-Says Akpabio Is A Serial Liar
-Admits Pat Akpabio’s Allegations Against Senate President True
A foremost socio-political group in Akwa Ibom State, Ibom Akwa Ibom (IAI), has countered a recent false claim by the President of the Nigerian Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio on the 2019 Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District election.
Speaking during the screening and confirmation of Prof Joash Amupitan as INEC Chairman by the Senate on Thursday, October 16, Senator Akpabio claimed that he was the victim, not the beneficiary, of the 2019 election fraud in the Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial election.
“I was cheated in 2019 election,” Senator Akpabio said during plenary on Thursday while speaking on the plan to amend Nigeria’s election laws. “They prosecuted the wrong person. The same INEC resident electoral commissioner (Mr Mike Igini), working with some cohorts, changed the story and said the man was trying to assist Senator Godswill Akpabio. If the man was trying to assist Senator Godswill Akpabio, how come they burnt my votes in my local government? How come I was not announced as the winner?” he said.
Reacting to Akpabio’s claim, IAI, in an open letter signed by its Secretary General, Comrade Solomon Akpan-obong, described Akpabio as a serial liar, recalling that the the returning officer of the district, Prof Peter Ogban was found guilty of falsifying election to favour Mr Akpabio and convicted to prison.
“The case of electoral fraud in the 2019 Ikot Ekepene Senatorial District election was one that got a nationwide attention because of the personalities involved and therefore the facts were well-documented and publicized. For instance, various credible media outfits that keenly followed the case as it progressed in the court, made several reports on the issue till the conviction of the returning office, Prof Peter Ogban, for rigging the 2019 senatorial election for Mr Akpabio, who was seeking a second term.
“According to a report on one of Nigeria’s most credible news medium. Premium TIMES, in March 2021, a State High Court in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom, found Mr Ogban, a professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar, and a returning officer in the district election, guilty of fraudulent manipulation of election results, publishing and announcing of false results in two local government areas – Oruk Anam and Etim Ekpo.
“He was prosecuted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The report further revealed that the court sentenced Prof Ogban to three years’ imprisonment. But shortly after the court jailed Mr Ogban, Mr Akpabio, who was then minister of Niger Delta Affairs, disowned the professor and said the judgement vindicated him (Akpabio),” the group stated.
The group further noted that Akpabio’s current travails by the hands of his sister inlaw, Mrs Pat Akpabio, has further revealed who the Senate President truly is, admitting that all the allegations made against Akpabio by Mrs Pat are true.
Full Press Statement bellow:
2019 IKOT EKEPENE SENATORIAL DISTRICT ELECTION: EXPOSING GODSWILL AKPABIO’S BAREFACED LIE IN THE SENATE
BACKGROUND
Millions of Nigerians within and outside the country were taken aback during the screening and confirmation of Prof Joash Amupitan as INEC Chairman by the Senate on Thursday, October 16, when the President of the Nigerian Senate, Distinguished Senator Godswill Akpabio, during his remarks, told a barefaced and an outrageous lie that he was the victim, not the beneficiary, of the 2019 election fraud in the Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial election.
“I was cheated in 2019 election,” Senator Akpabio said during plenary on Thursday while speaking on the plan to amend Nigeria’s election laws. “They prosecuted the wrong person. The same INEC resident electoral commissioner (Mr Mike Igini), working with some cohorts, changed the story and said the man was trying to assist Senator Godswill Akpabio. If the man was trying to assist Senator Godswill Akpabio, how come they burnt my votes in my local government? How come I was not announced as the winner?” he said.
THE FACTS AS RECORDED
The case of electoral fraud in the 2019 Ikot Ekepene Senatorial District election was one that got a nationwide attention because of the personalities involved and therefore the facts were well-documented and publicized. For instance, various credible media outfits that keenly followed the case as it progressed in the court, made several reports on the issue till the conviction of the returning office, Prof Peter Ogban, for rigging the 2019 senatorial election for Mr Akpabio, who was seeking a second term.
According to a report on one of Nigeria’s most credible news medium. Premium TIMES, in March 2021, a State High Court in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom, found Mr Ogban, a professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar, and a returning officer in the district election, guilty of fraudulent manipulation of election results, publishing and announcing of false results in two local government areas – Oruk Anam and Etim Ekpo. He was prosecuted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The report further revealed that the court sentenced Prof Ogban to three years’ imprisonment. But shortly after the court jailed Mr Ogban, Mr Akpabio, who was then minister of Niger Delta Affairs, disowned the professor and said the judgement vindicated him (Akpabio).
“He (Akpabio) is vindicated that the perpetrators of the electoral fraud are being brought to justice; at last, the chickens are coming home to roost,” Mr Akpabio’s spokesperson, Anietie Ekong, had said in a statement in Abuja.
We recall that Senator Akpabio said at the time that the jailed professor joined then-INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Akwa Ibom State, Mike Igini, to deny him victory in the election. “For the avoidance of doubt Ogban never announced Akpabio as the winner of any election; instead, he cancelled his lawful votes and announced his opponent as the winner of the manipulated election. “It is the height of mischief for anyone to say that a man who arbitrarily cancelled lawfully collated votes of the APC and announced PDP winner of the election was working for Akpabio. In due time, we believe all the conspirators will be brought to justice as Ogban, either through the judiciary or divine intervention,” Mr Akpabio said.
Several reports on the Prof Ogban trial reveal revealed that before his conviction and sentencing, Mr Ogban, in one of the court sessions, told the court how the district election results were falsified in Oruk Anam and Etim Ekpo local government areas to give the APC an unfair advantage over its main rival, the PDP. For instance, some 5,000 fake votes were added to the APC’s score in Oruk Anam in the election. However, two INEC witnesses – John Enoidem and Itemobong Ekaidem – contradicted the professor’s claim. The witnesses, university lecturers and collation officers in the two local government areas, told the court that what Mr Ogban entered as scores for APC and PDP were not what they presented to him.
Here is how the Guardian newspaper captured the court session where the two INEC witnesses were cross-examined: “In their testimonies, they said the results they collated at the council level, which were presented to Ogban, differed from the results he finally declared.
“For the Oruk Anam Council result, Enoidem noted that while his result showed that the APC scored 10,534 votes and the PDP 25,123 votes, the accused declared that the APC polled 15,534, while PDP got 20,123 votes. He, thereby, reduced PDP’s votes by 5,000 and increased APC score by the same number of ballots. Ekaidem added that while the results for Etim Ekpo Council showed that APC scored 2,671 votes and PDP got 6,603, the result Ogban finally declared showed that APC scored 5,671 votes compared to PDP’s 3,306, amounting to a difference of 3,000 in favour of the former.”
Mr Ogban’s defence that the fraudulent votes he entered for Mr Akpabio in the election were “read out” to him would later attract a rebuke from the Court of Appeal, Calabar, on 30 April. “The rank of university professor is not one easily attainable and is certainly not a rank attained by fools,” the Court of Appeal said in its judgement affirming the 25 March 2021 conviction and three years’ imprisonment of the professor by the Akwa Ibom State High Court.
Before the Akwa Ibom High Court sentenced him, Mr Ogban pleaded for mercy. He told the judge he had learnt his lesson. “When next I am given a responsibility, I will be extra careful. All that glitters is not gold. Everyone is a persona. The way they look is not the way they are. I will be very careful in dealing with people,” he had said before the court.
The 2019 election was Mr Akpabio’s toughest political battle to date – he lost his bid to return to the Senate, failed to unseat his successor, Governor Udom Emmanuel, with whom he fell out, failed to get the APC to win a single seat at the National Assembly, and could not get President Muhammadu Buhari to win in Akwa Ibom.
During the district election, Mr Akpabio’s challenger, a former deputy governor of Akwa Ibom, Chris Ekpenyong of the PDP, was leading with a wide margin, until the APC began to scramble for “suspicious” votes, which they could use to change the election course. INEC, at some point, suspended the announcement of the election results in Essien Udim Local Government Area, where Mr Akpabio hails from.
AKPABIO IS A SERIAL LIAR
This would not be the first time that Chief Godswill Akpabio has been caught in a web of lies. The man as we all know, is a serial liar. His current tribulation orchestrated by his own relative and sister in-law, Mrs Pat Akpabio, has further revealed the heinous crimes that Akpabio has committed against God and humanity since the days of his reign as governor of the state. From kidnapping, political assassinations, political violence and bloodletting, electoral fraud, money laundering, etc. Mrs Pat Akpabio has stripped Godswill Akpabio stack naked for the whole world to see and no amount of damage control by the hungry elders, poor women, unemployed youths, and others, will change this truth that has come to reality.
Signed:
Otuekong Udeme Umoh
Coordinator
