The Niger Delta Political Awareness Coalition has slammed the decision of Godswill Akpabio, minister of Niger Delta, to abandon the rerun for the Akwa Ibom Senate seat as opportunistic and cowardly.
In a press statement signed by Imeobong Idongesit, its chairman, the group said: “we find the decision of Senator Godswill Akpabio not to recontest the rerun election in what he has repeatedly said is his stronghold as a disservice to his party and a clear indication of his negligible electoral value to any party. Having said he was popular and accepted and having fought desperately to reverse the victory of the PDP candidate Dr Ekpenyong through the courts and failed, the minister has now found that he cannot indeed win a free and fair election in Akwa Ibom State and has instead elected to hold on to the honeypot he has been gifted in the NDDC.” The group said the minister was more interested in cornering the resources of the NDDC and repeated its call, and those of other groups, to move the NDDC back to the presidency, where it was until recently.
Akpabio had said in a statement that he was no longer interested in the contest because he was on an assignment at the Niger Delta ministry where he is the minister. According to the controversial minister, “I have taken into consideration the critical national assignment bestowed on me by Mr. President which will be of immense importance to Nigerians and in particular the indigenes of the Niger Delta region and have resolved to remain as a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to further discharge my contributions and services to our great fatherland.
“It is on the premise of the foregoing and particularly in line with the provisions of Section 35 of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended) that I want to formally and voluntarily withdraw my candidature as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the forthcoming Court ordered Re-run Election for the Akwa lbom North-West Senatorial District.”
Akpabio has been embroiled in a power struggle with the Senate over the manner in which the NDDC is managed. He had appointed an interim management committee just at the point that the Senate was screening nominees for the board sent by President Buhari. Indigenes and groups in the Niger Delta region have lampooned the minister over his distortion of the NDDC succession process and his overbearing hold on the intervention agency. Some have alleged that Akpabio is more interested in contract sharing and covering his tracks when the forensic audit ordered by the President is carried out. As a consequence of the minister’s decision to retain the interim management committee the Senate has refused to consider the NDDC budget, asking that the board be sworn in to defend the budget. In response, the interim management committee and the ministry has engaged the Senate in what an observer labelled as a ‘campaign of calumny.’
Akpabio’s decision to hold on to the ministry would provide more salvos for those pushing these narratives.
