Uyo State Constituency Election 2015:Behold An Achiever and Team Player Enters the Stage

By Ephraim Ikpe

The history of the world, at all times when bookmakers are engrossed in chronicling it, would never ever be complete when the role of women who have affected it positively is ignored.

Fate has done many things to many people.  Fate has brought me into a point of confluence with this high-flier, go-getter and doer. For an Edinburgh University thorough-bred Masters Degree in International Law, capping it up with the best dissertation in World Trade Organization Law during her graduating year, Lady Barrister Stella Ezekiel Udoh has, like most great women in human history, thrown her hat into the ring to tread the murky terrain where most valiants dread.

She has an upbringing laced with hard work which sustained her through her stay in Adiaha Obong Secondary Commercial School Eniong Offot, Uyo, which she made Grade one in her WAEC. 

Lady(Barr) Stella Ezekiel Udoh
One of the front line contenders of
Uyo State Constituency in 2015

At Calabar Polytechnic where Secretarial Studies was her first love, she graduated with an Upper Credit making the best result in that Department that year.  Times change, they say, just like the season.   This could explain the changeability of human desires.  Stella fell in love with the Law profession perhaps to seek an advocacy platform by which she would serve humanity.  After her National Youth Service(as was the case for NCE graduates then to be mobilized for NYSC) she studied Law at the University of Uyo and graduated with LL.B(Hons) Second Class (Upper Division) Honours bagging an Award as the best graduating student of the Faculty of Law that year.

At her time there was only one(with no other centre in any part of the country) Nigerian Law School in Vitoria Island, Lagos, she, like other notable women of no mean repute, braved the odds and bagged her Bachelor of Laws(B.L)  and was called to the Nigerian Bar in December 1993.

Insatiability of human wants, according to economists, must have pushed Stella into the urge for higher academic attainment.  She proceeded to the Rivers State University of Science and Technology where she studied Law at the Master Degree level.

A wonderful wife to a United Kingdom trained Chartered Accountant as a hubby, a caring mother of note with bubbling sons, an indigene of Ikot Ntuen Oku, Uyo Urban Ward Two, in Uyo Local Government Area, with a broad spiritual background, Lady Barr. Stella Ezekiel Udoh  is married to Sir Ezekiel Okon Udoh.

She has rolled through the experience of work from the ranks and file.  In the then Cross River State she served as a Clerical Officer in Etinan Local Government Area under the Local Government Service Board/Ministry of Local Government.

She has, during her year of National Youth Service  to this country, worked as Confidential Secretary to the Branch Controller, Nigeria Bank of Commerce and Industry in Sokoto State.  Fate, it can be said, still pushed her into the tight corner of doubling as the Office Aminstrative Manager at her point of  primary assignment.

Sojourning in the terrain of legal practice, Barr Stella Ezekiel Okon Udoh took her toll on Serena David Dokubo(Barristers and Solicitors) Attorney-at-Law; U.G. Nwokocha & Co.(Legal Practitioners) Barrister and Solicitor; Nwokocha, Boms & Effon(Barristers and Solicitor) all in Port Harcourt and S. Effon and Associates(Legal Practitioners) Port Harcourt and Akwa Ibom –  as Managing Solicitor.

Professionally she is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association, Port Harcourt, International Bar Association and a member of the Institute of Chartered Mediators and Conciliators.

Politically, she is a long standing Card-carrying Member of the Peoples Democratic Party, socially a member of the National Council of Women Societies, Akwa Ibom State, Oku Clan Women Association, Nkemesit Iban Association, Ikot Ntuen Oku, and Ibom Jewels International.

On grounds  of charity, she is a benefactor of St. Vincent De Paul Society , a Donor of the “Help the Widows Society” and a Founder of the “Poor Widows and Orphans”(POWIORS).

Religiously she is the First President of National Association of Catholic Lawyers (Port Harcourt Diocese); Squad Leader/Grand Assistant Secretary, ladies Auxilliary of Knights of St. John International(KSJI) Port Harcourt; Diocesan Secretary, Diocesan Council of Catholic Women Oganization and Parish President, Catholic Women Organization.

Apart from having penchant for success, Barr Stella Udoh is a pace-setter, very hard working, go-getter, good team player, an achiever, God fearing person, respectful of elders and the traditional institution and has been, over the years, positively touching the lives of her people and making the difference.

Miffed by the mere fact that her Oku indigenes in Uyo Urban Ward two have not been allowed to breathe in the politics of Uyo local government area, she feels that a woman who is the symbol of peace and unity in a home can play that role and close the gap between the male and females in the political calculus of Uyo local government area.

Enmeshed in empathy for her people as a mother of modern times she shares the thinking of Her Excellency Senator (Mrs) Helen Esuene that “There are times and seasons.  Men have been there over the years and we have assisted them thus far; they have done a fantastic job, but it is time to try the women.  Like I have said, this is the season to put more women on the job of governance”

Permit me to present to you Lady Barr. (Mrs) Stella Ezekiel Okon Udoh, the game changer and achiever who has stepped into the political turf of Uyo State Constituency race with stellar mien and alluring qualities of the Modern Esther to place Uyo in the House of Assembly in 2015 where it rightly belongs.  She knows the problems of Uyo people, has talked to them while consulting and is ready to provide solutions with a motherly touch. Welcome the modern day Amazon. Welcome the Achiever. Welcome the Team player.