TheCable

BY JAMES UWEM
It seems the only lie in the propaganda kit of the All Progressives Congress in Akwa Ibom State is to cook up stories of assassination just for the purpose of drawing attention. It started with the former Minority Leader in the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio shortly after he defected from the Peoples Democratic Party to APC and suddenly discovered that the move was a strong political miscalculation as his people refused to follow him to the party that they felt had shortchanged Nigeria in the last three and half years.

He then came up with a lie that he narrowly escaped assassination claiming that there were gunshots aimed at killing him in Akwa Ibom when he was holing a meeting with some people. Of course, the police swiftly denied this and curiously, up till now, there is no evidence yet from the senator’s camp to debunk the police position other than the mere words of the mouth of the accuser. Up till now, no one has been arrested over the assassination bid and the senator has since kept quiet.

Again, just a few days ago, Nsima Ekere, the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission , who incidentally just got the APC ticket to contest as its governorship candidate in the state after a primary full of rancor is telling the same lie again. He said he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. He alleged that the security agents had gone away with the expended bullet allegedly fired into his room but as usual, the police have said there was nothing like an expended bullet. In spite of the police denial, he is still going about deceiving the undiscerning minds that some people, and in this case, the ruling party in the state, is after his life, because according to him, he is gaining popularity in the state, the same reason given by Akpabio for the attack on his life.
In Nigerian politics, anything can be used as a campaign weapon no matter how stupid the argument sounds. People just sit down and fabricate lies just to please their sponsors, have access to media space, albeit for a few moments and gain attention even if it is for a day.
It is not surprising though that the APC in Akwa Ibom will resort to lies and deceptions to gain attention. It is not easy to be in a party that is unpopular among the majority of the people. A typical Akwa Ibom indigene just does not want to hear anything about APC. This is a party that has impoverished Nigerians and caused untold hardship on them in the last three and half years. Besides, they don’t want anything that will alter the peace and the gains of democracy that they have been enjoying under PDP particularly with Udom Emmanuel at the saddle of affairs.
Emmanuel has been quietly charting a new dawn for the state via his industrialization drive turning the mainly civil service state to an industrial haven such that the state is now the second most preferred state after Rivers for foreign investment in Nigeria today.
So, for a party considered to be an outcast, irrelevant and unwanted, it is understandable that the members will spit out lies if not for anything but at least to remind the people and their sponsors that they are still in existence. A typical Akwa Ibom man will tell you today that the state is PDP and PDP is Akwa Ibom. The state has ever been ruled by the PDP. Though they love Akpabio their son, they are nonetheless disappointed in him that he chose the wrong party this time around for whatever reason.
In fact, the state elders in a public notice advert this week have called on security agencies and the Federal Government to take particular interest in the false stories of lies of assassination bids by the opposition in the state. Their fear is that these people may have been cooking up these lies to use them as excuse to invite the ruling party at the federal level to form a siege round the state all in the name of protecting some people, thereby disrupting the peace of the state. This fear cannot be dismissed going by the way the APC led government has been using state power to intimidate the opposition.
Perhaps, it is high time Ekere and others in the APC in the state should be reminded that nobody believed the lies and propaganda of assassination again. In fact, the good people of Akwa Ibom are tired of hearing such lies being repeated. The governor is too busy thinking of how to develop the state than waste precious times hatching assassination bids on anybody. Hence, they should think of other ways of getting attention.