Senator Godswill Akpabio told Nigerians that he would not participate in the senatorial election re-run because he didn’t want to resign his position as Minister of Niger Delta Affairs. At that time there were calls for his resignation.
He told his party people that he would not run again, to stave off the then growing calls for his resignation. To execute the deceit, he wrote a letter to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, released same to the press, knowing full well that under the law, the period to withdraw had lapsed by virtue of S.35 of the Electoral Act and knowing full well that at that point, his candidature could not be substituted.
With that letter deliberately written to protect himself and mask his real intention of participating, his party members stopped the call for his resignation. Everyone was deceived except his opponent. Akpabio was always at his Essien Udim Local Government Area deploying financial inducements to buy every vote he could. Yet, he claimed in public that he had withdrawn from the race.
In effect, Akpabio as a Minister, indirectly, participated in the court-ordered election re-run on Saturday January 25, 2020, as the candidate of All Progressives Congress, APC.
This is a terrible precedent set by him because those who should have asked him to leave the cabinet failed to do so.
If truly he withdrew, why then was there violence and abduction of poll officials in his Ukana ward and in his polling unit at Independence High School Ukana, where lNEC officials/observers monitoring the election were prevented by a combined team of security agencies’ personnel made up of policemen, DSS officers and Civil Defence officials, from entering the School where National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, members deployed to his polling units were reportedly compelled to mass thumbprint ballot papers for him.
Although the fraudulent ballots were again cancelled by INEC, the act and the intention and therefore the infraction of the law, has been established.
That was where the massive ballot papers thumb-printing took place. The results are out and Akpabio garnered only 6,298 votes while his opponent obtained 17,684 votes, all of which were added to the preserved results of the other LGAs.
These results are a wide difference from the 61,339 votes that he wrote for himself in just one LGA in 2019 that were rejected by INEC and affirmed by the Appeal Court that ordered the rerun election in his LGA, out of the 10 LGAs that make up the N.W Senatorial zone of Akwa-Ibom state.
Thus, Akpabio as a serving Minister, wanted Nigerians to believe that he withdrew from a rerun he actively participated in but still lost.
He should resign his ministerial position immediately, be kicked out by President Muhammadu Buhari or be compelled to relinquish the position, because he cannot eat his cake and still have it.
