Opinion: End Of The Road For Udom –2, By Iboro Otongaran

By Iboro Otongaran

The first serial of this prophetic utterance about the end for evildoers which was first published on Wednesday last week was well received by those with grace for discernment, but Ata Ikiddeh, my friend and son of the late Akwa Ibom icon of letters, Professor Ime Ikiddeh, not too long ago head of English at the University of Uyo, dismissed the write-up as premature. He was not alone. The tribe of unschooled propagandists misleading Udom Emmanuel (apologies, Torobong Ekpo), all of them to a man, poured scorn on the prophetic conclusion that Udom and his clan of election robbers had come to the last bus stop.

They hissed because they missed the spiritual undertone of the entire affair, and, therefore, couldn’t see what I saw. Since that article, Udom and Akpabio have faltered every step of the way. Each day they brought witnesses to the tribunals that ended up supporting the position of the APC. It needs to be said those witnesses of theirs did not turn out to be assets willingly to the APC. They melted in the furnace of the most ferocious scrutiny by the best of attorneys.
Initially, Udom had listed 9000 witnesses that would tell the tribunal that there was election and Udom was overwhelmingly elected. But after most of those on the list, some of whom were actually taken to Abuja, had watched their partners in electoral crime roasted in courtroom battle, they ducked the courthouse one by one. The most prominent deserter was Barr Emmanuel Enoidem. Thus, after just about four days of opening their defence, Udom and the PDP ran out of witnesses and had to call for adjournment of proceedings while they scouted for people among their depleting ranks who were willing to go and lie on oath and risk jail for perjury. They couldn’t find any.
Short of witnesses, they filed a fresh application with the tribunal to call additional witnesses. But like anyone acting under pressure, they made a frivolous request that was lacking in merit, and the tribunal today rejected their application and their hope of getting people that could rescue their failed defence evaporated.
They had lined up “their big guns” to counter Umana’s galaxy of stars. HE Idongesit Nkanga, former military administrator of the state; Senator Anietie Okon; Senator Ibokessien; Senator Bassey Albert, were among the so-called big guns brought from Uyo and sequestered at the Abuja Hilton at public expense, ready to “storm” the tribunal and halt the denouement of a tragedy at a moment’s notice. That did not happen. The tribunal Thursday ruled that the application brought by PDP for leave of the tribunal to bring in the listed “big guns” was incompetent, lacked merit.
But let’s assume that the tribunal granted their prayers and they brought in these “saviours,” what would have changed? Hardly anything! The explanation is simple. The bible asks, When the foundation is wrong what can the righteous do? The so-called big guns would still have had to rely on the same set of documents that are making the case of the petitioner an inevitable winner. They were thus doomed to fail before they took the first step in the direction of the courtroom.
If what happened at the tribunal today, which built on what has been happening since the respondents flagged off their defence, is not a sign of the end, Udom’s baby propagandists should tell me what else it is.
This turn of events at the tribunal was bad enough on its own. Now, when you add on the deluge of woes from the National Assembly tribunal, where the PDP national has said the party had no senatorial candidate for Akwa Ibom Northwest, a sucker punch for ex-governor Akpabio; then the gun running case with DSS and the roomful of dollars, you get the picture of an overflow of a mess, which reminds me of Wole Soyinka’s book, "Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years." "Penkelemes" was Adelabu’s unforgettable rendering of “peculiar mess,” as his level of education would allow. Udom and his people are enmeshed in a penkelemes, Akwa Ibom variety.
The unfolding reality is so unpleasant to the PDP that Udom’s battery of hatchet men is avoiding the real issues playing out in court. They have resorted to Afganistanism, a journalistic coinage for escape from unpleasant situation and refuge in irrelevancies to earth one’s senses from trauma. They don’t report proceedings again in the tribunal. All they do is invent outrage after outrage to distract attention from the catastrophes buffeting them each tribunal session on the one hand, and on the other to encourage their demoralized base with forlorn hope. What they report when they remember the proceedings in the courthouse is to say, That or this witness said there was election in Etinan, or Oron, Ikot Ekpene. In every instance of cross examination, they have not been able to show to the tribunal that there was election anywhere in Akwa Ibom. Testimony in court is not tale by moonlight.
The issues raised in this narrative, which at once cement and illustrate the theme of the initial article entitled, “End of the Road for Udom,” justify this sequel. It has helped me to sketch in more perspectives and articulate some of the new developments that will furnish the building blocks for a new society to be raised on the ashes of the cesspit, the rot, the putrefaction of the last eight years.
It has also helped me again to look at tomorrow. In doing so, I see that the Egyptians plaguing you now, soon you may see them no more. Some of them may do time in prison for gun running and for election crimes. Those who enjoyed immunity yesterday no longer do so; those who are hiding under immunity now will soon be ordinary men and will answer for their past.