Once in a while an interesting character comes along in Nigerian politics and leaves behind something odious or noble to remember him by. I remember Dr Kinglsley Mbadiwe for his bombast, whose grandiloquent language provided much needed relief when the going got tough politically, and everything looked grey and grave.
The latest of such characters in contemporary politics from the South-south is the current Senate Minority Leader, Chief Godswill Akpabio, ex-governor of Akwa Ibom State. Akpabio has left his imprint on Nigerian politics. He is easily remembered for his uncontrollable itch to donate and give away state funds while he served as governor of his state even in the face of crying needs of his people. He was so generous with state resources, particularly to non-Akwa Ibom indigenes, that he earned the nickname of Governor Donatus.
But he is just as noted, if not more so, for some of his political theories, often expressed in catch phrases, one of which is, “What money cannot do more money can do.” He used this theory of the power of money to telling effect in the last general elections and the legal disputations that followed. But today, 18 December in the year of our Lord…Akpabio’s money failed, reminding me of the scriptures. In Gen. 47:15 (KJV), the bible states: “And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph…”
As it was with the Egyptians, money failed in the Akpabio Kingdom and they went knocking on doors from Lagos to Abuja and back, looking for a way out. They went knocking on doors because “more money had failed to do what money cannot do.”
They had met a team of incorruptible justices, and their money failed to move the custodians of justice. They, the Akpabio clan, with Udom in tow, went round the homes of APC bigwigs, begging. But it was futile effort, all. They couldn’t as much as secure an ordinary meeting. The best they got was a perfunctory handshake in one instance. On one or two occasions their frustrations surged to overflowing and the Executive PA in office sans power snarled at a hapless but diligent worker in the office of an APC leader. It was frustration of historic magnitude; failure of biblical proportion.
That is the story, in a nutshell, of the historic win today for Umana Okon Umana, a win not just for Umana but more poignantly for the long abused people of Akwa Ibom and their party, the APC.
It is the beginning of the crash of a Kingdom of Fraud. After that, Udomgate a la Dasukigate.
