GUBER POLL: HOW THEY PLANNED TO KILL ME -AKPABIO
Muzzling of opposition
I am insisting that the ACN has no plan to contest elections. I have been provoked many times by supporters of ACN who smatch windows of my vehicles using brooms. What they do is that they put dagger inside brooms, when my convoy is passing they would start hitting my vehicles.
A few days ago, before the rally, they opened fire on my convoy and shot Archbishop Akpan.But I have refused to be provoked. I said na cunny pregnant woman dey take run from cow.
All I am waiting for is for the elections to come and go because they want to create what they have been saying before, the governor is intolerant of the opposition. They want to create a situation that the governor is afraid of the opposition when I am not. They want to tell the outside world that they would have won election but for the governor.
So, I have been avoiding them in spite of their taunts. I said, 'let's focus on campaigns, when the election day comes, they will know who is who.' They say I am a minority man and nobody bothers to recall that this minority man in 2007 without a track record of performance defeated the incumbent governor and his son-in-law at the PDP primaries and during the elections proper he won over 98 per cent of the votes across the state including the local government of his opponent.
This is the same man, that delegates, during the PDP primaries in December 2006, spent five days on the street, to elect. And you spend time in Abuja saying he is a minority man. Akwa Ibom people don't look at me a minority man, they look at me as their governor, their brother. They look at me as a man who has come to empower their youths and has shown that government can work and that if you don't share the money, the money can be used for the people.
Allegation of intimidation
How can a governor say 'this senatorial district is mine, nobody should go there to campaign?' Is that democratic? Don't you think it is stupid? It is a very cheap blackmail. I saw it in the papers and that is what I have suffered in the state all along. Akwa Ibom is the only place where if somebody is killed, they would say it is the governor even if the person died in an accident. If somebody is kidnapped, had an accident or shot through accidental discharge, it is the governor because that is the stock in trade of the leader of the opposition. He thrives in blackmail and character assassination.
Senator Udoedehe
To be very honest with you, I don't know what the charges are but I know the charges he will face here. From the action of that day, he has more charges here. He was implicated in the murder of Paul Inyang, the zonal secretary of the PDP and that trial is on. His name is Number one on the charge sheet. He went to a court in Abuja to try to get an injunction to restrain the police from charging him. I don't see how the court would restrain somebody from facing a criminal trial. Paul Inyang was assassinated in a church.
He is facing trial with the boys he said were his coordinators, who did the killings. There were eight of them. This was investigated by the Police from Abuja, not from Akwa Ibom. That one is aside. On that day, multi-faceted charges came out from the actions. That was why in my state broadcast, I said those who committed these actions should be punished. If we don't take action and bring them to book no part of this country will be safe. People will get up and think they can go into wanton destruction of lives and property and get away with it because of their position in the society.
The reality is that they waged war against the state, that is treasonable felony. On that day, the government came under serious attack. I don't know where they got those boys from, they were moving on bikes and throwing bombs. Most of the burnt cars you see dotting around, they threw bombs inside, blew up the people inside and the vehicle. I had up to 170 people who slept in the Government House till the following day. Chief Don Etiebet, everybody, that came with me from the campaign in Abak stayed here. The Commissioner of Police, who reported that same day was in the Government House for over six hours.
He waged war against the state. You go into a school, these children are small kids, they don't know anything at all, you start attacking the school, open fire, throw bombs, destroy 11 vehicles in the school, burn down the buildings and send 150 children into the bush. We caught many of them in the act. They made confessional statements. The director general of the ACN, his vehicles that they were using for the attacks are at the police station. They were caught in the act. There is ample evidence that they waged war against Akwa Ibom State, against a part of Nigeria. Treasonable felony as a charge is not political, it is what happened on that day.
Even though there was altercation in Ikot Ekpene, does it warrant what they came here to do in Uyo? Is that politics? You want to lead people and you start terrorising them. It is arrogance, it is impunity. I have seen it before in this country where people think they can do anything because they have godfathers.
ACN's denials
Tell people not to talk nonsense. Tell them to bring the dead bodies of those killed or the maimed. The Commissioner of Police is there. Those who were wounded, the PDP people they destroyed are there. My Special Adviser on Labour and Productivity has lost his hand. Former Head of Service of the state is in the hospital; he was coming back from Abak.I barely escaped death because they were laying in wait for me on Abak road.
The police were quick, they sent soldiers who came and diverted my convoy through the old road ;that was how I escaped. I came in through Uyo village road that entered here. That was how I escaped. This story would have been totally different because they were waiting to eliminate me. I have never seen this kind of violence. The PDP machinery was 70 kilometers away. By the time we got to Abak, which was 20 kilometres to Uyo, the havoc had already been done to the extent that my convoy had to be diverted and so many of my people ran into it.
The man, Udoedehe
People like him do not look at things that way. They feel that in Nigeria anything goes. They feel that they can do anything and get away with it. They sponsored people who call themselves lawyers, to sit on AIT, Focus Nigeria, to say 'I was a roommate of Godswill Akpabio at UNICAL. He used to live in one room with me. Where did he get wealth to become governor? And some would say all these were planned by President Goodluck Jonathan because of election. Didn't you hear his lawyer on Channels Television.
He said President Goodluck Jonathan planned it. He described what happened in Akwa Ibom as a war of liberation, that they want to liberate the people that was why the ACN and legal adviser of ACN were fighting a war of liberation. That war of liberation is the burning down of the state. It depends on what you mean, they don't see it that way. The man in question was struggling for the press to take his photographs whenever he appeared in court. He was smiling at journalists. Instead of entering his car, he would turn round for photo shows. He needed his pictures to be taken because in his opinion, he was now a very popular man.
When his father died in 2006 or so and I went for the burial, he stood up in the public and told a story of how much his father loved them; that his junior brother gave a dud cheque and defrauded somebody and the police came with the dud cheque to arrest his brother. And the father realising that the younger brother was in trouble asked the police to produce the dud cheque to show whether it was actually his son. When the police produced the cheque, the father snatched it, put into his mouth and chewed it (it is on televison). And then the police and everybody beat the father and the father swallowed it, my daddy loved us, he swallowed the cheque.
That is the story he gave. When he was giving that story he never thought that one day he would go to look for political position because it is by their fruit we shall know them. You are looking at it as a man who had committed a crime. He is seeing it as something that has brought him popularity in the nation. Why is he not popular? He is now a colleague of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, he is now working with Chief Bisi Akande, so he is a very popular man in the country.I feel pity for the psychologyain offices. I feel real pity.
You said he was my friend, I knew him 2005. When he was reconciled with Obong Victor Attah, I was a commissioner then. In 2006, he supported Obong Attah's in-law to be governor. When that did not work out, he abandoned the process and came and supported me. And I made him my campaign manager. At the end of the election, I compensated him by nominating him for a ministerial position. He did not last one year because he fought with Modibbo, the FCT Minister. When the man delayed to give him vehicles, he went to bring vehicles to block the FCT gate for 24 hours.