A well-choreographed solidarity visit with Governor Godswill Akpabio by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) party chairman in Akwa Ibom and other smaller parties in the state has been revealed to be a high priced bribery job orchestrated by the governor to legitimize his fraudulent victory at last week’s gubernatorial polls which was marred by violence and fraud.
A well-choreographed solidarity visit with Governor Godswill Akpabio by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) party chairman in Akwa Ibom and other smaller parties in the state has been revealed to be a high priced bribery job orchestrated by the governor to legitimize his fraudulent victory at last week’s gubernatorial polls which was marred by violence and fraud.
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Following the development, ACN in Akwa Ibom met today , Sunday, and suspended the chairman, Chief Aniekan Akpan pending the report of a panel set up to investigate him within the next 7 days. The party noted they have already written to INEC to cancel the fake results that gave victory to Akpabio.
To participate in the fraudulent hoax, the party leaders reportedly received N10 million each, along with a promise of future patronage by the governor. Those who visited the governor yesterday evening at Government House, Uyo, include Chief Aniekan Akpan, the state chairman of the ACN, and Mr Emmanuel Etim, the Chairman of Labour Party Akwa Ibom state Chapter.
The Chairman of the Nigeria People’s Congress (NPC), Elder Godwin Ukwak and the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, through its state chairman, Mr Godwin Edo Akpan and Secretary, Mr Etim Effiong Inyang, also issued congratulatory messages after they were also bribed by the governor.
The “accord” visit to the governor has further created division within the ACN as its candidate, Akpan Udoedehe, had rejected the result of the heavily manipulated gubernatorial election. SaharaReporters and several foreign journalists have unveiled a pattern of electoral fraud, violence and massive rigging in the gubernatorial election in Akwa Ibom. Before the election proper, the state had been gripped by an atmosphere of repression, state sponsored harassment and abuse of power.
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Akpabio manhandled and detained Udoedehe, who was his main opponent in the election. Saharareporters learnt that following declaration of Akpabio’s improbable “victory,” he reached out to the party chairmen of the ACN and the Labour Party (LP) with mouth-watering bribes with the objective of breaking the ranks of the ACN and separate the party leadership from its candidate in the race. The Director-General of the Udoedehe Campaign Organisation, Dr Udoma Ekarika, had faulted the elections because of the massive rigging and violence which characterized it, and accordingly rejected the results. Also benefitting from Governor Akpabio’s largesse is the Government House press corps. After the deal with opposing political parties had been reached to legitimize the governor’s "victory" via the visit of the ACN and LP, Akpabio’s handlers then splashed out in the direction of the journalists with a bribe package of N100,000 merely to ensure maximum publicity to the capitulation of the party leaders. In his speech during the visit to Akpabio yesterday, ACN’s Akpan stated that “an overwhelming majority of the Akwa Ibom state electorate voted massively in favour of the PDP which scored 957, 585 votes as against 163, 449 scored by ACN. In the light of above therefore, I, Mr Aniekan Akpan, state chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), for and on behalf of all members of the Party, hereby accept the result of the Gubernatorial Election in Akwa Ibom state as representing the wishes our people expressed willingly, freely and fairly in the election.” He congratulated Akpabio on his “incontrovertible success in the Governorship Election” and invited other political parties to “learn to deepen democracy in our country by accepting the outcome of election.” In the final act of selling out his own gubernatorial candidate, he dissociated the party from the position held by Udoedghe’s campaign organisation and urged Gov. Akpabio to ignore the press conference being called by Dr. Ekarika to fault the April 26 governorship election. Responding, Akpabio thanked the ACN leadership in the state for its “mature posture,” and urged other states in the country to take a cue from ACN Akwa Ibom and accept the results of their election. He described anyone who does not behave like ACN Akwa Ibom in this respect as “a bitter loser." Reacting to the development, ACN Headquarters sources told SaharaReporters that the action of the State Chairman was null and void. They said Mr. Akpan had been confronted about two weeks ago over suspicious anti-party activities but that he had denied that he was conniving with Akpabio against the ACN.
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