AKWA IBOM APC LEADERS AS HOBGOBLINS AND WEREWOLVES

Otobong Sampson,
November 29, 2018



Every passing day, leaders of the All Progressive Congress continue to split open and expose their rotten innards, emitting stench that is too horrible for humans. They are living spooks and unfit to cohabit with decent people. Their ways are eerie. Their general idea of power acquisition is anti-society. The party would rather govern over corpses than accept its rejection. It is recklessly determined to perpetuate security scare in Akwa Ibom if that will throw up rigging opportunities as it stands no decent chance. For being a brood of vampires, the people have serially rejected the broom and all it represents...in loud, clear term too.


The crisis in Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly is a litmus test for President Buhari who has repeatedly touted himself, even if falsely, as a corruption hater. The police institution has yet again firmed up the belief that nothing good can ever come out of it. The open bias it has shown to undermine a democratically elected government to give political advantage to the opposition threaten the structures upon which peace is set.

No time in the history of the state have we witnessed such open partisanship by the police force. If President Buhari has never been aware of any event in the country, he should be made to be aware of this danger to democracy in Akwa Ibom.

If the federal government in collusion with the police force won't allow the people to be free, they would be free to give voice to their unfreedom. And there's hope in the very fact that many of them in the face of intimidation and oppression will confront all obstacles to choose a leadership they want.

November 28, approximately five thousand women clad in black and over ten thousand students respectively marched in the streets of Uyo to protest against the growing impunity and lawlessness which is aided by the federal government. The governor who is the chief security officer of the state has rejected Police Commissioner Kimo, saying he can't work with him because of his partisan leaning. This sentiment is also echoed by the generality of Akwa Ibom people who now believe they are no longer safe in their state. There are enough reasons for them not to trust the police anymore. They have seen enough to guess the rest.

The statement credited to the Inspector General of Police that the CP will not be transferred is deplorable. That decision may proof calamitous in the days ahead. It erases every doubt and reinforces all fears that the new police chief is in town for an assignment and plots that are anything but noble. Even when he did his job fairly right, it didn't take the police IG 24 hours to announce the redeployment of CP Bassey Abang when the House crisis first broke out. Why he has confrontationally insisted on keeping Kimo in Akwa Ibom despite his rejection by the state's chief security officer and massive protests by the people against his stay is disquieting and distrusting.

The IG must remember that the police is a state institution maintained with tax payers money and not with the funds of the APC. It isn't the security arm of a political party either and so it should stay neutral and fair to all persons and groups.

Blames for the crisis rocking the Assembly have have continued to be deposited at the door of a serving senator who months ago, had vowed to run down the state in the manner infamous Adolf Hitler overran Warsaw, Poland. Every other skirmishes that have engulfed the most peaceful state in Nigeria have been instigated by leaders of the APC, some who are serving in the presidency. Their intent and purposes are clear: they want the governorship contest taken off the general electoral calendar to a later date to enable excess deployment and concentration of federal security forces in the state for smooth rigging.

Ini Okopido, state chairman of the APC in his ridiculous press statement called on the federal government to sack the present administration and declare a state of emergency in the state. This was an extremely silly request. The federal government should of course know it has many situations on its hand that require immediate declaration of state of emergencies: The Boko Haram insurgency, corruption, that has become a synonym of the Buhari administration, and several others.

Neither the IGP or the police commissioner can claim to be more interested in the peace and security of the state than the governor. He should know when breakdown of law and order is imminent in his state and he has sounded this timely alarm with justification. It is goofy for anyone to think or say the governor has lost control of the state. A state police chief should work in tandem with the chief security officer of a state in line with the law. But when he opts to take instructions and directives from Abuja and implements them against the collective interest of the state, it is a recipe for trouble.

Akwa Ibom people must stand firm and be resolute as always to fight off this dark clouds that hover in her skies. For it shall surely give way to sliver linings at dawn.