By Nse Peter
There was dead silence in Akwa Ibom State throughout the
whole of Sunday, a day after Gov. Godswill Akpabio unleashed thugs to molest,
maim and killed scores of Akwa Ibom people in order to force his protégé, Mr.
Udom Emmanuel on the people as the next governor of the state. Even PDP members
were too scared to celebrate the so-called ‘victory’. Of course they needed to
be afraid because so much blood had been used to water the streets for Akpabio
and Udom Emmanuel.
But for Godwill Akpabio, a man whose conscience has long
been dead and has no respect for human life, there was nothing to worry about,
after all supporters of APC were forewarned to stay off the streets on Election
Day. And in order to make it look as if the election results were a reflection
of the people’s wish, Akpabio quickly released huge money for his ‘boys’ to
rent a sizeable crowd for a stage-managed celebration, Monday, along Wellington
Bassey Way, about 200 metres away from the Government House, Uyo. N1Billion, we
learnt, was budgeted for the ‘victory’ march. Each of the young men and women
that participated received N3k, while the middle men as usual went away with
big money.
The governor we learnt didn’t allow the rented crowd to go
past Wellington Bassey Way to avoid being attacked by angry residents.
Television cameras were quickly brought in to capture the ‘celebration’
for the world to see. We can’t tell if Akpabio has so far succeeded in getting
the world to see his stage-managed celebration or if the world is seeing the
pictures of precious lives that have been so wasted in the streets of Uyo
because of Akpabio’s lust for power.
If you take a closer look at the faces of the youth in that
their ‘celebration’ photo, one thing that is striking is that none of the
persons in that photo wore a smile on their faces. Sure, they couldn’t smile,
because Akpabio killed their joy in the morning. Once again, a great evil has
been unleashed on the land.
But there is hope for the people. The much expected change
is coming. Akwa Ibom, don’t give up!
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