The fruitless effort to demolish Akpabio

By Kemi Kasumu

“President Muhammadu Buhari is of a sound mind. He knows his thoughts for the people of Niger Delta. He will not give them stones for bread. He will bring to justice those who stole their prosperity. Buhari’s war on corruption has arrived the Niger Delta. You either hop in or get crushed.”

Last week, a report was published online by Vanguard, Sun, The DEFENDER and five other Nigerian newspapers titled, “NDDC: Corruption cartel angry with Buhari: Why they struck”.

The report exposed the very basis for the incessant but now senseless unsuccumbing war in the traditional, online and social media with intent to cast aspersions on the Forensic Audit of the NDDC ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The well spelt out, widely publicised report said the attack, which was vehement in its modus operandi, was conceived pretentiously aiming to cast a shadow of corruption on the Interim Management Committee (IMC) established to hold sway while the turn around of the NDDC as well as Forensic Audit of its past managements lasted.

But in all certainty, as far as it has been found out so far, the aim is truly targeting the President, Muhammadu Buhari, who ordered the Forensic Audit and appointed the IMC, the Pondei-led team, to salvage the NDDC, known by many as the citadel of corruption in Nigeria.

There, however, were responses, by elements sympathetic to the Niger Delta people it was established to benefit, and they stood shoulder-to-shoulder to contend with the pro-corruption elements whose main source of stupendous ill-gotten wealth was the NDDC.

That was when the expositions began, exposing, word-to-word ‘why they struck’.

The latest, which is the demand for removal of Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio from office as Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, has now further shown that, these elements who in actual fact have something they are yet to confess in their minds against President Buhari the major “rusida” of the issue, have no shame even now much exposed as their corruption is. “Rusida” is a not too-clear Yoruba word for ‘trouble-shooter’.

This call cannot be seen in any other light than CORRUPTION FIGHTING BACK!

If the President did not decide vehemently about the comprehensive probe of why the development package, which the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) was meant to provide for the good of the Niger Delta, was not evident in their lives, the wicked beneficiaries did would not waste time to employ the huge traditional, online and social media for a campaign of calumny, misinformation and misrepresentations that the populace have witnessed in recent times.

In a nutshell they do not love the people they claim to represent in their usual political statements. If they do, why should it take the same Fulani man they once thought was the cause of their backwardness to do the best for their people?

That for two decades, the purported leaders of the region have incapacitated the NDDC from making a Dubai out of the Niger Delta is a brazen blazing fact.

It is no wonder the people have remained poor and profoundly stricken by abject poverty. It is also the reason one is bound to ask how former Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II arrived at his statistical conclusion of 20% South poor and 80 percent poor in North West and North East respectively without having to show enough critical magnanimity towards the South South by helping the majority of the geopolitical zone’s poorest of the poor expose the real poverty that is resident with them, per adventure things would be better.

For the first time the Niger Delta has a kind-hearted figure with full commitment to ensuring the kind of paradigm shift that will see the life of the Deltans truly and transparently transformed for the better, he did not start with this ruling party, he was all along with the party that installed these “jegudujera” (eat-it-all) past managers in the NDDC and the popular thought was that he was part of them, unknown to many that he was not.

His name is Godswill Obot Akpabio. The moment he joined not just the ruling party but the Change Regime of a man, Buhari, that indisputably means well for the country and its entire components Niger Delta inclusive, his (Akpabio’s) potentials as incorruptible national leader began to manifest and so the Mafia of the Delta suddenly found out he should be removed as Minister. So sad!

One, therefore, cannot but align with the Akwa Ibom State Phase II Ex-Militants Forum of the Niger Delta Presidential Amnesty Programme, which claimed that recent calls by some Niger Delta groups and some individuals for the removal of Honourable Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio, has ethnic colourations. Not only ethnic colorations but subject of an agenda to pave the way for their existing corruption to continue.

But that ethnicity thing is even a serious one. Suddenly they have switched from “corrupt” Akpabio to “non-indigene” Obot. When did they begin to know this? When their campaign of calumny trying to bring him and his team comprising Pondei and Cairo Ojougboh, both of NDDC down, crashed out, as truths are now available in the same airspace they hitherto dominated with lies and deep-rooted misinformation?

Even at that, the ex-militants added that such calls were simply because Akpabio is an indigene of Akwa Ibom State and not necessarily that he has committed any offense. Whoever must be appointed to carryout anything connected to Niger Delta must come from not just anywhere in the region but Delta State where the ‘ethnicity commanders’ reside and hail from.

This could have been fine, although not fine at all, if the same elements holding this thought and who are from the Central Senatorial District of the state do not also show this stigma against fellow Delta State people on the ground that they do not come from the same Central Senatorial District as they.

All appointments the state got from Federal, an Assembly man and his fellow actors cornered to their own Senatorial District, not giving any thought to Delta South.

That would have been better but not really. The Minister of State for Labour and Productivity, Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN) comes from their Central Senatorial District but because he is not from their Local Government area, they have also marked him as a prodigal son. The position Keyamo occupies could have been well appreciated but why not from the local government of the self-appointed deciders of the Niger Delta Affairs?

The Assembly man, in question, does not like to hear that anybody from Delta South or Delta North gets an appointment. He doesn’t want to hear that, a source actually said.

“He does this because he wants only people from his own senatorial district. In fact you can mention it that since Keyamo was appointed from the same senatorial district, he has now reduced his scope of acceptance to only his own local government area and cut out the Keyamo’s local government as well, even though they are both from the same senatorial district. That is how small minded he is.

“In fact when one of us got appointed by President Buhari, there was this man, a former union leader and close ally of the Lord of the manor, who called the appointee and angrily asked, ‘You are not from Delta Central so how did you get this appointment?”

That’s how petty they can be. It’s some sort of, “We must keep the corruption in the family”.

According to another source, the whole thing centres around the Assembly man because he aspires to be governor of Delta State with a serving senator who is having issues with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as his running mate. Their hope is to fund that project with the NDDC money which Akpabio, Pondei and Ojougboh’s die-hard anti-corruption stance has now stalled.

This is the latest development that is unfolding in the fight against NDDC Forensic Audit.

Therefore, the fictitious Niger Delta groups and the looting NGOs, calling for Akpabio’s removal as Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, are totally wasting their time as Buhari is intent and bent on cleaning up the NDDC.

Investigations, finally again, revealed that the same people who have released false and fabricated stories about the NDDC Interim Management Committee (IMC) on the internet through the traditional, online and social media are the brains behind the murmur to have their nightmare, Akpabio, uprooted.

It is now getting clearer why the NDDC corruption cartel, angry with President Muhammadu Buhari, struck. It was last said that their target was the President. Now that they have failed to dismantle the IMC, they have moved a step further, targeting the Minister.

It is believed that as they also are wont to fail, they will now pull strength with the coalition and opposition whose sponsored pro-corruption wailings have refused to leave the airspace since Buhari’s victory of 2015 and whose frustration has worsened since he defeated them again in 2019.

President Muhammadu Buhari is of a sound mind. He knows his thoughts for the people of Niger Delta. He will not give them stones for bread. He will bring to justice those who stole their prosperity. Buhari’s war on corruption has arrived the Niger Delta. You either hop in or get crushed.