Members of the All Progressives Congress in Akwa Ibom state have frowned at
the attempt by the national leaders of the party to crown former senate
minority leader, senator Godswill Akpabio, as the state leader of the party.
Prince Emmanuel Sam, a stalwart of the APC, on Thursday, said, they can not
accept Akpabio as their leader.
“We can not be led by a man who was brutal to us. We have not forgotten
that his brutality costs the lives of some members of the defunct ACN who
dissolved into what is called APC today. He can never lead us. We will
resist it”.
Sam was among members of the party who reacted to Akpabio’s repeated
declaration of himself as leader of the party and his wife, Ekaette Unoma,
as “mother of APC” in Akwa Ibom state during his reception rally in Ikot
Ekpene.
Akpabio was officially received into the APC by the National leader of the
party, Alhaji Ahmed Bola Tinubu, and the party’s national chairman, Comrade
Adams Oshiomhole, on Wednesday 8th August.
The former Governor repeatedly used the phrase, “under my leadership in the
party” in a remark he made extemporaneously to confirm his acceptance of
membership of the party.
Members of the party believe that Akpabio’s repeated announcement of
himself as leader of the party cowed the national chairman of the party
into calling Akpabio the leader of the party without a second thought.
Also, Obong Mike Edem, a chieftain of the APC from Itu said right thinking
persons in the party can not indulge Akpabio to superintend over them.
He explained that it will be a broad self contradiction for Akpabio who
left the PDP because a new entrant was rewarded over those who stood by the
PDP in her trying times, to want to be rewarded over those who laboured and
built the APC over the years.
“He can not be our leader. He will be contradicting himself, because he can
not reject a skewed reward system which favours newcomers in his former
party, yet wants to be rewarded in APC through similar skewed arrangement”.
Edem insisted that Akpabio should not be given preference over senator
Nelson Effiong, another APC senator from the state who joined the APC
earlier or the 2015 governorship candidate of the state who have been
around longer than Akpabio.
“Currently, Akpabio does not have any leadership position which makes him
superior to the other senator. When he resigned his position as senate
minority leader, he became but an ordinary senator. There are other people
in the party who have been senators before, who are more knowledgeable in
party leadership and administration than Akpabio”.
The party stalwart said reasonable members of the party will not work with
Akpabio.
“We will not work with Akpabio. He persecuted us out of the PDP. When some
of us left, Akpabio led the PDP to doom. Now, PDP is no more, he is coming
to destroy the APC in the pretext of coming to build”.
He insisted that the APC will fail just as her main opposition, the PDP,
if the party leadership takes to celebrating and rewarding newcomers over
old members who have kept faith with the party over the years.
Also, a group, Akwa Ibom Progressives Watch says the APC will be more
disunited under Akpabio if he is made leader of the party in the state as
rumoured.
The group at a press conference addressed by her chairman, Mr. Innocent
Sylvanus, on Thursday, warned that many people who left the PDP to the APC
because of Akpabio’s impunity can not work again with Akpabio.
“It will be a disaster to allow Akpabio lead the party. We want the
national leader and chairman of the party to know this”.
“We left PDP because of the kind of impunity Akpabio dished out to us.
There is no guarantee that he has changed, so he will bring on the same
kind of impunity he used which killed his former party”, Sylvanus added.
