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Akwa Ibom State Governor Umo Eno warned the state’s traditional village leadership on Saturday that any community where government infrastructure is vandalised will face the removal of its village head’s certificate of recognition, the formal instrument through which the state confers official authority on community rulers, in the most direct threat yet in a two-year campaign to hold local leaders accountable for the protection of public assets.
The warning was issued during the State Government House Monthly Prayer Service at the Latter House Chapel in Uyo, an event attended by the Deputy Governor, members of the state executive council, religious leaders, and senior government functionaries.
Eno framed the directive in terms of basic institutional accountability, arguing that a village head unable or unwilling to prevent hoodlums from destroying government property had failed the primary duty of office.
“Any village that we have government presence, and there is vandalism of government property in that village, we will withdraw the certificate of the village head,” he said. “If a public school, well furnished with modern facilities by the government, could be conveniently vandalised by hoodlums in your locality, what is the usefulness of the village head there?” He directed the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Frank Archibong, and the State Chairman of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria, Dr. Uwemedimo Udo, to convene an immediate meeting with village heads across the state’s 31 local government areas to communicate the new accountability standard.
The certificate of recognition is not a ceremonial document. In Akwa Ibom State, as in most Nigerian states, village heads derive their official standing — and with it access to government channels, security coordination, and participation in council-level governance, directly from formal recognition by the state government. The certificates are issued through the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, following a process of community consultation and executive approval, and they confer both the title and the institutional legitimacy that allows a village head to function as the government’s primary interlocutor at the community level. Withdrawal of that certificate would effectively strip an individual of their official status and remove them from every formal governance structure to which it granted access, a significant sanction in communities where traditional leadership remains the most immediate face of authority.
The threat represents an escalation of a policy Eno has pursued since taking office in May 2023. At the commissioning of a 1.3-kilometre underground flood control tunnel in Uyo in April 2024, the governor directly challenged community youth to protect the infrastructure around them.
“We cannot be destroying facilities that government spends so much money to fix. It is not my money; it is your money. It is our collective money. So if you see someone destroying government property, know that it is part of your money being destroyed.” Weeks into his administration in January 2025, he decried the vandalism of public facilities, particularly electricity transformers, when receiving the newly appointed Commissioner of Police for the state, and announced the Ibom Community Watch initiative, designed to station at least one community security volunteer in every village to monitor government installations.
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The scale of the problem that has prompted these measures is not trivial. At a public event in Eket in 2023, Eno acknowledged that his administration would engage security personnel from host communities on the recommendation of village heads and youth leaders, with the explicit aim of transferring accountability for the protection of government installations, in schools, health centres, water facilities, and road infrastructure, to the community leadership rather than relying solely on state security agencies. The Saturday warning marks the point at which that framework of shared responsibility has acquired formal consequences for non-compliance.
Vandalism of public infrastructure is a persistent and well-documented governance challenge across Nigerian states. Schools equipped with desks, computers, and laboratory materials are stripped within months of completion; transformers are stolen for their copper components; borehole and water scheme installations are systematically dismantled for the value of their metal parts.
The cumulative cost runs into billions of naira annually, undoing significant portions of capital expenditure and leaving communities without the services that spending was meant to provide. Civil society organisation CHRAN, in a December 2025 statement, called on Eno to personally tour all 31 local government areas to assess whether development funds were reaching communities in usable form.
Separately on Saturday, Eno announced that planned mini water projects, one per ward across the state’s wards, would be handled by the Inter-Ministerial Direct Labour Committee, and directed that committee to involve his personal assistants in every ward to ensure coordination and oversight at the local level. The inclusion of personal assistants as accountability monitors in ward-level projects reflects the same logic as the village head directive: direct lines of gubernatorial oversight, reaching below the local government level to the ward and community tier where delivery and protection of infrastructure most frequently break down.
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The prayer service at which the warnings were issued featured praise and worship sessions, choir performances, and a sermon delivered by the Presiding Bishop of Beautiful Gate Family Church, Reverend Bolaji Adeisrael, drawing on Romans 11:33 under the theme “Unsearchable God.” Adeisrael admonished attendees to remain steadfast in religious observance as a foundation for personal and communal excellence.
No timeline was given for when the instructed meeting between the commissioner and village heads would take place. The government did not specify whether the new accountability standard would be applied retrospectively to recent incidents of vandalism or prospectively from the date of the announcement.
