In fulfilment of his election’s campaign promises to the electorate, Governor Udom Gabriel Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State has initiated moves to revive the moribund Peacock Paints Industry cited at Ikot Ekan, Etinan Local Government Area of the state.

Governor Emmanuel broke the news to the people in Etinan, during an inspection visit to the abandoned industry at the weekend.

The governor said that the visit was to give him first hand information on the reality on ground and the possibility of making the Peacock Paints industry bounce back to life.

He noted that what he met on ground gave him the hope that “the company can be reactivated sooner than expected”, promising to send a technical committee for further assessment, with the possibility of urgent take-off of the industry.

He commended the host community, Ikot Ekan and the management staff of the failed company, for protecting the equipment and making the premises secured from vandalism.

“We promised during our campaign tours, that in our mind, this will not be as one of the old stories which we normally started to tell that: ‘Once upon a time’. That was why we promised the people that we will take a second look at this industry,” he recalled.

The governor, with his entourage, was conducted round the premises by the Chairman of the company, Mr. Edet Udoette and the Executive Chairman of Etinan Local Government Council, Mr. Kenneth Okon, who appealed to the governor to “revamp the industry within the first 100-days” of his administration.

News Express reports that Peacock Pants industry is one of the moribund industries abandoned in Akwa Ibom State, which the governor promised to resuscitate, in line with his administration’s policy on industrialisation.

It would be recalled that the out-gone Senior Special Adviser on Industrialisation and Investment to the immediate past Governor Godswill Akpabio, Chief Senas Ukpanah, had told Correspondents in Uyo, that a misused N100 million loan granted to the paints industry by First Bank of Nigeria (FBN), which had not been repaid, was the remote cause of its collapse.

•Photo shows Governor Udom Emmanuel.

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