By Aniekan Umanah
RIGHT OF REPLY
I read with utter dismay the story by Sahara Reporters slugged “Am I Your Receptionist? Why Should I Pick Your Phone Calls All the Time ? ”, which attempts, with predictable drama, to portray the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Pastor Umo Eno, as dismissive and inaccessible.
But let us ask: When did laughter become hostility? When did wit become warfare? When did a joke at an enlightened Covenant Service become a crisis?
I was physically present at the Monthly Covenant Service held at the Banquet Hall of Government House, Uyo, on March 1, 2026, when the remarks in question were made. The setting was solemn yet joyful, reverent yet relaxed. The Governor was thanking the people for their overwhelming goodwill messages, prayers, and countless calls. In the same breath, he acknowledged the simple human limitation that one man cannot personally answer every single phone call directed at him daily.
In encouraging citizens to channel some concerns through Commissioners, Special Advisers, aides, and officials who work round the clock, he was explaining governance , not evading it.
Then came the moment now inflated into controversy. With a smile, in a tone so light it lifted the hall into laughter, he quipped: “You don’t have to wait until I personally take your calls ,there are many channels… Or am I your receptionist?” It was humour , pure and simple. The hall laughed heartily. The mood remained warm. No outrage. No offense. No “attack.” Until, of course, the Sahara winds began to blow.
Clearly, Sahara Reporters does not know this Governor. If they did, they would know that Pastor Umo Eno is the very epitome of humility, calm, and candour. They would know that he wears his pastoral badge with honour. They would know he is a man of wit who wears words like ornaments , polished, expressive, and often playfully rhetorical. His humour is not arrogance; it is humanity.
Pastor Eno is a Governor who is human and kind , sometimes, one might say, kind to a fault. He attends to people of all classes without discrimination: the powerful and the powerless, the titled and the unknown, the urban elite and the rural farmer. His governance demonstrates compassion for the most vulnerable. Many have benefited from the 335 fully furnished homes he has built and donated to the disadvantaged out of the 500 units planned in his first term. . Many more are among the 600,000 households he has provided with free food. He has also settled a backlog of gratuities, paying N80 billion of the N111 billion owed to workers and donated free 150 homes to civil servants.
This is the same Governor who, for the first time, gave equal opportunity to 4,000 persons to be recruited into the Civil Service, ensuring fairness, meritocracy, and inclusion. His accessibility is not measured by how many personal calls he answers, but by how responsive, caring, and open his government remains.
To extract a playful aside from a broader message of gratitude and structured governance, and then stretch it into a narrative of hostility, is less journalism and more desert fiction.
Governor Umo Eno remains steadfast in his commitment to people-centred governance , accessible, organised, and accountable. No headline, however dramatic, can erase the lived reality of a leader whose humility, compassion, and humanity are evident to all who truly know him.
