How Eno made my ancestors plan lovers retreat in Arise Palm Resort, Ibom International Hotel

By Emmanuel Nicholas

I swore, with every fiber of my being, never to betray you, Governor Umo Eno, no matter the sum of money offered, no matter the promise of a higher rank.

Yet, Sir, you have shattered me. You have broken my heart and wounded my spirit so thoroughly that it felt as if my very soul had bled dry; I stood diminished, a vessel rent and empty.

Then, as if the world had thin places and I had stumbled into one, my ancestors came to me. Their faces rose from the vapor of memory; their voices crowded the room that held my sorrow. I spoke with my forebears, and I wept until my tears would not be restrained.

Their consolations were gentle and useless; my vexed spirit only compounded its own torment. All of this, I knew, because you had broken the covenant of performance and trampled the old ways that governed our tribe.

When I opened my eyes, my grandmother approached me, Nne Nyong, wrapped in the weight of years, and placed a hand on my brow. “Emmanuel,” she said, voice like peat-smoke and river stone, “it is not yet your time to join us. Go back to the earth, my son.

Trust no mortal blindly; they are quick to wound, quick to be seduced by ease and false comforts.” I asked her, bewildered, what she meant by “life trials.”

“Go back and work with Governor Umo Eno,” she answered, her tone clearing as if she had seen a distant light. “There are divine powers behind him. He will not fail, my grandson.”

I stared at her, anger and incredulity warring within me. For a breath, I felt a curse rise on my lips against my forebears, but she read my storm and bade me calm myself with a look.

“I hear the people of Akwa Ibom are angry with Governor Umo,” I said. “They say he completed the five-thousand-capacity conference centre, and they curse him for it.”

Her eyes narrowed with a quiet pity. “Do not mind those men,” she said. “They are the same who sow tribal divisions, men who mislead and who would see our leaders mocked.

They wanted the billions invested by Senator Godswill Akpabio for themselves, to keep the project in ruin so they could use its decay as a club against the Senate President.”

“They say the project is a waste,” I protested.

She laughed, a sound at once delighted and disdainful. “They are liars and charlatans, my son, men who bend truth like a crooked reed. That centre will draw great international conferences to Akwa Ibom. It will create work for more than five hundred people directly, thousands more indirectly. The conference centre will be a spinner of wealth for the State; it will lift the tourism of our land.”

A conviction settled over me like a mantle as she spoke, and yet I could not help but tell her of other accusations. “They crucify the Governor for finishing the old Ibom Tropicana Hotel, now the Ibom International Hotel,” I said. “They say he stole, that he squandered.”

Nwan Philip Ikpe, an old spirit who never missed an opportunity to mock, laughed me to scorn, but my grandmother only shook her head. “When Senator Akpabio was Governor, he poured billions into that vision,” she said. “Governor Umo Eno is a wise steward; he would not let that vision rot.

He reinvested to complete the fourteen-floor hotel with two hundred rooms and suites. Do you know how many hands will be held at work? More than a thousand direct staff; five thousand jobs if you count the ripple.”

Her words painted futures in my mind: waiters and porters, gardeners and clerks, mechanics and cooks; a city humming with new purpose. “Umo Eno knows how to make Akwa Ibom self-reliant,” she continued.

“Remember to tell him to employ Akpan-Akpan; he is a good electrician. Do not listen to those who hate Akpabio and wish the project to lie in ruin, that they may mock and point. God has shamed those fools.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, leaning closer as if confiding a secret. “He is adding to that centre a world-class tourist complex, a cultural village, vast shopping arcades, so that when the wife of Donald Trump comes to Akwa Ibom, she will find our crafts and take them back to America.”

She smiled at that image, and my amusement slipped into wonder. “When you see Governor Umo Eno,” she said softly, “greet him for me.”

“Why should I greet him?” I demanded, still stubborn. “Don’t you know he is building the best tourist centre from the old erosion spot? Apartments for families and travelers, a golf course, restaurants, tennis courts, volleyball fields, a dance bar and club, a water park, gardens for lovers, and your ancestors will even come there to rest.”

“Do ancestors get married there?” I asked, half laughing, half incredulous.

She sighed, amused and patient. “Do you think joy belongs only to the living? We drink palm wine, too. We love a good time. The Governor calls it Arise Palm Resort. There will be enough palm wine and goat meat pepper soup for us, Ancestors.”

I found myself oddly comforted and oddly skeptical at once. I vowed to ask my pastor in Bible class whether the ancestors indeed wed one another in the beyond. But the vision persisted: a place of industry and gladness rising from the labour of leaders who cared.

“I must go back to my family,” I told her finally. My heart was still sore; I had been angry with Governor Umo Eno for the way the people accused him of pilfering from public works. My grandmother waved a hand, dismissing the petty men like flies.

“Those people are distractors,” she said with fierce tenderness. “They do not want peace or love to reign in Akwa Ibom. Our Governor has done well, so well that even we, the ancestors, can testify to it.”

And with that benediction and a head full of visions of conference halls and hotels, of palm wine and ancestral laughter, I rose and prepared to return to the muddled business of life, carrying her words like a lantern against the dark.