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.

Yes! I am UbongAbasi Ise. For comment, send SMS to 08189914609 | ubongabasiise@gmail.com

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