ONE Thing About A’Ibom APC Campaign
By UbongAbasi Ise
Whenever the APC campaign train moves, it moves like tidal wave.
It clutters the routes to its destinations, reverberating all the way. The
waving brooms along the roadsides are always there to send both covert and overt
messages that ultimately explain that the APC campaign movement is not just a canvass
for votes but a widespread revolutionary wave seeking to end the hostile order
and status quo in Akwa Ibom State.
Today APC in Akwa Ibom is
waxing stronger, and it appears more as a movement of the mass of the people
against the government of Governor Udom Emmanuel and the PDP. The APC movement
in the state is accentuating once more that there is a common thread that runs
in human history, which is all about people rising against systems unfavorable
to their aspiration and collective societal progress. Let’s not be economical
with the truth here: people that are frustrated and disappointed by the present
Akwa Ibom state government are the majority, and they are with the APC today.
It is at the
APC campaign rallies that one would see 6,000 primary schools cooks coming out
to tell the world some sorrowful story of how the PDP exasperate them by
cornering their entitlements graciously provided by the federal government. At
APC campaign venue, the 5,000 sacked teachers would lament how their jobs were
seized by the PDP government under Mr. Udom Emmanuel; the students would bemoan
non-payment of bursaries since the birth of the incumbent state government in
2015; even the first cousin to the
governor would come out to express frustration over Udom Emmanuel’s neglect,
and empty promises to family members. The commercial motorists are not left out
- over 15,000 of them would come out complain how they are frustrated by the
PDP government.
Stories of
deprivations can go on and on. Some may be alarmed that the present state
government has not paid civil servants promotion arrears since its inception in
2015. Half-truths and outright lies advanced by the incumbent power continue to
colour the issues of gratuities and pensions payment. And the graduate youths
keep on groaning under the heavy burden of unemployment because the heaviest
load is having nothing to carry. Of course it seems there is no hope that the
PDP government would cure the social malaise it inflicted on the entire state. This
is why all the burdens of the aggrieved persons in the state are laid before this
one man, Obong Nsima Ekere.
Udom
Emmanuel’s government has been able to use the draperies of media to cover the
nakedness of its industrialization miscarriage. People didn’t know that the
owner of the so-called Fertilizer blending plant, Greenwell, is Mr. Johnson Udo;
nobody knew that Ini Utuk is the owner of Agricon Rice Mill in Ini local
government area, and not the state government’s investment. Everything about the
phantom factories that exist under Udom’s government seems blanketed by the
media until prominent Akwa Ibomites come out to open the can of worm at the
campaign grounds.
When people
become tired of the deceits, impunities and the maladroitness of their
government, they rise up massively with rage to oust it and bring the needed
changes and reforms. We have heard about French revolution in the 19th
century; the Bolshevik revolution of 1917; Chinese revolution of the 1949; the
Arab Spring of 2011 and several others movements that were both successful and
unsuccessful. In Nigeria, there was more legitimate and acceptable movement
which was known by some commentators as the Broom Revolution forged through
ballot that ended up terminating the 16-year reign of the PDP at the federal
tier. It is likely that this feat would be replicated in Akwa Ibom State which is
about 20 years old under the rulership of the PDP, and people feels it is the
time to embrace the change, or never.
One thing
about the APC campaign rally is
that people are coming out on their own to support the cause of change without
inducements. It is all about passion and individual sacrifice. And true
revolutionaries are always energized by their motivating ideologies, and not necessarily
by financial incentives. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible for the Moa
Tse Dong’s riff-raff guerrilla fighters to defeat the well-organized,
well-equipped government forces of China and then went ahead to establish a new
government model. The same way President Muhammadu Buhari, along with common
people, overcame the stinking rich PDP government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and
its supporters in the 2015 general elections, and establish a progressive
government.
In line with
Atuekong Don Etiebet’s revelation, APC supporters, unlike what is happening in
the PDP, are not the same faces and same names that come from all the local
government areas to converge at a location and then bused to all the campaign
venues just for the sake of winning number-game and testing popularity. APC has
supporters coming out naturally with their own brooms, making self-sacrifice to
join the movement. No hired or rented crowd, to state the obvious.
Today, Akwa
Ibom people are flocking around Obong Nsima Ekere because he is seen as their
only hope and the rescuer of the state from the path of backwardness. He
promises people-oriented government. The youths believe they would become transformative
entrepreneurs; unemployed have high hopes for opportunities in a completed Ibom
Deep Seaport; students believe that payment of bursaries will be resumed and
increased from paltry N5,000 to N25,0000; the orphans, handicapped persons and
the extremely poor are hoping to be receiving N5,000 conditional cash transfer;
the multiple-birth mothers will be lucky enough at the time to be benefitting
from N100,000 relief from Ekere’s government, and a lot of people will be
enabled to have their own homes through the State’s Social Housing Scheme.
©The Sensor Newspaper
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