Dr. Essien Ndueso, Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Research and Documentation, insists the calm is not suspicious. It is earned.
By Vanessa Anietie
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Published on September 27, 2026
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4 min read
With the 2027 election drawing closer, the campaign posters are missing. The rallies are silent. No challenger has stepped forward. Is Akwa Ibom State a model of performance-driven politics? Or a democracy with the lights switched off?
The Governor’s camp has an answer, and it isn’t shy about it. Dr. Essien Ndueso, Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Research and Documentation, insists the calm is not suspicious. It is earned.
For him, the reason nobody is campaigning is simple. Governor Umo Eno’s performance, he says, leaves rivals with little or nothing to campaign on.
“The Governor’s performance across all sectors is unprecedented, and it has made it difficult for them to have a campaign message,” he argues.
Stakeholders across the state, he claims, have “unanimously endorsed Governor Eno for a second term based on performance.” That, in his account, has left would-be challengers in an awkward spot. “It is difficult for you to go and unendorse who has already been endorsed.”
Then comes the harder question, one Dr. Ndueso poses himself: “Where were they before?” Those eyeing the Government House, he contends, are people “with no proven track record.”
He goes further, questioning the character of one prospective challenger, Senator John James Akpan Udo-Edehe. In Ndueso’s telling, the senator’s past is marked by violence and chaos .
Ndueso alleges that the people of Akwa Ibom have not forgotten a man he says once turned ethnic groups against each other in the name of politics. He attributes this as one of the most deadly pre-election crises in the state’s history, on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 — describing it as political vandalism in which youths burnt and destroyed government property at the State Secretariat, including public vehicles and private residences, disrupting peace and safety in the state.
“This kind of person says he wants to come and restore Akwa Ibom, to what?” Dr. Ndueso asks. “He brings violence and confusion to the table.”
“That day, we were returning from campaigns in Abak, when we started hearing that Uyo in on fire. All of us who were not in his party were hounded and chased all over town, and our offence was that we were supporting the incumbent Governor who was an Annang man,” he recalls.
“The Campaign Office of the PDP was torched on Olusegun Obasanjo Way, the State Secretariat was attacked and fleets of cars, meant to kickstart the State Urban Transport Scheme, were razed, scuttling one of the most promising mass transport schemes in the State,” he says.
Yet the aide stops short of calling the empty field an unqualified triumph. “The Governor has made it difficult for opposition to thrive in the state.”
Then he says what critics have been muttering for months. “The Governor of Akwa Ibom State has practically made it impossible for anybody to be bold enough to come and showcase themselves for the governorship in 2027,”
“The Governor has used these three and a half years to close the doors against the possibility of an opposition.”
“Let me ask you one question. What is the campaign slogan of Senator Udoedehe? What is his manifesto?”
“As a supposed governorship candidate, all he could do was to spew lies about EFCC and our immediate past Governor, Mr. Udom Emmanuel.
“EFCC has not indicted Mr Udom Emmanuel and the Akwa Ibom State Government has nothing to leak about the former Governor. There is no basis for Udoedehe to come and make such spurious allegations against a decent man like Mr Udom Emmanuel.”
For Essien Ndueso, “a Leopard cannot change its spots.” He offers a personal story to make his point — one he presents as connected to Udo-Edehe, though the connection is his own inference, “In 2011, few days after the carnage in Akwa Ibom State, my dad, a retired civil servant, was ambushed and shot thrice by bandits right in front of his house in Eket on April 7.
Till date, no reason can be deduced from this senseless attack on an innocent retired civil servant who narrowly escaped death by the whiskers.
However, today, Udo has returned with his inciting rhetoric —” make some noise, stir trouble, disappear for another four years.”
His closing question hangs in the air: “Has the Governor re-defined democracy in Akwa Ibom?”
That is the question voters, and perhaps the semblance of opposition, may soon have to answer.
