Postponement Damages And Paranoia (PDP)


By UbongAbasi Ise

At the end of it all, Saturday 16th February 2019 turned out to be quite calm and peaceful. I had met with Barr. Clifford Thomas, the Akwa Ibom State Human Rights Community Coordinator, and we drove all afternoon, with visits here and there. From the urbanized areas of Uyo, the capital city, to the countryside of Nsit Ibom, Etinan and some other places, tranquility subsists beyond the warm harmattan afternoon. It was quite uncharacteristic of any Saturday in this part of the world: there were no wedding and burial ceremonies; markets were either shut or half-closed; business activities in general were quite low key, no thanks to the brusque postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections in the dawn of that day by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. Barr. Clifford Thomas had expressed disappointment in INEC for putting off the elections it had almost four years to prepare for. He berated the commission for wasting tax payers’ money on mobilization for the polls that would never hold, and was not happy that INEC would stop the common citizens from going about their normal businesses that could have brought food on their table. The human rights lawyer therefore called on the electoral body to immediately apologize to Nigerians for its show of shame and national embarrassment.  Later on, the car radio broadcasted the fiery voice of Comrade Adams Oshiomole, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who took it all out against the INEC. While protecting the interest of APC, Oshiomole decried the cost incurred by his party in mobilizing party agents to the polling units and then slammed the INEC Chairman, Prof. Yakub Mahmood, for having to wait till about 2.00am before he could announced the postponement. The Presidency would later rap the INEC in order to show that the commission was taking its decision independently outside the influence of the government. Even Senator Godswill Akpabio tweeted to describe the postponement as the impunity to democracy. On the other hand, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, was seeing the rescheduling as a ploy by the APC government in connivance with INEC to scuttle the electoral process. The electoral body was facing the worst rejection and condemnation almost unprecedented in the history of the nation.

                Beyond all the condemnations trailing INEC, the unceremonious postponement of the elections was just a raging wind that blew open the main tail feathers of a fowl to expose its cloaca. It exposed all the stratagems the PDP in Akwa Ibom State concealed under its sleeves to stage a huge surprise so as to affirm the infamous cliché that Akwa Ibom is PDP and PDP is Akwa Ibom. Had elections went on as scheduled, a lot of nauseating incidents would have occurred to embarrass the image of our dear state courtesy of the desperation of Governor Udom Emmanuel and his PDP co-travellers. Their paranoia over the entire electoral processes forced them to embrace all extremes. The veneer of peace as pretended by our state government was torn open and it was clear that the PDP-controlled state government does not mean well for the generality of the Akwa Ibom citizens as long as its continuation beyond May 29 is threatened. On a day to the aborted polls, all the incongruities as blindly composed by His Excellences and the Honourables in the PDP began to play out. How could the government vested with the responsibility of securing and protecting lives and properties condescended to the level of hiring over 1,000 thugs per polling unit in the state with our taxpayers’ money with the intention to maim and murder the citizens who might have come out to exercise their constitutional rights? How could our resources be lavished in feeding militants in a dormitory at Winners Chapel in Uyo and other locations under the pretext of rehabilitation only to release them for elections? Were all of these done out of fears that the people of Akwa Ibom have rejected the PDP? And does it mean that their election actually worth a single drop of Akwa Ibom son or daughter? Whatever the response might be, the postponement had averted, at least for a moment, the mayhem that would have been visited on the innocent and unsuspecting citizens of our dear state.

It is no longer news that the umbrella people professing ‘Only God’ were flooding the state with thugs recruited from within the state and the neighboring Cross River and Rivers States, with our resources going down the drain. With the rearrangement of the elections timetable Ghana-Must-Go bags had already missed road. They blew away stupendous amount of cash before one vote was cast. Certainly, INEC would never be forgiven by the pre-election big spenders for failing to hint earlier on about the postponement, thus letting them waste the money aimlessly with many electoral battles still lining up ahead. The postponement might be condemnable, but extrinsically, it has served our soul.


Again, what really exasperated the PDP most was the wasting of billions of naira on the votes that would never come, and on the people they never loved. PVCs were becoming ticket to free cash. The money the PDP denied the people by not executing life-touching projects were sent back to the people in desperation to win their sympathy and regain lost popularity. At the end, it became a big loss to these vote-buyers and a huge gain for the vote-sellers that had no vote to sell.

To this end, Akwa Ibom people should know that it is not time to vote for money and tribe but time to vote for our conscience, destiny and future. Those who steered us towards hunger, unemployment, backwardness, infrastructural decay, weak educational system and insecurity in Ukanafun, Etim Ekpo and Ika local government areas are at their game again. By selling our votes to them, we are destroying our voice and mortgaging our rights, and so whatever they will be doing in government, won’t be our business; we can’t hold them responsible because the officials had paid us off. It is time to rise up against their chicaneries, intimidations and tempting naira wads and establish our authority in government as a people as required by the spirit and letters of democracy.

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

© The Sensor Newspaper



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