This study investigated the moderating role of personal experience with governance services in the relationship between broadcast campaign message credibility and Akwa Ibom residents' perception of the trustworthiness of members of the 10th Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly. Anchored in Perception Theory, the study adopted a qualitative content analysis design to examine the dominant themes and promise categories embedded in broadcast campaign messages disseminated during the 2023 general elections. Ten broadcast campaign messages were randomly selected from a population of seventy-two and subjected to thematic analysis. Findings revealed that infrastructure development emerged as the most dominant theme, appearing in all ten messages, followed by youth empowerment, education, agriculture, healthcare, women empowerment, water and sanitation, electricity, security, and constituency representation. Six categories of promises were identified: project-based, financial/empowerment, service delivery, legislative/advocacy, constituency engagement, and social welfare. The analysis demonstrated that the specificity and solemnity of campaign promises created high expectations that, when unmet, fostered distrust and cynicism. Personal experiences with governance services were found to act as a powerful perceptual filter, with negative experiences exerting a stronger moderating effect than positive ones. The study concludes that broadcast campaign message credibility significantly shapes residents' trustworthiness perceptions, but this relationship is powerfully conditioned by direct encounters with public services. Recommendations include the establishment of a public database of campaign promises, the publication of annual constituency scorecards, and prioritisation of front-line service delivery to rebuild political trust.

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