When Umo Eno, as a governorship candidate, crisscrossed Akwa Ibom State, soliciting for votes, he vowed to entrench transparency if elected. At town halls, campaign events, and meetings with professional groups, he repeatedly spoke about accountability, openness, and responsible governance. In his manifesto, the ARISE Agenda, he pledged to “promote accountability and transparency by ensuring compliance with Fiscal Responsibility and Public Procurement Acts.”

However, more than two years into his administration, a detailed review of budget documents, official timelines, legal provisions, civil society reports, and responses from government officials reveals a widening gap between that promise and practice.

Instead of deepening fiscal openness, evidence suggests that Governor Eno is adopting government secrecy, repeatedly breaching Akwa Ibom’s fiscal responsibility law, and dismantling reforms that once made the state a reference point for subnational transparency in Nigeria.

What the law demands

Akwa Ibom’s fiscal responsibility law, codified as Volume III, Cap 56 of the Laws of Akwa Ibom State 2022, is clear on what the government should do to be fiscally transparent. Section 47(1) mandates the state to conduct its fiscal and financial affairs “in a transparent manner” and to ensure “full and timely disclosure and wide publication of all transactions and decisions involving public revenues and expenditure and their implications for the economy.”

Section 47(2) requires all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), including local governments, to maintain functional online portals for publishing critical fiscal documents. These include proposed and approved budgets, budget implementation reports, individual MDA performance reports, and audited financial statements. The state’s own Standard Budget Calendar complements this by setting clear deadlines for making each document public.

Eno inherited foundation of fiscal openness

Governor Eno did not inherit a blank slate on fiscal openness. His predecessor, Udom Emmanuel, had come under pressure following the 2018 World Bank-supported State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) assessment, which ranked Akwa Ibom among 11 states that performed poorly on fiscal transparency.

Rather than resist scrutiny, Mr Emmanuel’s administration embraced reforms. The state made fiscal laws that institutionalised fiscal responsibility and began publishing proposed budgets before legislative approval to allow public input, approved and supplementary budgets, detailed quarterly Budget Implementation Reports (BPRs), debt management reports, audited financial statements and citizens’ budgets. These efforts paid off. By 2020, Akwa Ibom ranked first in the South-South region and fifth nationally on the Budget Transparency Index. In 2022, Akwa Ibom State advanced to the top of the country’s fiscal transparency rankings.

Aware of these strides, Mr Eno, in the opening words of the ARISE Agenda, promised continuity. “I believe in building upon the legacies of past administrations for faster and sustained development,” he declared.

Promising start, then a turn

The early months of the Eno administration appeared to align with that pledge. In September 2023, barely four months in office, the governor presented a supplementary budget, which was passed into law and published on the state government budget website.

However, the gesture did not last.

In November 2023, Policy Alert, a civil society organisation focused on fiscal justice, reviewed the supplementary budget and raised red flags.

The group reported that five projects already completed and inaugurated by the previous administration were reallocated multi-billion naira in the new budget. It also criticised what it described as disproportionate votes on furniture for lawmakers and the approval for the purchase of 180 SUVs and pickup trucks, despite generous allocations for similar items in the original budget.

Mr Eno dismissed the concerns as “frivolous.”

“This government will not be responding to frivolous allegations. I won’t be distracted,” he said, adding that Akwa Ibom people would judge his administration at the end of its tenure.

Behind the scenes, however, multiple sources in the ministries of Finance and Budget and Economic Planning told PREMIUM TIMES that the scrutiny triggered a decisive shift.

According to them, the governor directed that proposed budgets should no longer be published until after legislative approval, effectively shutting out civil society and the media from questioning budget priorities before they become law.

Architecture of secrecy

The effects of that alleged directive are now visible. Unlike previous years when proposed budgets were uploaded immediately after presentation to the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly, the 2024 proposed budget was not published until late January, weeks after it had already been passed into law. The same pattern was repeated with the 2024 supplementary budget, the 2025 proposed budget and the 2025 proposed supplementary budget. None of these documents can be found on the state’s official budget portal.

The 2025 Approved Supplementary Budget signed by Mr Eno on 8 October 2025 was only published 12 days before the end of the fiscal year, on 19 December 2025, a day after PREMIUM TIMES’ enquiry about the absence of the document.

In contrast, checks show that between 2020 and 2022, when fiscal reforms gained traction, such documents were available online and before approvals.

Even more worrisome, the 2026 proposed budget was published in mid-January 2026, after legislative engagement that culminated in the budget’s approval had ended in 2025.

Without access to the document, citizens were excluded from providing informed input, a concern publicly raised by Policy Alert and the Akwa Ibom State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress during a public hearing on the budget, organised by the Akwa Ibom assembly.