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| Gov. Akpabio |
By Nse Peter
Godswill Akpabio has said that before he became the
governor of Akwa Ibom State there were moments in his life he used to eat from
dustbins.
Akpabio’s shocking revelation is contained in one of
the audio files secretly handed over, Monday, to Think Akwa Ibom! by a staff of Government House Uyo.
The governor was speaking in Eket during the
inauguration of a hotel, Sonak, owned by his older brother, Isong Akpabio a
former public affairs manager of Mobil Producing Nigeria. The exact date of the
event is unknown, but it is obvious from Akpabio’s remarks that it happened early
in the governor’s first term in office.
“I was on the street, struggling with other people
to eat, sometimes from the dustbins,” Akpabio said with great energy and
passion. The crowd could be heard from the background, laughing and cheering on
the governor. “I knew that (my brother, Isong Akpabio) having worked in Mobil
for a long time and Mobil provided the food, the car and everything for him.”
The governor’s brother, Isong, was among the
numerous aspirants within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in Akwa Ibom
State who contested alongside Godswill Akpabio for the party’s governorship
ticket in 2006.
“I felt I knew the people’s problem more than him
(Isong Akpabio) that was why I told him wait for me, let me go first as
governor,” Akpabio said, eliciting more laughter from the crowd.
“Yes, I knew the problems of the people. One of the
major problems was that even your state capital did not look like a state
capital. Another problem was that people were using your children as house-boys
and house-helps. The third problem was that when you mentioned your name
‘Ekaette’, people looked down on you.
“So, we worked on those three things; your state
capital is now the cynosure of all eyes, your children are now enjoying free
and compulsory education, and now when you say you are from Akwa Ibom, people
say, ‘oh, welcome and have a seat’”.
Governor Akpabio said he doubted if his brother,
Isong would have ‘noticed’ the problems of the people if he were to be elected
governor since he was so comfortable working in Mobil then.
He told the brother, “Now, after 2015, you can
contest (as governor). They will vote for you, after seeing what you’ve done
here”, apparently referring to the hotel that was scheduled for commissioning.
Akpabio boasted that by the time he finishes his
tenure as governor that time will be divided into two – ‘before Akpabio and
after Akpabio’.
He told the people in Eket that before he leaves
office, he was going to build ‘a beautiful Sheraton’ hotel at the location
where Qua River Hotel used to be and that his administration was soon going to
remodel the city of Eket to look like Uyo.
Akpabio has just about three months to complete his
tenure in office. There is nothing in Eket to show that he meant it when he
said he was building ‘a beautiful Sheraton’ in Eket. The oil city is far from
being a remodeled city as promised by the governor. Apart from a four-star
hotel in Ikot Ekpene which is near completion, the only five-star hotel in the
state is Ibom Le Meridien Hotel & Golf Resort built by Akpabio’s
predecessor, Victor Attah. Another five-star hotel which would have been part
of Governor Akpabio’s pet project, the Tropicana Entertainment Centre, has long
been abandoned after gulping about N120 billion.
It is unclear how Akwa Ibom people will react to the
governor’s revelation that he used to eat from dustbins while struggling in the
streets. Although Akwa Ibom receives the highest monthly allocation from the
Federation Account, sometimes as much as N27 billion in a month before oil
price tumbled down, the state remains one of the poorest in the country. Most
people in Akwa Ibom State believe that Akpabio manipulated the state economy in
order to use hunger and poverty as a political tool against Ibibio which is the
dominant ethnic group in the state.
(Listen to audio below)
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