By Ofonime Honesty
Nigeria has never suffered from a shortage of ideas. Grand ideas. Beautiful ideas. Ideas that look so good on paper you would think they were crafted in paradise. Our history, however, is littered with the carcasses of such ideas—abandoned or left to die as mere concepts.
Well, I choose to observe, with a measure of optimism, the ongoing construction of the ARISE Youth Friendly Centres across Akwa Ibom State. This initiative, a cardinal programme of Governor Umo Eno’s ARISE Agenda, appears to be a deliberate and strategic investment in the future.
Picture this: a place where a young girl from a village in Ika, with a mind yearning for code and a heart full of hope, can walk in and find a super-fast internet connection, gadgets, latest softwares, a modern co-working space, and a library that is not a museum of old books but an online portal to the world.
Imagine a young man in Esit Eket, an aspiring ‘Tech Bro,’ sitting in a recreational lounge, powered by the sun, brainstorming with his peers—not about the prevalent internet fraud, but about the next big app that could change Nigeria. This is not a scene from California’s Silicon Valley; it is rather what looks like its embryos in Akwa Ibom.
The blueprint for these centres suggests a well-considered approach. They are designed to empower young people with practical skills and opportunities, addressing unemployment, insecurity, and brain drain. They will feature various facilities, including multi-sectoral training centres, accelerator and incubation hubs, co-working spaces, recreational lounges, creative development hubs for arts and culture, ICT hubs equipped with digital tools, coffee bars for networking, and e-libraries for digital learning and research.
The programme aims to create a network of innovation centres across the state’s 31 local government areas, providing safe spaces for young people to develop skills, knowledge, and confidence.
Construction has commenced in 11 Local Government Areas. By January 2026, work will begin on 20 additional hubs, with the goal of completing one hub in each LGA before May 2026.
This is not merely about building structures; it is about building the foundational ecosystems, the very bedrock upon which the renowned Silicon Valley is built. It is about providing the tools and the environment for the latent genius of our young people to flourish, equipping them with the skills to compete in a modern global economy.
For context, Silicon Valley is the globally recognized epicentre of technological innovation, located in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It is renowned for its dense concentration of tech gurus, pioneering startups, and a unique ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurship, risk-taking, and the rapid development of groundbreaking ideas into world-changing innovations.
This vision guarantees that a young person in Etim Ekpo, Ini, Urueoffong Oruko, or Eastern Obolo has the same shot at greatness as one in Uyo, the state capital. This is how you build governance, not from the top down, but from the grassroots up. Methinks this is where the Akwa Ibom version of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Elon Musk will emerge. This is where the Mark Zuckerbergs of Akwa Ibom will write their first line of code. This is where poverty and redundancy will meet their match.
In a country where leaders often give youths a bottle of coke, gin, or bread during elections, here is a man building them formidable hubs for self-reliance. He is not just giving them fish; he is not even only teaching them how to fish. He is building them state-of-the-art fishing ponds, stocking them with the best fishes, providing the best fishing rods, and then saying, “Go on, my children, be the best fishers in the world!” This is what leadership is all about. It is about seeing the future and building it today.
The language is refreshing. It acknowledges a demographic truth we often cite but seldom act upon: that youths constitute over 60 percent of Nigeria’s population. To ignore this segment is to sabotage our collective future; to invest in it is the most profound economic and social imperative of our time.
For these centres to avoid becoming white elephants, they must be insulated from political jobbery and sustained by competent and corruption-free management.
The Federal Government, through the Minister for Youth Development, has taken note of this initiative and others, and has described Governor Umo Eno as a “visionary leader.” This is all well and good. But true success will be measured not by plaudits from Abuja, but by the number of young Akwa Ibomites who walk out of these centres as job creators, innovators, and problem-solvers, not as seekers of nonexistent white-collar jobs.
The ARISE Youth Friendly Centres represent a seed. Every entity that forgets to plant seeds for the future has no right to complain about the harvest of thorns. These 31 embryonic ‘silicon valleys’ are a strategic investment that must be guarded, nurtured, and made to work, for the sake of our youth and for the sake of Akwa Ibom State.
These centres can mould Akwa Ibom into an ICT Mecca if properly utilized and managed.
May it succeed!