“History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man. ” – Percy Busshe Shelley
BY Substance Udo-nature
Can history repeat itself? Does history, political history to be exact, have anything to do with human genetics? If your answer to either or both questions is yes, then the former two-term Governor of Akwa Ibom State and the immediate past Senate Minority Leader, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio, is standing one leg on a pin-point edge of reinvention, courtesy of “ACMOUD” – Accidental-Character-Metamorphosis- of- Uncertain-Destination, a backronym I own the copyright.
Those who said Sen. Akpabio has committed any crime by his defection to APC are either not conversant with the liberal provisions of the Nigerian Constitution or are ignorant of the antics of politicians when there is something at stake. In as much as his grandstand justifications for defecting were no less ordinary than the common personal excuses offered by those in his shoes, I take exception to the speculative reasons peddled for Sen. Akpabio’s earth-quaking decampment from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a party that has turned him from clay into a 12-carat gold, to the All Progressive Congress (APC), that may have hypnotized him with promises of 1000 castles in Paradise.
This article therefore is not a criticism of Akapbio’s freedom of choice and association or an autopsy on dead conclusions, but a bounden duty I owe history in this phenomenon of intriguing propensities. It is not to evoke atavistic feelings but to dignify history. I therefore seek your collaboration to launch this article as a brief excursion into History and the contingencies we have found ourselves in Akwa Ibom’s present and unfolding socio-political scenario.
Apart from the fact that his clout and crowd have been divided by the latest manifestations, and because he may be as politically right as he maybe morally questionable by his decamping, Chief Godswill Akpabio remains my man for the personal reasons he has always been my man, one of which is the megawatts of thermal electricity his words and action can generate anytime, anywhere.
Hence, whether Akapbio’s decision to decamp was for the interest of the South/South as a region, Akwa Ibom as a State, Ikot Ekpene as a Senatorial District, or for his fears and personal ambitions, we must agree that it is uncharacteristic of the Akapbio we all know to dig a hole he has not seen a tail of something; although sometimes, burning their candles from both ends, political desperadoes do undertake the dangerous venture of digging holes because they were tickled to believe down there lies a sleeping elephant. That means I am not concerned about Akpabio’s personal choices but the unpredictable general consequences.
Senator Akpabio’s crossfire decampment was both historic and historical. It was historic because unlike every other defection, it came with a momentum that shattered contemporary formulas in Nigeria and Akwa Ibom political folklore. It was historical because the purported incentives attached to the bargains between him and APC that may have secured Akapbio’s convictions and concessions have the tendency to reinvent the circumstances that led to Akpabio’s late uncle, Sir. Ibanga Udo Akpabio’s political triumphs and suicidal summersaults.
Although biased national history and our stereotypic lack of interest and support for committed documentation has consigned great names and lofty exploits of Akwa Ibom people in general to inconspicuous corners in the back page of Nigeria’s Chronicle, Sir. Ibanga Udo Akpabio remains a resonating voice amongst the intelligentsia and highly revered political Bishops to have ever been born into Akwa Ibom State and Nigeria.
Sir. Ibanga Udo Akpabio was from the old Ikot Ekpene Province, one of the pioneer founders of the Ibibio State Union (ISU) in 1927. He belonged in the first batch of six Akwa Ibom sons sponsored on scholarship by ISU on August 3, 1938, where he alone opted for Education. His return from England with port-folio-ful of intimidating credential and immediate explorative involvement in local and regional politics paid off when he joined the NCNC and sooner became Member of the Eastern Regional House of Assembly of 1951 and upwards, and later, Minister of Education in Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s-driven government.
The Nigerian Eastern Regional House of Assembly was irredeemably ethnocentric and a melting pot of tribalism for sectional dominion and sustainable selfish advantages, with the minorities as guinea pigs and victims of incomprehensible assault. Even then, ethnic bigotry found fierce opposition in the unity and ideological fortifications of the Ibibio State Union, a trail-blazing pan-Ibibio socio-political organization with pioneering and breakthrough antecedents that were adorable novelties to other regions of the country, particularly on issues of transcontinental scholarship and integrated growth. The Igbos would first envy, then love to hate the promising Ibibios (as all from the Calabar Province were then generally identified).
But in the progression of time and turn of events, extant sources reveal that the fluorescent lights of unity among the Ibibios radiated by ISU gradually or rapidly began to wane by the dictation of acrimonious politics and irresistible personal ambitions. Segregationist politics against the minorities had already inspired the formation of National Independence Party by Prof. Eyo Ita, the Leader of Government of the Eastern Region (1951 -1953), an office that made Azikiwe, Leader of the NCNC and who eventually succeeded Eyo Ita, and his Igbo brethren very uncomfortable. Therefore, in prospection of the 1959 General Elections, Azikiwe first galvanized a plot that he used Mr. Effiong Okon Eyo (EyoUyo) to move a motion that led to the successful impeachment of Prof. Eyo Ita, an Ibibio man.
Next, having to his greatest surprise secured their conspiracies, Eyo Ita and Ibanga Udo Akpabio were deployed to form the Annang Welfare Union (AWU), which in all intent was a euphemism for NCNC and a sledgehammer to further split the Ibibios politically and territorially. A source reports thus, “The NCNC party concentrated its forces on causing the fragmentation of Ibibio-land by instituting schism between the Annang and Ibibio people.”
Part of the delicate bargains of the fratricidal deal was that should Ibanga Udo Akpabio succeed in disintegrating and capturing the Ibibios for NCNC, he will become Premier of the Eastern Region, plus other fringe benefits. As plotted and expected, the results of the massively rigged election favoured the NCNC. But what become of the negotiated bargains? Instead of Ibanga Udo Akapbio, Azikiwe promptly allotted the office of the Premier of Eastern Region to his kinsman, Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara, the immediate past Minister of Health.
It followed that Azikiwe would however later give the consolation price of Minister of Education to Sir. Akpabio. Disappointed with the debilitating outcome, Sir Akpabio had no comfortable and trusted option in his belated self-recovery than to return shamelessly to the same Ibibio State Union that he betrayed. The synopsis of this retrospection, which supplies the current to this article, is that, just because of money and personal ambitions in the shrine of politics that Asikiwe was a Chief Priest, Ibanga Udo Akpabio sold his heart and people to outsiders.
This brings into currency Sen. Akpabio’s recent ambitious, inter-ethnic and inter-party manipulations. With recurrent manifestations, one quick idiom that readily crosses the mind is “chip of the old block”. How are we sure Sen. Akpabio may not in his serendipity have stumbled upon an extant script left behind by his late uncle, upon which he has taken time to study and is now acting, complacent or careless about the rueful liabilities and nemeses of the politically tragic epilogue? There is also a linking facet of the game of circumvention telling how a typical Annang-stereotype conspiracy with Joseph Wayas (as then Senate President) was a cork in the wheels to Dr. Clement Isong’s reelection as Governor of Cross River State in 1983.
Contemporary Nigerian situation has turned Sen. Akpabio into a charismatic political hybrid of dare and befuddling eccentricities, able to adopt and adapt in order to permanently dominate and always conquer with a false sense of invincibility. Akpabio appears to have a secret code or cryptic formula to manipulate the genetics of politics and enforce artificial mutations in the bloodstream with classical particulars of a genius.
Genetics is broadly defined as the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in living organisms. However, the exponential Mendelian Law of Inheritance of the 1970s clinically sliced genetics into a three-fold string: The Law of dominance; The Law of Segregation, and the Law of Independent Assortment. The cumulative summary of this biological trinity simply refers to the “apparent blending of inherited traits in the overall appearance of the progeny – multi-gene interactions”. Literarily, it is the ability of parents’ genes to mutate or transfer their traits, good or bad, to successive generations.
By the law of dominance, Sen. Akpabio broke the original zoning template of a single term for Ikot Ekpene and Eket Senatorial Districts and went ahead to govern the State for 8 straight uninterrupted years. By the Law of Segregation, he championed and nourished political tribalism in the State that ensured his tribe took the lion’s share of everything. By the law of Independent Assortment, he was able to singlehandedly produced Gov. Udom Emmanuel in 2015, who now may be his albatross and nemeses. And when Sen. Akpabio uncommonly emerged Senate Minority Leader, the timid logic that he was a first-timer did not hold a drop of water.
Because of intoxicating politics of consuming personal ambition, Sir. banga Udo Akpabio became a traitor to the cause of Ibibio unity and collective political destiny. Will his progeny, Sen. Godswill Obot Akpabio, reinvent history with his adulterous political alliances? What really happens when history repeats itself? To Karl Marx of the annihilated Soviet Union political tradition, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”. I may have to come back!
