Uyo Back Then, And Other Stories
By UbongAbasi Ise
It’s quite thrilling to follow the trending social media craze within Akwa Ibom online community hashtagged, Uyo Back Then. This comes with beautiful recollections of social activities, personages, and notable landmarks that used to characterize Uyo and gave it the uniqueness in the 1980s, 1990s and the early turn of the 2000s. The livings that witnessed what happened in Uyo back then and are now actively practicing the social media culture might not be able to contain the surge of nostalgia associating with the mention of those appellations that were common in the days when men were boys, and women girls.
Going through the trending Facebook updates particularly, one would be reminded, with UyoBackThen hashtag, the rivalry that used to exist between Jetimo Football Club of Uyo and the Mobil Pegasus of Eket; some posts would mention businesses such as Joesco Group of companies, EMCO, Utuks and Inyangette motors; the buried name of an African highlife music icon, Udo Abianga, would also be exhumed and made to come back to life; gifted radio comedian, Udo Sunday of blessed memory, would be gleefully mentioned to the envy of the indomie generation. Also, one would come across olden days’popular entertainment nomenclatures such as Afim Akpa, Ekondo, Mkpo Ndik, Mboribo, Udo Barikang etc. In those good old days, monochrome television and radio powered with batteries were articles of luxury and of wealth. Landmarks such as Esso, Ekpenyong brothel, Uyo Market, Itam Peace Columns, Uyo Circus, Nigerian Army School at Barracks Road, Mben Corridor, and Uyo Motor Park also become some proud features worthy of reminiscence. A certain social vice committed as advanced fraud and popularized as utoto or cymonkey as well as a kind of gambling called ben-mi-dia-ko, have also been mentioned to the amusement of social media freaks that had lived in the era that seems to have expired.
This hashtag on Uyo that was inadvertently created by social media chatterers has succeeded in invoking the scintillating memories of the past of this graceful city. It has made the older persons in the present generation to relive the days they were younger. But the social media generation doesn’t seem to know beyond their age, I may be wrong anyway.Therefore it is purposive of this piece to bring up the backmost facts on Uyo back then. I know that the tales of Uyo from 1919 when it first attended the status of urban centre to the 1970s, may belong to another world, but this generation should know how the past labored to give birth to the present beautiful city.
Uyo has its first ever storey building in the 1920s, an edifice built by Obong Thomas Udok at No 1. Barracks Road, (now Wellington Bassey Way). The first transport outfit was “the Weeks Transport Service”, a lorry that oscillated between Uyo and Aba areas. Most of this generation may never have known that the spot used to be called Picadilly Circus which formed a nucleus of Uyo whereby all major routes like Aka, Ikot Ekpene, Abak, Oron and Barracks roads originated, is now called Ibom Plaza. The first motorable road in Uyo was Barracks Road. And St. Luke hospital, established in the 1930s was the first health center.It would also interest both Uyo residents and visitors to know that the city first benefitted from public electricity supply in 1963, four years after pipe borne water came to being.
Today, Uyo is known for having vast number of hospitality enterprises: there are a lot of hotels scattering all over the city. Lest we forget, Catering Rest House, owned by government, was the first hotel Uyo could ever boast of back then. Movies at Ibom Tropicana Galleria may be of fancy to the present generation, but there was Uyo’s first movie theatre called Diko Cinema located close to where we now have Power City International.
In the sixties and seventies, Uyo’s population was relatively low but the establishment of the Cross River Breweries by Dr. Clement Isong profoundly helped increase the population of Uyo, according to available report. Again, the tertiary educational institution which has evolved into the present day University of Uyo, has also helped considerably in making the capital city thick with increased population. On this note, this generation should be reminded that it was Obong (Dr). Okokon Etuk that successfully moved the motion on the floors of the Cross River State House of Assembly for the establishment of a state university in Uyo. The legislation resulted in upgrading the facilities of then College of Education in Uyo to a University of Cross River State, which has today become the University of Uyo we all know.
Furthermore, it was Arc. Obong Victor Attah that provided the master plan and the schematics of the Uyo capital city. He tried his best as AkwaI bom State governor to chart s new course of modernization for the state’s capital city. Chief Godswill Akpabio’s administration later brought spasmodic development which stimulated Uyo to leapfrog from a rebarbative urban center to a standard modern city that becomes the pride of the state today. Akpabio’s era had been a point of departure from the past to the present. It is from this era that Uyo became the city of international stadium, world class specialist hospital, elibrary, water fountains, ultramodern road networks, street lights, a Five-star Le meridian and golf resorts, and traffic lights. All these mementos brought from the past and put down in this writing, have made it clear that Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom State, has come a long way.
The government of Mr. Udom Emmanuel is still running anyway.Therefore it is believed that more state-of-the-art infrastructures would spring up before its exit in 2023. Governor Udom’s administration has bought the tallest building ever in Uyo, an edifice that scraps our tropical sky. It is now incumbent on the state government to ensure that the tallest building does not end up playing the role of a giant Christmas tree at every yuletide but to serve its purpose by ensuring that Exxon Mobil Producing Company relocates it headquarters from Lagos to Uyo. The headquarters of the oil behemoth in Uyo would bring with it productive population and would also stimulate the growth of correlated private businesses, thus boosting the IGR of the state.
Again, the inauguration of Ibom Blue Sea Science and Technology Park by the Governor Udom in the heat of his Supreme Court victory in December 2019 should not be a spectacle for the media. If the project, proposed to be built by China Blue Sea International Holding,would come with a University of Technology, vocational center, a power plant and a Five-Star hotel as proposed, then Uyo would be transformed to a megacity and a hub of socio-economic activities in the entire southern part of the country. This would be one of the most valuable bequests Udom’s government would leave for the posterity.
Yes! I am UbongAbasiIse. For comment, please send SMS to 08189914609 | email: ubongabasiise@gmail.com
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