By Nsikak Ekanem
February 18, 2017 was a day of pomp and ceremony for Udom Emmanuel, the Akwa Ibom State governor. He and his wife, Martha, were honoured by a group called Ati Annang Foundation in Ikot Ekpene, reckoned as the cultural headquarters in Annang land and Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District. As publicised on media and stated on the programme of the event, it was an investiture of Emmanuel as patron, while Martha, who by birth is from Annang, was formally inducted as a member of the organization. In March 7, 2017 edition of Niger Delta Chronicle, a weekly pull-out in the Daily Sun newspaper, the event was described as a “return match” in that Mboho Mkparawa Ibibio had on November 7, 2015 honoured Emmanuel’s immediate predecessor, Senator Godswill Akpabio, who is from Annang.
From all that characterised the occasion, it was more than an Annang affair. Other socio-cultural organizations from other parts of the state came out and gorgeously added more colours to the event. It was a symbol of cultural unification and Emmanuel’s no-lean-to-sectional biases, which has been the lot of some other political leaders in the state.
It was packaged to be the governor’s day of glory and calculatingly to goad him with grandeur for further political trip in the near future. No aspersion or demeaning of the governors self-esteem was expected. But Akpabio is good at using satire to let bare script in his heart, at least to the deception of those who grasp meaning only on the surface and to the comprehension of few knowledgeable in reading between the lines. The 54-year old flamboyant politician relishes a great deal in self-assessed achievement, veering off from lane of maturity to infantile self-glorification, most times causing serious damage to interest of a group and cause he purportedly meant to represent.
He was at it again on that Saturday. With his characteristic verbosity, he took the audience through monotonous trip of how he brought Emmanuel from boardroom politics in Zenith Bank in Lagos to partisan politics in Akwa Ibom. In apparent show of his displeasure to Emmanuel’s friendly-and-no-enemy disposition, he complained of how those that shrugged out with the governor at the last general election have since reconciled with the governor and still hold him and his wife, Unoma, in enmity.
In truth, the emergence of Emmanuel as governor of Akwa Ibom in 2015 was not uncommon even though it happened in the era of “uncommon transformation”. Emmanuel’s career background in Lagos before joining partisan politics in his home state was only following the trend of Lagos based professionals becoming governor on returning to their state of origin.
Emmanuel’s civilian predecessors, including second republic’s Clement Isong and Donald Etiebet in the old Cross River State, returned from Lagos to become governors in their native state.
The first civilian governor of Akwa Ibom, Akpan Isemin, was executive director with Avery Nigeria Limited in Lagos before returning to his native state, where he participated in politics and became the governor of the state on the platform of NRC. He defeated home-based architect, Ekong Etuk of the SDP.
In 1999, Victor Attah, who emerged the second civilian governor of the state came from Lagos, where he had had engaging career in architectural industry, which he once served as the national president of Nigerian Institute of Architects. In the build up to 1999 governorship election, he was treated as an alien by home based Akwa Ibomites, including his Ibibio kinsmen. But having got anointed oil from Chief Don Etiebet, who, as one of the founding fathers of the PDP, had the yam and the knife in his hand, Attah was handed the party’s ticket with ease through consensus and he went ahead to win the general election, governing the state for two terms of eight years. He defeated then home based Isemin of defunct APP.
About nine months to the end of Attah’s first term, Godswill Akpabio was offered a commissionership, causing him to hurriedly pack his loads from Lagos to Akwa Ibom. Attah did not only give him a free hand but planted him on a political nursery pot to ease his transplanting to the Hilltop Mansion. Akpabio’s administration was indeed the first direct beneficiary of Attah’s resource control fight and visionary master plan.
This writer surely knows that forces compelling Emmanuel to leave his rousing career in Zenith Bank, where he held sway as executive director revolved around more than an individual. It was a twist of fate that Emmanuel’s entrance into Akpabio’s administration rather led to exit of the former secretary to the state government, Umana Umana, who had been sending words regarding Emmanuel’s worthiness to Akpabio’s ears. It speaks volume of Emmanuel’s unique selling point even to the admiration of his competitors. The major issue raised about his candidature in the 2015 governorship was premised on Akpabio being the promoter of his political aspiration. It was feared that he would not be himself but a proxy of his predecessor and benefactor. He has proved his critics wrong.
Good enough for Akpabio, Emmanuel is not trending along some others from Abuja to Port Harcourt to Lagos, who have been engaging in blame game with immediate predecessors on what went on in the past and why the present is in quagmire, offering apparent bleak future. He has visibly demonstrated that government is a continuum. In addition to embarking on industrialization like Isong, he has continued with projects of the previous administration even as he is also servicing debt in painful silence.
Akpabio has cause to be happy, therefor, but his continuous gloating on how Emmanuel was discovered adds up to suspicion that he was driven wholly by self interest and that he is disappointed since Emmanuel has proved that he is no robot.
It is time Akpabio realised that his rhetoric on Emmanuel’s Lagos background has since lost its rhythm and no longer danceable just as it is also nauseating to the informed public.
