Donald Duke is a Lawyer as well as Politician who served as the Governor of Cross River State, Nigeria from 29 May 1999 to 29 May 2007.
Background
Donald Duke was born on September 30, 1961 at 16 Annesley Street, Calabar, Cross River State of Nigeria, to the family of Mr. Henry Etim Duke and Mrs. Genevieve Etim Duke. He is the fourth child in the family of five children. His father, Mr. Henry Duke, was the Chairman of the Board of Customs and Excise (now The Nigerian Customs Service) between the years 1967 and 1975.
Education
Donald Duke had his primary education (Corona and Saint Mary's School in Lagos), he attended Secondary School (Federal Government Colleges (both Unity Schools) at Sokoto and Ilorin and thereafter returned to the Federal School of Arts and Science, Lagos for his 'A' Levels ) and University in the North and Middle Belt, received professional training back in the west and later enrolled in some of the best Universities abroad. He received his LLB degree in 1982 at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria – Nigeria, and a BL in 1983 from the Nigerian Law School, Lagos. He went further for his LLM in Business Law and Admiralty in 1984 from the University of Pennsylvania.
Having acquired sufficient grounding and exposure in academics, business and law practice in the United States, Donald Duke returned to Nigeria and teamed up with some colleagues to establish the Lagos based Law partnership of Onyia & Duke. Being in active law practice, he soon assumed full management of the family's shipping business when he became Chief Executive of Hegeds International Limited.
Donald Duke entered into public Governance for the first time In 1991 when he was appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of Voice of Nigeria. This was quickly followed by another appointment in 1992 when Governor Clement D. Ebri appointed him a member of the Cross River State Executive Council and Commissioner for Finance, Budget and planning. The appointment as Commissioner was unfortunately short lived due to the abrupt change in Government in November, 1993.
He returned to private life in the course of which he became the chairman of Allied Merchants & Brokers Limited, a sole Africa Franchisee for US-based Uncle Ben's Rice.
He later became the Governor of Cross River State between 1999 and 2007.
Achievements
Works
Other Work
Obudu Ranch Resort
(Duke came up with the idea of Obudu Ranch Internationa...)
Tinapa Resort Project
(Donald Duke instigated Tinapa Resort project so as to boo...)
Politics
His political views are portrayed in his works. Duke has been praised for his contributions to the fields of agriculture, urban development, governance, environment, information and communication, unit investment and tourism. Through his work Calabar is seen today as the "cleanest city in Nigeria."
Views
Quotations:
"We have to invest mammoth sums of money in education, in training teachers, in providing the infrastructure for education, in ensuring that every child up to the age of 18 is mandatorily enrolled in school. It is not an option; not getting a child to school must be treated as an offense. That is the first thing. We must ensure that we have good health care system in the country so that our people’s well being is being taken care of. Then of course, we must provide requisite infrastructure for growth. If we do these three things and embrace technology, with the Nigeria's strength, in 10 years we would leapfrog from where we are now to the 21st century."
"I don’t think anybody who is objective would give high mark to our National Assembly today, neither would anybody give high mark to the presidency either, I mean, these are institutions that have not delivered. The National Assembly has not been able to carry out their constitutional responsibilities. They were not decisive on constitutional matters. How many bills have been passed to date?"
" I don’t want to bring ethnic connotation to this I don’t think it is ethnic, I think it is personal interest, I don’t think it is ethnic at all."
"I will ensure that Nigerians are productive people. I will ensure that our infrastructure is a world class; I will ensure that our children go to school; I will ensure that the economic environment is such that businesses thrive, and employment is given to people. I will ensure that Nigeria is a country that works. That is when you would re-brand the country. If the country is working, children are in school, hospitals are functioning, infrastructure is world class, the place is esteemed, we are responsible citizens of the world community, we are good neighbors and good influence to our neighbors, and then the world would respect us. You earn respect; it is not given to you on a platter, you earn it. We have not earned it. To whom much is given, much is expected. We are very resourceful country of 150 million people or more, we have tremendous economic and material resources, but we have not justified respect. That is why the world sometimes treat us with scorn."