Once upon a time, Godswill Akpabio, Governor of Akwa Ibom State, ate like a vulture. But unlike the eater of entrails, Akpabio never feasted on decomposing corpses; rather he had an appetite for actual human food thrown into the dustbin. Thus was the nature of his resemblance to a vulture; Akpabio nurtured no taste for corpses; he simply scavenged leftovers from the bin.The governor made the interesting declaration in an audio clip published exclusively by the blog, “Think Akwa Ibom!” Speaking in native Eket dialect, Akpabio made the disclosure during the inauguration of a hotel, Sonak, owned by his older brother, Isong Akpabio, a former public affairs manager of Mobil Producing Nigeria. The exact date of the event is unknown, but it is obvious from the governor’s remarks that it happened early in the governor’s first term in office.
“I was on the street, struggling with other people to eat, sometimes from the dustbins,” Akpabio said in the clip.
The crowd could be heard in the background, laughing and cheering on the governor. “I knew that (my brother, Isong Akpabio) having worked in Mobil for a long time and Mobil provided the food, the car and everything for him.”
The governor’s brother, Isong, was among the numerous aspirants within the ruling People’s Democratic Party in Akwa Ibom State who contested alongside Godswill Akpabio for the party’s governorship ticket in 2006. However, Governor Akpabio said he doubted if his brother, Isong would have ‘noticed’ the problems of the people if he were to be elected governor since he was so comfortable working in Mobil then.
He told the brother, “Now, after 2015, you can contest (as governor). They will vote for you, after seeing what you’ve done here”, apparently referring to the hotel that was being commissioned at the event. Akpabio said that by the time he completes his tenure as governor, the governance era in Akwa Ibom would be partitioned into two – ‘before Akpabio and after Akpabio.’
He told the people that before he leaves office, he would build ‘a beautiful Sheraton’ hotel at the location where Qua River Hotel used to be and that his administration will remodel the city of Eket to look like Uyo. It is however, surprising to note that Akpabio has just about three months to complete his tenure in office and he is yet to fulfill any of the promises he made at that event. Eket is yet to be remodelled and there is no ‘beautiful Sheraton’ in sight.
Today, the people of Akwa Ibom will definitely find it difficult to relate the current Akpabio with the one that allegedly scavenged food from the dump; Governor Akpabio is reputed for spending his state funds as if it is his personal wealth. In March 2013, the governor acquired expensive exotic bullet-proof sprinter luxury vans from US-based Texas Armoring Corporation. The vans were customized to his specifications. That happened five days after he donated two brand new Toyota SUVs to newly-wed Nigerian musician, Tuface Idibia and Annie, his wife.
He also bankrolled an all-expense paid trip for 29 delegates from the State to attend the white wedding of the couple in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates on March 23, 2013.
That same month, he unilaterally donated N230 million on behalf of the then newly-formed PDP Governors Forum to President Goodluck Jonathan’s hometown church. It later turned out that many of the governors did not give him their nods to make any donation on their behalf.
He took his profligacy to a new high later that month by openly donating N1million lunch money to party chairmen from states in the South-South geopolitical zone who had converged on Port Harcourt for a party reconciliation session.
In March 2012, three staff of the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCo) attached to Arik Airlines were arrested for allegedly stealing N2 million from the luggage of a Government House, Uyo, protocol staff at Ibom International Airport.
At a forum held in honour of the movie industry in Nigeria on March 3, 2013, Akpabio promised to release an unsolicited N50million for a so-called ‘Goodluck Jonathan Prize’ award for best performers in the film industry. Although Akwa Ibom receives the highest monthly allocation from the federation account, sometimes as much as N27 billion a month, before the crash in oil price, the state remains one of the poorest in the country. Citizenry of the State claim that beyond his facade, poverty and unemployment rate in the state remain among the highest in the country.
Local contractors are routinely ignored for multinationals in the execution of infrastructural projects, and residents complain of huge capital flights from the state.
The largest employer of labour in the state remains the civil service which is already overstaffed.
Most state-owned industries have closed shop and the State is yet to attract substantial investment despite Governor Akpabio’s incessant overseas trips in search of foreign investors.
