The Director of Operations, East, AYF Development Nigeria Limited, Engr.Ekpeyong Ekpeyong has lauded the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Pastor Umo Eno, for his rural development strides, as encapsulated in the ARISE AGENDA of the Governor.
Engr. Ekpeyong stated this, on Monday, May 5, 2025, during an inspection tour of the 8.3km Ikot Ekan-Ediene Abak road project by the World Bank representatives, led by Mr. Rakesh Tripati, and the team from the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, led by its National Coordinator, Engr Aminu Bodinga Mohammed, including the state team, led by the State Project Coordinator, Pastor Gideon Akpan.
According to him, Pastor Umo Eno is someone that is very intelligent and particular about rural development. I am not surprised about the Governor following up the ARISE AGENDA to the latter, which has contributed to the actualization of the RAAMP project, where rural communities are properly involved in road construction and development, which has helped the farmers to bring out their farm produce to market, and with this, there is food sufficiency.
The Governor should be encouraged and supported, and everyone should join hands with him and work with him, because the Governor is Godsent and a gift to Akwa Ibom State.
He also said, the road project is at 33 percent completion, we are receiving the team from World Bank and RAAMP who came to inspect the project and they have encouraged us to do more.
The team has expressed satisfaction on our job, and has given a timeline of December 2025, which is possible. Irrespective of the raining seasons, we are still doing culverts, drains, concrete works and in the next three months, everything about concrete should be completed on the project, while we wait for the sun to come up.
We are also doing road construction at Ibesikpo. We have the capacity to do more road constructions that is why we are putting in efforts to finish before time. We are using the locals to do a lot of jobs on our sites, in compliance with the local content law. We have tried to pick locals in the communities we are working in, Ekpenyong said.
