Nseobong Okon-Ekong
Mr. Larry Esin, a serial governorship contestant in Akwa Ibom State has challenged the state governments to develop an economic stimulus package to increase productivity across the land, and indeed usher in our century of industrialisation.
He said, “without industrialisation, our economy will continue to grow at marginal digits if at all, and rely on the mercy of the federal government, donor agencies and the international community.”
Announcing his fourth governorship bid in Uyo to journalists, this time, on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Esin. opined that, “Increased productivity can only be sustained by peace, security, social justice, quality education and health care for our people. In these areas, it is also the responsibility of the state government to provide direction. Our teachers, doctors and judges must be well trained and compensated; and residents of Akwa Ibom must be safe and free to express themselves.
Our public servants and professionals must undergo continuous training to update their skills and knowledge in this fast paced technological world, where new tools of learning and miracle drugs are preparing nations for that battle of survival and supremacy in the 21st Century. We must strive to achieve same, to prepare our children for a profitable participation in the emerging world of ICT that they will inherit. Today our concern must be with that future.”
Esin has, therefore, proposed a government that understands these challenges, and is equipped with the requisite intellect and acumen to meet them; a government that will reduce political tension, maintain the peace and transform Akwa Ibom State into an industrial breeding ground of sustainable growth.
He said he will run a government that will “guide the affairs of our state through laws and projects aimed at strengthening our development effort; a government that understands that infrastructural development in a developing economy must be balanced with welfare programmes that will help subsidise the infrastructural toll on the people and the opportunity cost of such infrastructure.
According to the leading APC governorship aspirant, “the government that I propose will provide leadership that will help us discover true unity in our diversity, and ensure a peaceful coexistence and an equitable distribution of our state’s wealth; so that together we may contain the growing pockets of ignorance and prejudice, and the unanswered questions of poverty. A government that will ensure that our ethnicity will have no more significance than the content of our character and our individual commitment to the cause of building a strong and peaceful Akwa Ibom State. In the final analysis, the government that I propose will seek to improve the lives of our people.”
