Forget coat: Umo Eno plays Joseph to Okon Lagos

Emmanuel Nicholas

In a nation long familiar with grand professions of faith, the simple question persists: Does a public declaration of Christianity translate into a Christian disposition of mercy and forbearance?

Too often in our recent memory, leaders have announced themselves as devout believers, yet acted in ways that betrayed that profession when confronted with opposition or ingratitude.

There have been lamentable instances in which blood ties counted for nothing; biological brothers have become adversaries, their kinship sacrificed at the altar of political ambition.

We have also witnessed the weaponization of state finances, where incoming administrations have occasionally refused to honour legitimate obligations simply because the creditors were thought not to have been allies during an election.

More alarmingly, political contestations in some quarters have metastasized into violence, and opponents have paid the ultimate price for refusing allegiance. These are realities that have eroded public trust and imperilled our common life.

Against such a backdrop, the comportment of Governor Umo Eno, Ph.D., offers a corrective and a challenge: a diminution of those red flags of rancour that have too often defined our politics.

His comportment suggests that evangelical piety need not be a mere credential; it can be expressed concretely in humility, magnanimity, and the refusal to enshrine vengeance as policy.

A telling episode occurred during the Akwa Ibom Entertainment Week and has since become emblematic of this posture.

Ime Umoh Bishop, popularly known as Okon Lagos, is a comic actor whose early days were materially assisted by Governor Umo Eno; he once lodged in the governor’s Royalty Hotel in Eket and benefited from that patronage in formative years.

When that same actor declined to support Dr. Eno’s electoral bid and instead aligned with another candidate, the governor chose not to interpret that refusal as a personal wound demanding retaliation.

At the entertainment week, the governor made an offhand reference to that shared past, a statement neither vindictive nor self-aggrandising, but factual and disarming in its candour.

The brief exchange was captured and circulated widely; the actor later offered an apology, delivered in a tone some acquaintances described as casual rather than theatrical.

Where lesser instincts might have sought to prolong the embarrassment, the actor capitalised on the moment commercially and advertised his forthcoming event under the banner “Okon Lagos and Friends.”

Yet Governor Umo Eno moved beyond mere silence; he became a public patron of reconciliation. He lent his visible support to the artist’s event. He attended in person, accompanied by his deputy, the Secretary to the State Government, commissioners, and other stakeholders.

He remained through the programme’s conclusion, signaling that his dignity did not depend on reciprocal obeisance, but on the cultivation of communal harmony.

This is more than a private virtue; it is an exemplary public ethos that our political class would do well to imitate.

Forgiveness in politics is not naivety; it is a civic strategy that prevents cycles of retribution and opens space for inclusive participation. No citizen should be reduced to the status of an enemy simply for political nonconformity.

There is moral intelligence in allowing opponents to remain citizens, rights intact, and relationships reparable; such mercy fosters stability and preserves the institutions we all rely upon.

In the Scriptures, the figure of Joseph of Egypt offers a fitting analogue. Sold into bondage by his brothers, Joseph later rose to power and, when the opportunity for retribution presented itself, he chose reconciliation: he provided for those who had betrayed him and restored them to dignity.

Like Joseph, Governor Umo Eno’s response to ingratitude and divergence demonstrates that restorative leadership is not only possible but politically efficacious; it heals wounds and binds disparate interests into a shared future.

Scripture repeatedly affirms that forgiveness is not a sentimental softening but a disciplined courage: the courage to transcend injury for the sake of the common good. In that sense, Dr. Eno’s conduct is consonant with a biblical imagination of leadership.

To play politics as sport, as he seems to advocate by practice rather than mere rhetoric, is to accept competition without allowing it to calcify into personal enmity. It is to prize the rules and the playing field over victory at any human cost.

Let it be said plainly: forgiveness from a person in power is neither weakness nor licence for impropriety; it is an exercise of authority that redeems public life and models civic maturity.

In a lighter register, Okon Lagos is my Friend and neighbour of many years,
And Okon Lagos has, until now, not deemed it fit to visit the palace of Obong Efak and bring some Ghana-must-go bags with kola nuts and Adiaha Uruan liquor so that we can pray to ancestors like Chief Usoro Usoro to continue bestowing their blessings on him. We are watching him closely.

If, by the next sanitation, nothing is done, we will be forced to plant plantains in front of his mansion on Ime Bishop Crescent as a traditional injunction.

Although his father, now an ancestor, was a SAN, he won’t win this judgment against living ancestors such as Whyte Bom Bom and Toney Tommey.

Setting aside any personal grievance with the young man who declined to provide the customary items for ancestral rites, Governor Umo Eno, Ph.D., has shown that politics should be conducted without bitterness and that opponents ought not to be seen or treated as enemies.

Ultimately, Governor Umo Eno’s example issues an invitation: to reimagine governance as stewardship that seeks restoration instead of retribution, to practice mercy in policy as well as in posture, and to teach a new generation of leaders that political life flourishes where grace is given and returned.