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On Thursday, August 6, 2015, the Senator representing Akwa Ibom North East, [Uyo] senatorial district in the Senate, Mr. Godswill Obot Akpabio, addressed a Press Conference as leader of the 49-member senate caucus of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP. In it, he made absolutely false and damaging allegations against the Federal Government and the Department of State Services, DSS. Senator Akpabio claimed that the Resident Electoral Commissioners, Electoral Officers and other senior officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Abia states were being “daily arrested, their families and associates hounded and judicial officers involved in election tribunals intimidated and questioned using trumped up petitions bordering on corruption…There is no provision in our laws that allows the DSS to meddle in a partisan manner in the political electoral process.”
1. THE BLACKMAIL
We in the APC in Akwa Ibom State do not find it strange that Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio is spewing barefaced lies and concocting malicious falsehood aimed at besmirching and/or assassinating the character of people he imagines as his adversaries; it is in his character. Because this is his nature, Senator Akpabio is simply behaving true to type in his latest desperate attempt to tarnish the integrity of the DSS and its new Director General, Mallam Lawal Daura. This blackmail by Senator Godswill Akpabio may not be unconnected to the fact that the agency as led by Daura has stoutly resisted his well-known habit of corrupting functionaries of government with monetary inducements in the bid to have them at his beck and call and for the purpose of perverting justice.
However, to put the records straight and expose the tissue of lies being maliciously woven by Senator Godswill Akpabio and his colleagues, the Akwa Ibom APC truthfully repeats here for the umpteenth time that we had compelling cause to invite both the Director General of DSS and Inspector General of Police through our petition of 8th July, 2015 titled: “Petition Against Corruption And The Unbecoming Conduct of INEC REC, Akwa Ibom State, Mr Austin Okojie and other INEC officers” so that they may investigate into and find out why:
i) INEC officials, who are expected to be impartial umpires and who “ought not to be partisan,” degenerated to the level of causing irreparable damage to ballot papers used for the April 11, 2015, governorship election in Akwa Ibom State.
ii) Austin Okojie and members of his gang in INEC went to the extent of deliberately pouring and soaking bags of ballot papers in water. We wanted the security operatives to unravel the reason behind why INEC staff in Uyo bundled ballot papers into ramshackled bags and kept them under the rain, contrary to INEC manual directing that all ballot papers used in election be put in sealed envelops and preserved unit by unit.
iii) Under Mr. Austin Okojie’s watch, hundreds of thousands of ballot papers used for the governorship election of April 11, 2015, were physically mutilated beyond redemption, making it absolutely impossible for the APC forensic experts to scan them for forensic examination.
In our view, this deliberate and callous destruction of material evidence, in this instance hundreds of thousands of ballot papers used for the governorship election of April 11, 2015, was criminal in all material particular and so naturally warranted the involvement of the DSS and the police. We are not aware of any state in the federation where INEC officials went to the criminal extent of destroying ballot papers of the last elections as we have witnessed in Akwa Ibom State. We had earlier published pictures of thousands of the mutilated ballot papers and also pictures of how INEC officials in Uyo were sun-drying thousands of ballot papers they had previously soaked in water on pages 52 and 53 of the Nation newspaper of Friday, July 31, 2015. Neither has INEC nor any sane person controverted this facts since we published them.
We find it, therefore, very disappointing that instead of Senator Godswill Akpabio, a person who is supposed to be a “distinguished” law maker of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, condemning this devilry and brazen criminality, he is shamelessly defending it in public. We consider it very appalling and smacks of depravity that a lawyer by training and Minority Leader of the Nigerian Senate can so audaciously, virulently and falsely accuse the DSS and other security agencies of meddlesomeness and partisanship in the affairs of the ongoing election petitions tribunals but sees nothing untoward in INEC officials willfully destroying ballot papers. In any event, the truth of the matter is that the DSS is not in any way involved in the trials going on in the election tribunals. All that the dedicated officers of this agency have done, in the patriotic discharge of their constitutional duties, is invite and interrogate Mr. Austin Okogie and other INEC staffers to assist them in determining why and who authorised the destruction of the ballot papers used for the governorship election of April 11, 2015, in Akwa Ibom State.
2. WHY SENATOR GODSWILL AKPABIO IS AFRAID AND PARANOID
The April 11, 2015 Governorship and State House of Assembly elections in Akwa Ibom State dwarfs the Liberian Presidential election of 1927 which had the notorious distinction of being recorded as the “the most fraudulent election reported in history,” according to the 1982 Guinness Book of Records. In the Liberian election, President Charles D. B. King won his 3rd term bid with a total vote of 240,000, while the total number of registered voters was 15,000.
In the Akwa Ibom State case, the INEC REC, Mr Austin Okojie, awarded the PDP governorship candidate, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, a total score of 996, 071 votes; whereas the total number of Akwa Ibom people accredited for that election, as captured by the Electronic Card Reader database in the INEC Headquarters at Abuja, was exactly 437,128. We should recall that Mr. Godswill Akpabio had vowed in Cletus Bassey’s church last year that he will impose Udom on Akwa Ibom people “no matter whose ox is gored.”
The leadership of Akwa Ibom State APC asserts vehemently that the INEC REC, senior INEC officials in Uyo, the 31 Electoral officers and sundry other officiating INEC officials involved in the conduct of the Governorship and State House of Assembly elections, and who “ought to (have) been shielded from partisanship,” were unconscionably induced and monetarily corrupted by the PDP government of Mr. Godswill Akpabio whose officials used to publicly boast: “what money cannot do, more money can do.” We further assert that it is the “uncommon” financial inducement that made Mr. Austin Okojie and his gang throw caution to the wind by colluding with the PDP government in the state to perpetuate the monumental electoral roguery ever in Nigeria.
We insist that it was this material inducement that encouraged the INEC officials in Uyo to go to the odious extent of compromising the integrity of, and destroying ballot papers officially requested by the APC legal team.
All considered, we have no doubt that Senator Godswill Akpabio has recruited other PDP Senators to stand by him while he fouls the air with his irresponsible blackmail and blatant lies against the DSS and other security agencies because he is aware that the rigorous interrogation of Austin Okojie and other INEC staffers would certainly unearth the involvement of his corrupt government in the fraudulent governorship elections of April 11, 2015. Additionally, Senator Godswill Akpabio is spending enormous resources to fiendishly blackmail the DSS in the forlorn hope to discourage the agency from involving in the “political electoral process” because he dreads that the new DSS investigation would uncover how he and some senior officials of his government formed, sponsored and heavily armed a private army of more than 2,000 Akwa Ibom youths that they have conscripted into dangerous thuggery and gangsterism, providing them with fake police, MOPOL and army uniforms and using these narcotized youths to unleash unprecedented state terror and mayhem in Akwa Ibom State during the March 28, 2015 and April 11, 2015 presidential and governorship elections respectively.
Succinctly put, it is the morbid fear that an unfettered DSS investigation into the “political electoral process” that took place in Akwa Ibom State will bring to the knowledge of the Federal authorities the callous atrocities committed with impunity against the state and people of Akwa Ibom State by the Akpabio administration that is making Senator Godswill Akpabio concoct nauseous lies against the DSS and the APC Federal Government.
3.THE 30-YEAR-CYCLE AND THE PDP THREAT TO PRESIDENT BUHARI’S GOVERNMENT
With Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio’s false allegations to the effect that the “current war [against corruption waged by the APC government of President Buhari] lack transparency, fairness to all and appears to be aimed at political adversaries,” we have historical reasons to feel deeply troubled that Senator Akpabio is strategically using his present position as the Minority Leader to galvanize that segment of the powerful elite in our country who are determined to ensure that the Buhari “Change” philosophy and the war against corruption fails. It does appear to us that Senator Akpabio is trying to craftily use the PDP Senate caucus to coalesce a formidable group of powerful Nigerians to frustrate the war against corruption. These are the same people who have profiteered from the hydra-headed dragon of corruption, the very clique who are going to be exposed and contained by the battle against graft.
Common sense cautions that this group will spare no effort to ensure that the anti-corruption crusade of President Buhari fails woefully. The leadership of APC in Akwa Ibom State sadly recalls what happened thirty years ago when some patriotic Nigerians embarked on the project to stem corruption. We know that certain events with highly disruptive consequences have the periodicity of occurring every thirty years in the lives of individuals, groups and nations. We, therefore, recall that some very powerful forces and influential personalities in our country sponsored the palace coup that ousted the military regime of then Major General Muhammadu Buhari and truncated our national renaissance against corruption in 1985. It is, therefore, very worrisome to us that the current war that the APC government of President Buhari has begun in 2015 may suffer a grave set back unless and until the dark agents of corruption and evil who have held sway especially in the last eight years are contained and brought to justice.
In the light of this, the leaders and members of APC in Akwa Ibom State urge the APC government of President Muhammadu Buhari to take very serious notice of the antics and schemings of Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio. The APC Federal Government and the new leadership of the DSS must take note of the saturnian 30-year-cycle and ensure that the dark intents of the likes of Senator Godswill Akpabio which are implied in his outlandish lies and puerile allegations meant to cause disaffection in the mind of the generality of the Nigerian populace against the government are decisively enfeebled and the patriotic and regenerative war against corruption taken to its logical conclusion, “no matter whose ox is gored.”
CONCLUSION
We can vividly recall that Governor Godswill Obot Akpabio had made very disparaging remarks and personal attacks against General Muhammadu Buhari during the PDP presidential rally in Uyo in February 2015. We know for sure that as a governor, Akpabio used the DSS in Akwa Ibom State to intimidate and persecute Akwa Ibom elders, perceived political opponents and journalists. If by his latest grandstanding and audacious attacks he is hoping to push his luck further by frightening and intimidating President Muhammadu Buhari and the new DSS, he must be reminded that “Change” is here and nemesis beckons.
