Scripture did not reveal (Rhema) the intention behind the inspiration submitted by the everlasting symbol of the highest earthly glory of the only Jewish nation on earth, the Nation of Israel, in a scriptural passage. The most prosperous and the wisest King to ever live, till date, King Solomon David Jesse, said, as recorded in the Old Testament scriptural book of Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 “I return, and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to the men of skills, but time and chance happens to them all”.
The factor for this discussion is “time and chance” and the misinterpretation of the phrase by ordinary men who are instruments in the hands of the power of darkness makes it imperatively timely to call out the truth from the top of the mountain ranges and let the whole world see and hear truth with naked eyes and open ears.
King Solomon, as he is institutionally referred to in latter day books, was the most successful man on earth in his days, and he ruled the world rulers through admonitions and sermons. He had no need for the standing army he inherited, built and prepared to protect his Kingdom and his rule. Talking about the rule of law, King Solomon was very fair to his subjects such that “silver was like tones”, nevertheless, he was weak in terms of pleasure hunts.
For him, his weakness was from his insatiable appetite for plessure. Of course, “something must kill a man”. He had favour with all men, yet he was not a perfect King. Today he is an example of fair human leadership. There was no lack in his colonies. Citizens of Israel only worked for a total of 20 years during his reign, in their gangs of 300 supervisors over slaves taken for 3 of 12 months annually, especially when the “Temple Mount” and his palace were built: constructions that had no hammer work to them. Cut stones were laid on one another.
Who is the man in Akwa Ibom State than can attempt to emulate such distinguishing leadership that has been set as an example of democracy when the political philosophy was yet unrevealed. King Solomon talked about time and chance and left it there. Time and chance do not mean “hustling”, otherwise the King’s admonition would concede to been swift, strong, wise, understanding and skilled; but it surely means a faithful following of providence to the end. If a matter is not true and fair to all concerned, then any ambition that rides roughshod on stakeholders is defective.
But God gave Nigeria another good leader, a leader who was an experimenter of popular governance and he is everlastingly documented in our history books as he that “was the President Nigeria never had”. with tribute to the father and leader of the Biafran struggles, late Dim CO Ojukwu, who left that truth behind about Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Awolowo, the erstwhile political leader of the Yorubas, we here borrow his submission in line with King Solomon’s.
Chief Awolowo was the one who positioned the submission of King Solomon in a way that grants the understanding the mind God revealed to the great Jewish King when he said “life’s battles do not always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can”. Yet again, it is not about strength and fastness, the submission that the man who wins life’s battles is the man who thinks he can, cannot also be comprehended by certain fillers from darkness. They always mistake smartness for cleverness.
Let nobody be deceived, both King Solomon and Chief Awolowo were known to be people who were straight forward in their leadership styles: they provided services for their people, and were not doling raw cash. None of them had to read the laws of power to find devious instructions in the Machiavellian principles. So, who is the leader amongst the numerous power scavengers in Akwa Ibom State we can trust?
For the weakness of pleasure, Kind Solomon was consumed by power, for the weakness of been forceful with truth, Chief Awolowo was denied power, and for the weakness of trusting without cause, the icon of the opposition struggle in Akwa Ibom State, Senator (Dr) John James Akpanudoedehe, the only living man among the three herein mentioned, of men who understand ” time and chance” and can relate that with the “will to win”, is the only man who stands in providence to win power in the Governorship race of Akwa Ibom State on the platform of the APC in 2019, and none other given under heaven amongst men in Jesus name, Amen.
This must be made very clear: that any enchantment against the governorship will of Senator Akpanudoedehe in Akwa Ibom State will make it look like President Buhari accepted Governor Udom Emmanuel’s proposal of support him (Udom) to deliver him (Buhari) in Akwa Ibom State. As long as the APC in Akwa Ibom State is concerned, by the grace of the Almighty God, President Buhari’s election in the 2019 presidential election is guaranteed.
Whether it will be Senator Akpanudoedehe that will deliver this victory or Governor Udom Emmanuel, is left for the rascals currently troubling the APC in Akwa Ibom State to understand and position themselves well to be arrested for incitement to violence, and be brought to book for every destruction, in lives and properties, that would be recorded of them. We are ready to expose those who thirst for blood in Akwa Ibom State.
Only two men can deliver President Buhari’s victory in Akwa Ibom State: Senator Akpanudoedehe of the APC or Governor Udom Emmanuel of the PDP. No one else has the capacity. Who delivers President Buhari becomes governor of Akwa Ibom State in 2019. No one in Akwa Ibom State will support a usurper.
With all due respect to some of the leaders of the APC in the State, I must exonerate them for the activities of those who drop their names, showing off their appalling shame while tagging the names of these leaders. It is a pity that these came demanding our call for these leaders to rein these misfortune-stricken men and women who are always hungry and never getting filled up. They are all failed men and women in the dynamics of personal economics. For the sake of their belly, they are ready to shed human blood.
Let it be sounded out loud that Senator Akpanudoedehe is said not to “share money” to his supporters and this is true. It therefore means that he would be in the list of those who would not be able to afford guns for his supporters. He has never raised a cult gang to fight his political battles, and if a usurper (one man) is seen by the national leadership of APC as a crowd, the crowd that we are, will then appear to our party leaders as one man. No one will eat his cake and have it. Let them dole money and guns, we will face then in the name of the Almighty God.
There is a cloud of darkness over the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Akwa Ibom State and it has to do with what is been presently brandished as “choosing a governorship candidate of the party by consensus”. We are not an ignorant people: Akwa Ibom people are a wise people. They are only an impoverished and a hungry people. We will refused such dummies as “zoning” and “one term tenure”. If a man can change popular agreements unilaterally and with impunity, he is not an honourable man and should not be trusted with leadership.
No one would be reasonable to suggest that Dr Nsima Ekere should through consensus be chosen as the flag bearer of the APC in Akwa Ibom State for funding the APC in State. These same men parading themselves as leaders are those who have caused our collective pains in all the years of the abusive reign of terror and blatant rape our people experienced in our recent past. Can they be trusted? Yes! Only by belly fools.
Unfortunately, what the world should know is that the men and women taking this position are those who are visitors to the party. They all behaved like Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara to sustain political relevance, they scavenged their ways into positions of leadership, and claim what is already in arrears of compensation for another man. The question is on how the opposition party was funded and raised from being an invisible platform to becoming the newest partisan bride of Akwa Ibom politicians? Someone funded the party before our visitors overran their landlords.
So why the hypocrisy around Dr Nsima Ekere funding the party for 3 years when the opposition struggle is already a decade old? Who funded the Action Congress (AC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) to 2010? Who funded the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in 2011, and who funded the Legacy Parties’ merger in Akwa Ibom State in 2014? Who funded the birth of the APC in the State? What is the noise about on funding the APC for 3 years?
If party funding is the criteria for handing governorship tickets, then the rotation should begin according to “ranking” with Senator (Dr) Akpanudoedehe coming first; and Umana Umana must of necessity come before Nsima Ekere’s in the line of succession, since there is no “zoning” in the APC in the State. So much about party funding. It is dead on arrival.
We will not allow those who forget history to lead us into the condemnation of repeating our ugly pass. No one would be allowed to unleash open rape on our women, brutal murder of our kiths and kin, and the senseless kidnappings of our elders, or of any kind of social evil at this period of our nationhood. President Buhari must not be seen to be a desperate man to allow political bloodshed in 2019.
We hereby remind Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio of his support for the gruesome murder of his citizens in the Ikot Ekpene Township Stadium in 2011 while he was governor of the State. His present politicking in the APC is an open disrespect for this solemn remembrance that calls that unnecessary bloodshed to mind. He is a man who does no show remorse for his bad underbelly political tactics. He has never been like King Solomon nor would he admire Chief Awolowo; he therefore cannot stop the Third Missionary journey of Senator Akpanudoedehe in Akwa Ibom State.
Being an insensitive man, he has quickly forgotten what Senator Akpanudoedehe told him (Senator Akpabio) when the later visited the former’s “Chapel Villa” residence in Afaha Offot, Uyo: that two things about this present political season are non negotiable – his governorship ambition and the compensation for the gruesome murder of citizens who died from the state politically motivated gunning down of opposition figures in the State. They are now afraid of compensating the families of those they killed to keep power from 2011.
These men and women show themselves up as people who have forgotten their history and are looking for innocent people in the State to join the condemnation to repeat it. These men have their paths stained with the human blood and the pains of the poor and vulnerable followers of Senator Akpanudoedehe. This is the reason we are calling the entire universe to witness the catastrophe to which this piece points.
Now, what is the duty of Dr Nsima Ekere as the Managing Director of the NDDC if it is not to develop the Niger Delta region? If he does not do his job well, why should he remain as such? Now why should a man be eulogized for doing the assignment he solemnly swore to do? Why should such a man be seen to do the extraordinary? There is a good reason why Nnamdi Kanu called Nigeria a zoo.
Anybody that is qualified can run the NDDC as MD, and he would still show great competence and capacity than Dr Nsima Ekere. So bringing the point that he has done well as MD NDDC and therefore deserve to be supported to be governor, is shallow and despicable. Bar Bassey Dan Abia did better as NDDC MD: no governor chased his contractors around.
If it is a consideration that an MD of the NDDC deserves to be governor of Akwa Ibom State in 2019, Bassey Dan Abia has bought and submitted his forms, Nsima Ekere’s ambition should therefore come behind that of Bassey Dan Abia in “ranking”. That point also is dead on arrival. What are we talking about? The same mouth that supporters of Nsima Ekere use in saying he has done well in Akwa Ibom State is what they use in protesting how the Udom administration is chasing away contractors from sites. Are the eulogies for Dr Ekere centred on chased around contractors in the State? What a gamble by liars.
It is therefore a blatant hypocrisy to hide plain discontentment and open greed, trampling on the truth and due process, to seek free dispensation of the pecuniary. Akwa Ibom State belongs to all of us. No one should use his discontent for food and frivolities to hinder those who seek to serve the people genuinely.
Now on the issue of consensus candidate for the governorship ticket, the last elective congresses will be the last lie on “consensus” any political leader in the APC in Akwa Ibom State will attempt to sell to the people and we would believe. Let the APC house in Akwa Ibom State be divided into those who argued for the tenure elongation of the Chief John Oyegun NWC and those who stood with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu for elective congress. Then we would see how naked these troublers of Akwa Ibom State are.
This is how to filter the remnants of the Saraki/Dogara mafia, headed by Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, from the rest of the members of the party in our State. If Amaechi, Umana and Ekere were APC senators, they would have all defected to the PDP 2 months ago, but being tolerated in the executive arm, they have become the cankerworms eating up the party in their States.
Trouble started in the APC in Akwa Ibom State when tenure elongation was smashed and the John Oyegun NWC was saddled with conducting the congresses to lead to the national convention; and Nsima Ekere was made a member of the Abubakar Badaru Convention Planning Committee.
It was the poor handling of congress materials that led to the “consensus agreement” to use the 2014 lists of party officials at all levels in the State. It is treacherous that the APC NWC of the party never asked what happened to the congress materials released to Akwa Ibom State to warrant an intervention by the APC Caucus leadership in the State? I expect Adams Oshimhole and Asiwaju Tinubu to do better in this matter.
It must be noted that after the last State Caucus meeting of the party, of which Senator Akpabio was attending for the first time since joining the party, Atuekong Don Etiebet, Umana Okon Umana and Senator Nelson Effiong all agreed to stay with the decision on the 2014 lists of executives in the State.
This is the same people who hijacked the elective congress in the State and called for the “harmonisation and consensus” that supported the desecration and denigration of their dignities publcly in Eket on Tuesday – it is not their business if Dr Ekere meets the legal demands for his resignation from office within the constitutionally provided time frame.
They can short change our laws as they like because they think they can buy justice – we are all awaiting them at the junction of divine discretion. Till date, nothing good has come out of that communique they brought to being and they are shameless.
As we speak, an alternate State Secretary has made a press statement from the party’s former address protecting Godswill Akpabio from perceived insults – is that the job of a party secretary? The man (Akpabio) is not yet 3 months in the party and we are having his installed State Secretary? It is a shame to personal maturity – people are old but have not grown up. Why should we trust another consensus when the one Nsima Ekere pushed us into has been openly rejected by him?
No one is questioning Nsima Ekere for rejecting the agreed list, he has a right to do so but he has no right to unilaterally draw the lists of executives for all wards and LGA chapters in the State by compromising some members of the SWC with choice cars and houses: a member of the SWC has confessed how he rejected the offer. That is what is not acceptable. There are ominous signs of darkness over the APC’s fortune in Akwa Ibom State, and it is clear how the forces of darkness have scheduled spiritual wickedness in high places, to keep our people under continued bondage.
It is of public knowledge that the APC as a party will adopt direct primaries for all the nomination stages; and members of the party in Akwa Ibom State expect nothing more or less than direct primaries for the governorship nomination. And until the shattered consensus lists of wards and chapter executives are accepted as agreed, let no one talk about consensus in Akwa Ibom State. Until Nsima Ekere and his gang of trouble makers humble themselves and allow inclusiveness and internal democracy in the State chapter of the party, APC should be ready to lose Akwa Ibom State in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Ini Akpan Morgan is the Convener of the All Progressive Congress Patriots Grouping (APCpg) in Akwa Ibom State and he writes in from Uyo.
