Ibom Plaza: What began as a solution for traffic jams has become a source of pride for Akwa Ibom State.

By Kevin Lambert

Nigeria, with over 120 million people, is a sprawling, busy land of fantastic promise. Independent of Britain since 1960, it suffered under decades of military misrule, but became a multiparty democracy in 1999. Oil and gas are the principal sources of revenue, and agriculture employs the largest number of people. It is one of the most literate and cultivated of African lands; Lagos has more daily newspapers than New York City, and is home to "Nollywood," the world’s third largest film industry. Nigeria is comprised of 36 states, and this is a look at one of them.

Akwa Ibom ("Ak-wai-bomb") is a province in southeastern Nigeria, with a population of 3,000,000, created in 1987. The land is flat, lush with jungle, terminating at the Atlantic Ocean. The whole area was a pastoral backwater until oil, discovered in the 1950’s, came along.

The Akwaibomites are a largely homogenous, peaceful and agrarian people whose tribal and clan languages are closely related. It has never been a land of warriors. The Ibibio is the predominant ethnic group, and they share space with the Annay, Orons, Eket, Ibeno, and Mbo. It is known for its leisurely pace and hospitality to strangers. Like most agrarian communities, it is safe, friendly and inexpensive.

Unlike most agrarian communities, the people are open to new ideas. Mary Slessor, the Scottish missionary who fought the ancient practice of killing newborn twins, had her greatest success here. Well ahead of the European curve, Akwaibomites rarely smoke cigarettes. There have been very successful public health programs. It is largely Christian, but all faiths are welcomed.

Akwa Ibom has been described as a "value-based" society, where "honor and integrity are revered above transient gains." There are far fewer touts and hustlers than in other developing countries, and the ones encountered are remarkably low-pressure. "We hate crime," says Professor Monday Abasi Attai, who teaches history at the University of Uyo. "We hate lazy people."

Almost from the beginning of time, the Ibibio have lived from the palm trees which stretch in uncountable number throughout the state. (The tropical palm belt holds the highest density of that cash crop in the world.) The palm kernel, from which palm oil is extracted, is rich in nutrients, and can be used to make lubricating and edible oils, cane and paper. The state’s fishing and agriculture are mostly subsistence, even today. Mechanized farming, due to transportation and political troubles in other parts of Nigeria, didn’t really arrive until the 1970’s.

Akwa Ibom, like the rest of Nigeria, was colonized by Britain, but the overwhelming outside influence is now America, a country that the Akwaibomites hold in unbridled affection and admiration. Rap music is heard on the speakers outside the little shops. Ernest Hemingway is one of the most influential writers.
"America inspires many different feelings in the people of the world," says professor Ime Ikiddeh, dean of the University of Uyo’s graduate school. "The dominant feeling is that of a certain newness. Every new thing that influences people around the world seems to come from the U.S."

In Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" (1958), Nigeria’s best known novel, some British colonialists set up shop in the "forbidden zone," a nasty spot of forest declared off-limits by the village gods. To hear the village elders tell it, unspeakable horrors awaited all who ventured inside. But nothing happened to the British - no godly retribution, no heavenly wrath, and the word got around. The village gods soon became passé, objects of derision. Squaresville. The young generation, like American teens discovering rock n’ roll, saw a new, powerful exciting way of life.

The old ways – the string that had held the society together -- fell apart. Technical finesse and money became the standard that nations judged each other by, and Africa had neither. As a provincial spot, Akwa Ibom had a double dose. Lagos has the intellectual ferment. Abuja – the capital - has the politics and the big deals. Akwa Ibom's primary contribution to the national economy was household help.
The current governor, Victor Attah, saw that he had to change the dynamic himself. Among his bricks and mortar projects, he set up a commission to raise the Akwaibomite’s self-esteem. This is normally something one would expect in California, but it worked very well here. Eseme Sunday Eyiboh, its chairman, once called it "re-branding." Akwa Ibom’s state minister of Lands and Housing, Engineer Iroigak Ikann, says, "The governor is interested in developing the people."

In a rare example of a province coming up with ideas that inspire the urban intellectuals, the federal government has adopted one of the governor’s agricultural concepts, and other states are now being urged to adopt Akwa Ibom’s system of local government.

"Governor Attah has been able to open a new chapter in the lexicon of economics and social engineering in this country." says Eyiboh.

Other projects are tourism, which the province is entering in a big way. In February 2006 they are opening an 18-hole jungle golf resort, which will rival anything on the continent, and possibly the world. The University of Uyo is building its sculpture garden as a tourist attraction. "We are planning this to be a tourist heaven," says Uwa Usen, sculptor and chairman of the State Society of Artists. It features a long row of good, solid sculpture depicting Nigerian life, from legendary gods to oil workers. It is reminiscent of the Hirschhorn, at least conceptually.

The governor’s achievements – using a rare example of incorruptibility to take Akwa Ibom from an unimportant backwater to a place where things are starting to work, has galvanized the state. The new mood has taken the African’s natural state of cheerfulness and leavened it with hope. Amazing what just a few years of good governance can do.