Your Excellency,
Permit me to write with both the urgency of a man who has seen the anatomy of governance from the inside, and the anguish of one who hears the cry of the voiceless. Today, the call is not from militants in the creeks nor agitators in the market square—it is from the very womb of justice itself: Akwa Ibom’s own Law School students.
They have crossed the first hurdle by paying ₦476,000 in tuition for the 2024/2025 academic session, yet they are stranded in the wilderness between legal theory and survival. Most come from households tethered to low-income realities. Now, they ration their meals like war refugees, walk long distances to save transport fares, and improvise daily logistics in ways that demean the dignity of their calling.
Your Excellency, no society worth its salt abandons its budding defenders of justice to the quiet humiliation of hunger. These are not errant youths—they are the imminent custodians of Akwa Ibom’s legal conscience. To neglect them now is to plant a seed of distrust in the very people who will one day interpret and defend our laws.
Akwa Ibom is not bankrupt. The state budgets boast billions, the oil revenues are not whispers but roars, the state projects are draped in ceremonial ribbons. Yet in the shadows of this abundance, your own sons and daughters—the future voices of justice—are surviving on crumbs. Public administration teaches us that governance is not merely the art of managing resources, but the science of strategically investing in human capital. Sir, human capital is starving.
Other federating units—Lagos, Rivers, and even less resource-endowed states—have institutionalized bursaries and stipends for their law students. They understand that professional education is not charity; it is a deliberate infrastructure for the future. The absence/ public demands for more of such schemes in Akwa Ibom is not an oversight—it is a policy vacuum crying for urgent rectification.
You are not merely a governor; you are also a Man of God. You understand that leadership is both stewardship and shepherding. Scripture exhorts us: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain” (Deuteronomy 25:4). Sir, these students are treading the grain of justice; do not let them go muzzled and famished.
This is not a call for largesse—it is a summons to duty. Approve a targeted intervention to cover their feeding, logistics, and essential welfare until they graduate. In doing so, you will be inscribing your name not only in their gratitude but in the annals of a state that did not abandon its own at the edge of destiny.
Your Excellency, history will not remember how many roads we built if we neglected to build the people who will sustain those roads. Today’s hungry law student is tomorrow’s reluctant advocate. But today’s supported law student is tomorrow’s fearless defender of truth.
The gavel is in your hands, Sir. Strike it for justice—not in the court, but in the court of public morality.
Respectfully,
Inah Boniface Ocholi (PST)
