By Otobong SAMPSON
The time was some minutes past midnight when my phone beeped, indicating a call. That was few days before the September 11, 2018, APC rally in Eket. It was one of those nights I was yet to be asleep. A half-emptied glass of cognac doing just enough to keep my eyes fixed to the laptop and staring appealingly at me.
‘O’l boy, wia you dey? Come Ibom hotel make we dey small,’ he pealed from the other end as I swiped my phone’s answer button and offered a courteous ‘hello sir’. We hadn’t spoken in a while. The last time there was an attempt was back in July, on my birthday. On that day, he had offered to give me a wife for a birthday present. A top APC chieftain, on his good days, he is a man capable of pleasurable mischiefs.
As I independently followed the APC rally mainly through postings on the social media, my conversation that night with the APC top shot held true. He had correctly predicted the pattern of the rally, the primary intent of its organizers and the immediate outcomes.
In the dead of the night, my host had revealed in parts:
‘Nsima will play the one term card at the rally. That’s the key plot. It would be a dummy sold but whichever way, it is dangerous to trust Nsima. Those of us in APC from Uyo Senatorial District are particularly wary of him considering his character and the past.
‘Do you think a man like Nsima will voluntarily step out in 2023? Even if it wasn’t Nsima, see, it is practically impossible to get that from a Nigerian politician…’
So which way forward? I interrupted. He continued:
‘Many of our party men from Uyo (USD) are just staying on his queue primarily for ‘obvious reasons’ and secondly because of political identity. Our interests is more about 2023. The office of governor must revolve back to our district after the next four years beginning from 2019. If there’s going to be a disruption, then Uyo (USD) will struggle for it next year.
‘There are key APC players from Oro who are towing this path too but behind the scene. Analytically, Nsima’s governorship can’t give the Oro people a deputy. The best they can get is an SSG and there’s one already with Udom (Udom Emmanuel).
‘They understand that the sooner the governorship goes back to Uyo (USD), the quicker their chances of getting a nod for Hilltop Mansion (Akwa Ibom Government House) irrespective of party. Besides that, a governor from Uyo Senatorial District from any party will certainly have a deputy from Oro.
‘Nsima can run but truthfully, he will be running to nowhere…’, my host had declared with firm conviction.
The declaration by Nsima Ekere, MD of NDDC that he will do a single term of four years means he has formally agreed to run for the office of governor next year. But first, he will have to overcome the nomination obstacle in his party.
His single term promise has understandably met with snide remarks across the state. Many Akwa Ibom people have cast scorn upon his ONE tenure vow. Several others have mocked. The reactions have been almost unanimously derisive. No one is trusting the NDDC guy. No one is willing to. Not even those pushing forward his candidacy birthed from the same political loin. There are just enough doubts on that. I would be surprised if Ekere himself believed his promise to do a single term.
There is thick uneasiness beneath the confidence expressed by Mr. Ekere before the cameras. His subalterns do not seem to notice it. Maybe they are pretending not to. First to be solved remains the Udoedehe problem. Udoedehe has always been a problem to be solved. He is a top aspirant for the ticket of APC. Both he and Ekere are mutual trouble to themselves and major hurdle for each other.
On a scale, Ekere’s advantages weigh slightly higher. Majority in the party’s hierarchy in the state publicly identify with his aspiration. This has happened clearly because of his deep, or rather bottomless vault by reason of the public office he currently occupies. It is more about the honey that drips from the Commission’s beehive. It isn’t due to the charm of his character nor the force of his personality. For if it were of any or both, then his main rival has a better claim to both.
For a man who has been generously accused of being closefisted and niggardly to effortlessly raise crowds of volunteers and men to undertake genuine sacrifices of their finances, time and intellect – time after time – for his serial ambition must be truly phenomenal.
Severely bruised in some of his battles, victorious in others, Udo has retained a not surprising utility as a dense figure network of informal connections, acknowledged hugely in the state by opposition elements seeking a springboard to power. He is a phenomenon that can evolve more but has struggled to – because he has failed to either construct himself from a definite blueprint or mould himself into a recognizable shape.
In x-raying Ekere’s latest governorship bid and his promise, it is my aim to restore him from his canonized state into a man of flesh and blood with a past that begs for clarifications and a today that seeks deep explanations.
I do not pretend that this will be an easy task, considering that he has been, for the sake of 2019 transformed and dressed almost beyond recognition by the concerted efforts of idolatrous promoters and patronizing writers….[1]
(To be continued)
*Otobong Sampson is a native of Mkpat Enin in Akwa Ibom State*
