At a Thanksgiving Mass marking the third anniversary of his administration, Peter Mbah delivered a speech and shared a testimony at the Government House Chapel, Enugu, on May 29, 2026.

The Full Speech:

A Mass is usually not a platform for speeches. So, I crave your indulgence – given what today represents.

This is an opportunity to express my gratitude for the support and prayers of Ndi Enugu in the last three years.

Nothing we achieved would have been possible without the support of the civil servants and my entire team.

Thank you for your dedication to duty and painstaking implementation of our policies.

Thank you, My Lord Bishop, for your wise counsel and prayers. And to the Chaplain – for your daily dose of enriching sermons.

The church has been an important part of this journey. Our gathering here this morning re-affirms that.

My dear Ndi Enugu,

This morning feels both sombre and energising to me.

Perhaps anniversaries naturally create that feeling. Like a birthday. A celebration, yes, but also a moment that interrupts the rush of events and forces you to reflect.

Three years ago, after taking the oath of office at Okpara Square, I signed the Citizens’ Charter.

I remember the weight of that moment very clearly.

At the time, many people saw just another government promise. Public life had produced too many declarations that never truly reached ordinary people. Hope had become cautious.

But I believed that moment mattered.

The Charter was about trust. About rebuilding faith in public office and creating a service-centred mindset by government for the people of this state.

Most of what we now speak about so easily had not yet taken physical form. It existed as planning, conviction and hard belief. You could describe the future, but you could not touch it.

That gap between vision and evidence is uncomfortable. It asks people to hold faith before results arrive.

And honestly, that was our first challenge.

We had become too used to disappointment.

Too used to shrinking our expectations in order to protect ourselves from frustration.

That was the atmosphere surrounding Enugu three years ago.

Which is why I have always felt that the deeper significance of the Citizens’ Charter was psychological before it was political. It marked a decision to think seriously again about what this state could become and how future generations might eventually live here.

This morning, I think it is worth pausing to reflect on that moment properly.

Let us go on a journey across Enugu State today.

Picture it:

You leave early in the morning. You move through the capital and further outward into the rural communities.

You pass schools in every ward of the state.

Step inside one of them. Listen to children speaking confidently about robotics, AI, coding, agriculture, science and citizenship.

Watch how naturally they use computers and smart boards, as though this future already belongs to them.

Keep driving.

You come across healthcare centres communities can actually reach, where maternal mortality has fallen dramatically and healthcare is moving closer to ordinary life.

Move again.

You travel on smooth roads now connecting communities more efficiently across the state. Roads carrying farmers, traders, workers, students and businesses more from one place to another.

At some point, you stop at a junction and watch the city drive by:

Workers, students and traders traveling in air-conditioned CNG buses with Wi-Fi.

Watch how differently the city now breathes.

Then visit the terminals; The International Conference Centre; Hotel Presidential.

Look in on Hotel Presidential. Watch people visiting from different parts of the state and country. Watch how infrastructure shapes the feeling of a place before a single conversation even begins.

Go further.

Take a flight on Enugu Air: to Lagos, Abuja, Kano today, and tomorrow – the world.

Connectivity changes the psychology of a place. It changes how people see themselves and how the world sees them too.

Watch the shops opening throughout the week.

Watch young people working late at an ICT hub or filling restaurants late into the evening.

Then come back to the Lion Building.

Sit with my team.

Tell them what you saw.

Tell them what you can feel happening around the state.

Tell us whether this still looks like the Enugu you once knew.

And then come and see me.

Tell me how all this makes you feel

Now let me paint a different picture.

Imagine waking up tomorrow and finding yourself back in the Enugu of three years ago.

The roads are broken again. Gridlock clutters the junctions. Mondays fall silent under sit-at-home orders. Shops close. Businesses retreat indoors. Public transport becomes stressful and exhausting again. Schools drift further behind the modern world. Healthcare centres struggle to meet basic needs. Hotel Presidential slips back into decay. Rural communities remain cut off by weak infrastructure and poor connectivity.

The tech hubs are gone. The innovation ecosystem disappears before it fully matures. Investment dries up.

National attention moves elsewhere. International partnerships fade. The state begins losing confidence in itself again.

And the people who drove this transition – I and the team around me – are no longer there.

Slowly, quietly, expectations begin shrinking again.

And then ask yourself honestly: how would that feel?

What would you fight to keep?

What would you protect for your children and for the generations coming after us?

What people see today are outcomes.

What they do not always see is the struggle, persistence and invisible labour required to bring those outcomes into existence.

A functioning society does not emerge because somebody gives a speech and announces a vision. Between intention and reality sits an enormous amount of hard thinking, strategy and effort.

Take Hotel Presidential.

By the time we came into office, the matter had already been trapped in legal processes for years. Hearings had been pushed far into the future. It would have been easy to leave it there and move on to easier things.

But that building mattered symbolically to the state. It represented pride, confidence and economic possibility.

Allowing it to continue decaying indefinitely would have meant accepting paralysis as permanent.

So, we pushed. We engaged. We argued the case directly. We insisted the people of Enugu deserved results instead of endless postponement.

The same thing applies across the state.

People drive on constructed roads now, but before asphalt is laid there are engineering studies, negotiations, budgeting decisions and months of planning.

You see buses moving more smoothly across the city today, but somebody first had to think carefully about routes, congestion, pricing, terminals and sustainability.

Security required major investment, coordination, difficult decisions and resolve.

Even political harmony does not happen automatically. Across these past years, countless meetings have taken place quietly behind closed doors. Stakeholders have been engaged patiently. Communities have been listened to. Consensus had to be built repeatedly.

And still, we do not always get everything right.

None of this work is glamorous.

Most of it never appears in headlines.

But this is how serious transformation actually happens.

Through sustained effort, difficult decisions, and people remaining focused long after applause fades.

What we are doing here cannot be understood simply as a collection of projects.

We are rebuilding the operating system of this state.

A different future is being constructed layer by layer -economically, culturally and institutionally.

And we are living through one of those rare moments when the direction of a society can change fundamentally.

Can you feel it?

A state that had learned to manage limitation is thinking ambitiously again.

Young people are starting to imagine futures for themselves here at home. Investors are looking at Enugu. The wider region is paying attention.

And God willing, what is being built here will contribute to something larger nationally.

But work at this scale cannot remain superficial if it is going to endure.

That is why the foundations matter so much – education, healthcare, infrastructure, security, technology, investment, public trust.

These things only last when people begin treating them as their own.

When we are gone, what will remain?

Will future generations inherit systems strong enough to carry them further than we ourselves travelled?

Will they look back and recognise this period as the moment Enugu truly changed direction?

Or will people mistake the beginning for the end?

Because what we see around us today is not completion.

It is proof that far more is possible.

Three years ago, much of this journey depended on vision, trust and the willingness of people to take a chance on a different direction for the state.

Today, the situation is different.

People can now see the changes around them in daily life.

And that changes the responsibility all of us now carry.

Tomorrow Is Here can no longer remain government’s project alone.

It belongs to Ndi Enugu.

The future of this state cannot depend permanently on one administration or one political moment. It must become rooted in public culture – in the way communities protect what has been built, participate seriously and hold leadership accountable for continuing the work properly.

Lasting transformation survives only when citizens themselves begin carrying part of the responsibility for protecting it.

What we are building is still young.

A child taking its first steps into the world still needs guidance, patience and careful attention, even when those first steps fill the family with pride. In many ways, our wider transformation is still at that stage.

And anything young requires protection while it strengthens itself.

Eight months from now, in January, we will enter another election.

Do we realise enough that history has placed something precious in our hands?

History is full of people who reached this stage, relaxed too early and stopped thinking like underdogs. Momentum made them comfortable. Success softened their discipline. They mistook winning a battle for winning the war.

We cannot afford that mistake.

Forces that threaten serious progress never disappear. Political brinkmanship. Short-term thinking. Financial pressures. Geopolitical instability. People more interested in noise, ego and personal advancement than long-term results.

These are the challenges before us now.

So let us gather around what we have begun building here carefully.

Let us protect it.

Let us strengthen it.

Let us campaign for it.

Let us bring more people into the fold and help them understand why this moment matters.

Why!

Because Tomorrow is Here

God bless Enugu State

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria