The once deplorable Spring Road leading to the popular Goretti Girls Secondary School and adjoining communities in Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State will be commissioned on Friday, October 25, 2024, by the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Pastor Umo Eno.
The 1.1km road with two bridges was awarded in August 2024 to a UK construction firm after the management of the public institution and members of the community sent a Save-Our-Soul message to the governor having been cut off from the rest of the state by a dangerous ravine caused by gully erosion.
Conducting journalists around the newly completed road with aesthetics on Thursday, October 24, 2024, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Research and Documentation, Dr. Essien Ndueso, said the governor’s intervention had restored academic life to the public girls’ secondary school in the area and also enabled accessibility for farmers to evacuate their crops from the community to the market in addition to new businesses springing up daily around the area.
According to Dr. Essien, “The governor is all out to turn around the fortunes of the people in both urban and rural areas. Most of the projects, both completed and ongoing, accommodate all components of the ARISE Agenda of his administration. Another thing worth saying here is that the governor ensures that community elders and stakeholders nominate projects of utmost priority to him for execution, and this ensures that people’s needs are always met.”
He further highlighted that the governor appointed 368 personal assistants in all the wards in the state and equipped them with working gadgets to give him first-hand information on challenges facing their domains for the government’s prompt response.
Also speaking, the Group Managing Director of UK Construction firm, Engr. Ukeme Peter Eyo, said the project was undertaken within six months as directed by the governor, notwithstanding the difficult terrain.
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While expressing deep-seated gratitude to the governor for the confidence reposed in his budding indigenous construction firm, he assured me that the quality of work done by his firm will last the next 50 years.
He also said that outside his core expatriate staff, many of the casual staff were sourced from the community to help empower the people in line with the mandate of the governor to ensure that the people are carried along.
When reporters visited the nearby Goretti Girls Secondary School, enthusiastic students who spoke with journalists thanked the governor for coming to their rescue, as most of them had lost interest in continuing in the institution over the once deplorable access road.
According to Miss Esther John, the senior prefect, “many parents have withdrawn their children from the school when the access road became a death trap. We lost over 50 percent of our student population. We had to access the school through lonely bush tracks when the road was completely cut off, and we’ve had cases of students who were almost swept away by flood during rain while trying to use the road before the governor intervened. We are very happy and will keep praying ceaselessly for the governor.”
The vice principal of general duties of the school, Mr. Akan Bassey, said that life is gradually returning to the school after almost half of the student population left out of frustration, stressing that the teachers were not spared of the hardship as not even a bicycle could access the area before government intervention.
He expressed happiness that the new road has opened up the area for easy accessibility and also brought life back to the school and new businesses to the area.
