By Bassey Amba Offong

On the 8th of August 2018, the day Sen. Godswill Akpabio defected to the PDP, he told Channels Television that he was leaving the PDP because Mr. Uche Secondus the National Chairman appointed Sen.  Saraki the National Leader of the Party. Akpabio said that he couldn’t understand why Sen. Bukola Saraki who betrayed the PDP and former President Goodluck Jonathan when he left the Party with other Governors like Rotimi Amaechi in 2014 will now return and be rewarded with the position of National Leader.

Akpabio however did not see anything wrong when he prompted the National Chairman of APC to declare him Leader of the Party in Akwa Ibom State over the likes of Mr. Umana Umana, Chief Don Etiebet, Sen John Akpanudoedehe and others who sacrificed so much to build and sustain the Party. 

The action of rewarding Akpabio amounts to spitting on the graves of members of the APC who were killed in State sponsored violence before and during the 2015 Presidential and Governorship elections. Will the Party have peace with this ungodly action? Will God not fight back for the faithful APC members who were needlessly and callously killed for trying to vote for President Buhari and other APC candidates? Is it right and just before the Almighty God that the APC should reward Akpabio the man who was responsible for the electoral violence and mayhem which culminated in the deaths? 

What really is the electoral value of Akpabio? A former Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Engr. Patrick Ekpotu has stated that Akpabio’s electoral value is inconsequential- a statement supported by the fact that the entire PDP structure in Akwa Ibom State abandoned Akpabio as he virtually moved to the APC alone. Engr. Ekpotu has also warned that Akpabio will destroy the APC and that his reason for joining the APC is because he (Akpabio) believes he will deploy federal security agencies as an APC member to return to the Senate while pretending he is working for the reelection of President Buhari. 

There is also the issue of his pending cases with the EFCC including the celebrated one of fraudulent cash withdrawals (in multiples of N10m) amounting to N108billion. Akpabio believes these cases will be swept under the carpet as if the withdrawals did not take place.  On the day of his defection, Akpabio in his usual flippancy boasted on live national television that he had been cleared by the EFCC.

 In another act of flippancy, he said on national live television that Sen. Saraki and other senators and colleagues were misbehaving because they had taken too much tramadol.