By Nelson Utip

In a full page advertisement in The Nation Newspaper of Thursday of August 23, Nkereuwem Enyongekere, Akwa Ibom State Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC),  tried to mislead the Akwa Ibom people from returning Governor Udom Emmanuel for second term. The advertorial  further exposed the intellectual ineptitude of the APC.

Udom Emmanuel

The mouthpiece enumerated what he termed as  the failure of the incumbent governor with insipid innuendoes.

In his scorecard, Enyongekere, taking his inurement instincts to the limits, enumerated the various industries and investments in the state, scoring the governor ridiculously low! Enyongekere forgot to counter-balance his ‘facts’ with a simple comparison of  the industries and investments. The mouthpiece succeeded in illuminating the various achievements of  Governor Udom Emmanuel but with a myopic mien.

In the Fertilizer Bagging Plant at Abak, the Coconut Plantation and Refinery and Family Rice Plant, the myopic mouthpiece saw them as fake and a huge joke, whereas these projects are at various stages of  maturity; he agreed that these projects have started but only at the embryo stage. Enyongekere is so blinded by a serious malady that he has not seen the roads with bridges built by this administration; I can forgive him for that.

But how can he mention nepotism when  former Governor Godswill Akpabio, his hero, elevated his Annang brothers over the rest of the ethnic groups in all strata of the state, especially the civil service and the judiciary? What of his (Akpabio) siblings and in-laws from Anambra State allegedly running all the juicy sectors of the economy?

Is Enyongekere and APC in Akwa Ibom State now aware that the Ibom Specialist Hospital, which was one of the alleged conduit pipes of the previous administration, has been properly handed over to a Canadian firm for effective management? If the can of worms allegedly surrounding Le Meridien Five Star Hotel is opened, can APC endure the stench? Won’t they let sleeping dogs lie?

Upon his lugubrious mien, the mouthpiece agreed that the Syringe and Metering Solution Factories are real; he said they are privately owned. Illiteracy is a disease.

What business has government in building industries? Government only provides enabling environment for investors to establish industries, as bureaucratic bottlenecks always kill government owned companies.

Governor Emmanuel has created an enabling environment for investors; if in only three years, we have the Toothpick, Pencil, Metering Solution and Syringe Factories functional, among others, what do we expect in eight years? This is rhetorical; Enyongekere cannot attempt an answer to this.

Let me use this medium to advise the APC in the state to ponder on how to live with a bull in their canoe and stop misleading the Akwa Ibom people with fallacies. Only fools will give them an ear; we are basking in the euphoria of removing an ogre from our backs, a cankerworm that ate dip into the fabrics of our economy with his multi-hooked proboscis; a gargantuan demon that God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, decided to cast out of our psyche.

APC and Enyongekere should look for another audience with falsehood. Akwa Ibom State people are wise!

*Utip is an Uyo based public affairs analyst