok esit’ over their brothers and sisters’ achievements. If we can simply change this mindset, our society would take a big leap.

I will give a few examples. In 2004, the Central Bank asked banks to recapitalise. At that time, we had the Cooperative Development Bank (CDB), which was owned by some Akwa Ibom entrepreneurs. They could not come up with the money so they approached the state government to step in so that the state will not lose an institution, which was a key catalyst in the economic empowerment of our people. The then governor, Obong Victor Attah, always a believer in the empowerment of our people, was open to the idea. At that time, the state government was getting back its investment in then Econet, now airtel. The state government’s investment of $67.5 million in Econet had yielded $204 million. The directors of CDB wanted part of that money channelled to save CDB. Some people around the governor felt it would empower the directors of CDB. They blocked it. Helpless, the people sold the bank to FCMB. Imagine where CDB, a bank that was ahead of Access will be today.

There are many other examples but one more will suffice.

In 1991, Akwa Ibom people complained that the state had no federal university. The Federal Government harkened to the plea and earmarked a federal university of technology for the state. Since the former University of Cross River State (UNICROSS), later turned to University of Uyo, was state owned and located in Uyo, the federal government said the new university should go to another senatorial district. Some Akwa Ibom people picked a fight; the university cannot go anywhere outside Uyo. Prof Babs Fafunwa, a Yoruba man who was the then Federal Minister of Education could not understand what the fight was about. He then ruled that the new university would be located in Uyo. Since Uyo was could not host two universities, the Federal Government decided it must take over the state university. Akwa Ibom not only lost the new university of technology, it also lost the ownership of the state university which had built up a national reputation as a centre of excellence. I wonder how many readers can understand what the fight was about. What would our people have lost if the new federal university had gone to Ikot Osurua (where the polytechnic is today) or Ikot Abasi where we now have a Federal University of Technology.

Many Akwa Ibom people have held federal appointments in the past. Ask those people how many Akwa Ibom people they employed in those agencies. About 33 years ago, an Akwa Ibom man was a powerful minister of petroleum. How come there is no big player in the oil and gas industry from the state today? Go to Bayelsa State, you will get a different picture.

It is my wish that the Rev Yusuf’s insult will be the final one, to wake us up. We would not put an end to such insults by wishful thinking or shouting on social media. We have to rise up as a people and say ‘akpayayak’.

To make this the final insult, our government must invest more in education.  The first step is for the government to come up with a programme to capture the top one percent of intelligence among our people, adopt them as state wards and give them the highest standard of education possible.

For this reason, I will advocate the creation of one secondary school of excellence in each of the 10 federal constituencies. The school would be strictly 90 per cent based on merit. I have not said 100 per cent because if the 10 per cent is not reserved for concessionary admission to the children of politicians, permanent secretaries and directors in the civil service, they will kill the schools. Once admitted to the schools which must be boarding, the state government will be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the students, including dropping them at home at the end of the term. All the graduates from this school will remain state scholars and attend the best universities in Nigeria and abroad. This generation would ensure that the place of Akwa Ibom people in the wider world is secured. It may take a while but that generation will create the critical mass to build the Akwa Ibom we desire.

The second step is for the government to improve access and the quality of education. The present government of Pastor Umo Eno has taken education seriously. One sees new schools all over the state. This is commendable for arresting the deterioration in public sector educational facilities. Until recently, no parent who could afford it sent his/her ward to a public primary or secondary school because of falling standards. Although this led to a boom for the private education sector, it created class structures in access to quality education. Akwa Ibom state needs both universal access and qualitative education. The present government should vigorously enforce the Child Rights Act enacted by the Godswill Akpabio administration.

The government also needs to come up with a policy framework to improve the quality of education. This means employing more teachers, especially in STEM subjects, providing books to all children and introducing school meals in primary schools. The objectives should be to get every Akwa Ibom child into school and to get the state to the top of the education table in the country.

Akwa Ibom State also needs a roadmap to industrialisation. I suggest that the state government convoke an economic summit in Uyo. This time, the government should go out of its way to also invite Akwa Ibomites in the Diaspora. One is convinced that the ideas generated from the Summit would find solutions to the state’s civil service economic status.

Permit me to contribute three. One, the government should set up an Industrial Development Fund that will issue dollar denominated bonds or shares to Akwa Ibom people at home and abroad. The pool of funds can then be invested in industrial projects. The state has abundant skilled people who can run this successfully. This was the method used to raise funds for the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam.

The second is for the state to create at least three industrial parks, one in each of the senatorial districts. Along with each park should be a captive power project. Once the problem of power is solved, the parks will attract investors from all over the world. In under four years, Akwa Ibom will have nothing less than 60 industries.

The third idea is to develop the oil palm value chain. The Malaysians took oil palm seedlings from Akwa Ibom in the 60s to build a value chain, which catapulted them to the status of a developed economy. We can replicate what the Malaysians did.

Successive governments have built a great state since 1999. Where we have not done so well is in lifting majority of our people out of poverty. We have a collective challenge to change that. We also need to change our mindsets to support one another. If we do these, Rev Yusuf’s insult will be the final one. Akpayayak!