Akpabio’s Uncommon Trouble

By Chuks Ekpeneru

When former Akwa Ibom Governor Godswill Akpabio dumped the People’s Democratic Party for the ruling All Progressives Congress in August 2018, not a few said he was seeking immunity in the face of gross allegations of corruption against him.

Then Buhari was seeking re-election and was willing to dine with even the devil. They were reported trade-offs by the government.

It would be recalled that Akpabio’s entry into the APC was signposted by an announcement by the former presidential special assistant on prosecutions, Chief Okoi Obono-Obla.

However, his sojourn in the APC may now be turning into a nightmare as he now faces the herculean task of proving that the very damaging allegations against him by the former Acting Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Joy Nunieh are false.

Akpabio’s case is made worse because he is in tangle with a well-known associate of the president and his family from his earliest days in politics.

Some say the ‘uncommon transformer’ did not apply tact in his dealings with Nunieh who is widely known for her no-nonsense posture.

She has said the minister engineered her removal for failing to dance to his tunes.

The allegations against him are weighty and there are already calls for his suspension from the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

According to Nunieh, Akpabio attempted to inflate the NDDC budget during her reign as Managing Director.

She disclosed that Akpabio ordered her to include some projects from the refugee commission in the budget of the NDDC.

She alleged that Akpabio asked her to change the dollars in the NDDC account; sack the head of the legal team who is from the north; remove all directors who refused to follow his instructions and also to implicate Peter Nwaoboshi, chairman of the senate committee on NDDC.

According to Nunieh, Akpabio warned that if she did not follow his instructions, she would be removed.

She also alleged that Akpabio would never sign any document, but rather ask his subordinates to commit fraud.

She said the minister asked her to take an oath of secrecy to stop her from exposing any of his dealings but she refused.

Akpabio’s retort was to allege that the woman was probably a crack head pointing at “her four former husbands.”

But the hit at her personal life did not gain traction. The woman came back even hotter on Monday with the accusation that Akpabio made sexual advances at her.

“I refused. I am challenging him to deny any of these allegations.”

She claimed that she slapped Akpabio for sexually assaulting her at his guest house in the Apo area of Abuja.

“Why did he not tell Nigerians that I slapped him in his guest house at Apo? I am the only Ogoni woman, the only Nigerian woman that has slapped him. I slapped him because of his plan B. Since he couldn’t get me to take that money, he thought that he could come up on

Akpabio has undoubtedly gone through various challenges and successes and came out as the uncommon transformer. However, in the big Ogoni girl he has met an uncommon trouble.

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