Francis Jeremiah Sharon Umoh Etuk Atai was born on 1 December 1958 at Ikot Aba Ibiono, into the family of the late Superintendent Elder Jeremiah Umoh Etuk Atai and Mrs Alice Jeremiah Umoh Etuk Atai of Ediene Atai, in the Ikono Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State. He was the seventh son and the twelfth child of that house, and a grandson of the late Pa Umo Etuk Atai, the iconic leader of the Ekpuk Nnung Atai Inyang in Ediene Atai.
He began school before he was old enough for it: an under-aged pupil at the UPE Elementary School, Afaha Ediene, in 1964, then a boarder at the Native Authority Elementary School, Ediene Itak, from 1966, and finally the Primary School, Ukpap Itak, where he took the First School Leaving Certificate in Distinction in 1971. At Holy Family College, Oku Abak, he sat the West African School Certificate in aggregate 14 — the best result of that year — having already passed five subjects at GCE O/Level in Calabar in 1975, while still in Class Four.
He read Accounting at the Polytechnic, Calabar, taking his HND at Upper Credit in a straight four-year programme, and served with the National Youth Service Corps at Gboko, in Benue State, in 1982. That same year he joined ICON Limited, the merchant bankers, in Lagos. He cleared his professional examinations at the November 1983 and May 1984 sittings and was admitted to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria in August 1984. By 1986 he was Chief Accountant at the Merchant Bank of Africa (Nigeria) Limited, and in 1991 its acting Managing Director.
In 1989 he founded Eagle Finance Limited, a full-fledged finance house in Lagos, which later became Eagle Consortium Limited. The firm was appointed financial consultant to the Akwa Ibom State Property Development Authority in 1990, under Engr Effiong E. Bassey, and between 2001 and 2008 to nine local government councils in the state: Ibesikpo/Asutan, Eket, Esit Eket, Urue Offong Oruko, Abak, Ikono, Ini, Mbo and Uruan.
In 1993 he built the first privately owned industrial palm kernel mill in Akwa Ibom State — The Almega Plus Limited, at Ediene Atai — an automated plant of 150 tonnes a day. It was rated the best in Nigeria: the free fatty acid in its crude palm kernel oil ran between 2 and 2.5 per cent, against an industry minimum of 6 per cent and an acceptable maximum of 8.
He founded a gospel music group, the Messiah Music Ministry, in 1990; it has three albums to date. His published books are The Divine Leadership in Sovereign Will, brought out by Xulon Press in the United States in 2015, The Shadows of Eternity in 2017, and Akwa Ibom State in the Plan of God for Nigeria in 2022, distributed by the Akwa Ibom State Redemption Commission. More than thirty further titles remain unpublished.
In March 2022, at the party’s state congress in Abak, he became the consensus candidate of the Labour Party for the 2023 Akwa Ibom State gubernatorial election. He is Head Coach, Divine Leadership of the Zero-political Governments, and Governor-in-waiting of Akwa Ibom State. On 26 December 2025 the Elders conferred on him the Royalty Investiture of the Ekpuk Nnung Atai Inyang, the first such investiture in ninety-five years, and he holds the South-East Mandate. He is married, with sons and daughters, and his exposure is at once global, industrial, spiritual and intellectual.
What he is for, in his own words, is true governance and the zero-political leadership of the Creator’s presence, for the people and the land of Akwa Ibom State — a governance that settles every citizen in his or her own right: man eyak unen owo eno mme andinyene.