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BEING A VILLAGE BOY EARNED ME THE ACCEPTABILITY – ISOBARA

New Chairman of Essien Udim Local Government Council in Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Raphael Isobara, has said his acceptability by the people of the area was borne out of his closeness to the grassroots.

Speaking with Ibom Telegraph in his country home, Mkpatat, shortly after he was sworn-in, Mr. Isobara, who said he was indebted to the Senate Minority Leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio and to the member representing the area in the State House of Assembly, Mr. Nse Ntuen, stressed that “I have been a village boy. I grew up from this community. I went to the Primary School here. I went to the world and came back and lived here. So, people know me. I share their aspirations, I share their emotions, and I share their sentiments. So, when the opportunity to serve them in a higher capacity came, it was wholeheartedly accepted by the people.”

“When I went to thank the Senate Minority Leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio, for all his support, he told me that the acceptability of my candidature is an indication of the general acceptance of the entire people of Essien Udim about my person. He advised me to continue live the life that I am living,” Mr. Isobara added.

He said his relationship with the then Council Chairman, Nse Ntuen, has equipped him with requisite experience to lead the Council, according to him, “Nse Ntuen is a man that is so bless by God. He went into the Essien Udim Local Government Council with open-mindedness and performed very creditably. The legacies and the footprints that he left behind will take the special grace of God before anybody can match those achievements. So, fortunately for me, he adopted me as a friend and tutored me and by the grace of God I am here. So, I am a testimony of Nse Ntuen’s diligence and commitment to the development of Essien Udim.”

The new Council Chairman listed youth development to be the cardinal agenda of his administration, saying “By the time we went round all the nooks and crannies of Essien Udim, interacting and engaging the people, we saw their problems. We saw their aspirations and we saw expectations. And of course, before you launch yourself out in politics, there ought to be some fundamental principle that will push you into the public domain, so we looked at one cardinal problem of the present environment, which is youth unemployment. So, we made youth empowerment as our cardinal objective. Our empowerment programme is going to be different from the conventional empowerment programmes of politicians because we had to look at how we can propagate a system that can make the youths to be self-employed and even to be employers of labour tomorrow.”

“As we speak, we have assigned and contracted distinguished sons and daughters of this local government, who are professionals, to get proposals on how we are going to engage the youths in the programmes of skills acquisition; how they can be employers of labour. So, we have to be able to synchronize the level of support that we have here with our performance. That is burden before us,” he maintained.

On the industrialization, he said “There is something I admire Governor Udom Emmanuel for when he came up with the Dakkada philosophy. The initiative is that we should rise up and take our destiny in our hands. What makes the Yoruba man to be different from you? What makes the Anambra man to be different from you? What makes the Hausa man to be different from you? I had the privilege of getting out of this country and I discovered that you will find people from different parts of the world without finding an Akwa Ibom man and that is the different. During my electioneering, I told my people that if I am elected Chairman of Essien Udim, that I will bundle some of the youths of this local government and go and dump them in Dubai, in China, in India; let them find their bearings and by the time they come back, they will look different. So, it is just the opportunity that makes an Akwa Ibom man different from an Anambra man. So, we are going to use the instrumentation of government and see how we can catapult some of our youths to get to some level. I am disturbed about the low level of industrialization, commercialization and merchandising that is lacking in our environment.”

Mr. Isobara further assured the people of Essien Udim that his first 100 days in office would be laudable, saying “Come to Essien Udim on Tuesday, after the PDP National Convention, you will see government in action. We have our own plans and you are the one that will give the judgment. For the first 100 days, we must have something to present to Essien Udim people and I can assure that it will laudable because we will do just that.”

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