Day The People Invited OBA For A Covenant

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Day The People Invited OBA For A Covenant

A covenant is a solemn agreement between two persons, people or parties. It goes beyond mere promises ornamented on what has today been mundanely described as “gentlemen agreement”, which falls outside the corridors of litigations, if aberred.

Saturday July 30, 2022, will never be forgotten in a hurry in the political history of Akwa Ibom State because it signaled the ossification of a social agreement between distinguished Senator Bassey Albert Akpan, popularly known as OBA and the people of Akwa Ibom State. The Young Progressives sent for him.

It was a day mother nature herself approved, with a bucolic serenity of sunshine in a rainy season. The venue was the Multi Purpose Event Center, Ifa Ikot Akpan, Etoi in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital.

What actually led to the event (Invitation) were culminations of series of events. (1) In 2015, after the election of Governor Udom Emmanuel, Akwa Ibom people had high hopes in his administration.

Senator OBA,  the Pride of Akwa Ibom people
Senator OBA, the Pride of Akwa Ibom people
Hope of employment opportunities he enunciated through campaign promises centered on Industrialization. Hope of food sufficiency. Hope of economic stability tied to infrastructure multiplication and hope in social welfarism.

(2) Seven years along the line, the people discovered to their chagrin that their hopes for a better Akwa Ibom has been dashed as evidenced by the litany of abandoned projects littering the State, calibrated poverty as a weapon of political subjugation, acute hunger, failed promises, social injustice, discontent as a result of insensitivity and misplacement of priority.

(3) On Sunday January 30, 2022, in a manner and circumstance widely considered controversial, the long awaited “voice of God”, through the mouth of Governor Udom Emmanuel, unveiled a controversial and unpopular “anointed” to take over the leadership of the State in 2023.

(4) The people reasoned. They questioned the moral justification of a Governor who has stunted their growth and dashed their hopes. A Governor who has turned majority of the people by sheer maladministration into a bunch of suffering malams in the midst of plenty, to singlehandedly give them a successor ?

They reasoned how possible it may be for a wicked Pharoah to give a good successor.

(5) They expected an electoral process within party formations, that will give them the opportunity to choose a candidate for themselves.

(6) When it was glaring that they won’t get such a basic constitutional right from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, they downplayed on party politics and invented a lexicon that has now been popularized as “Ebrewoism”, anchored on the philosophy of “party because of individual, not individual because of party”.

(7) They sent for Senator Bassey Albert Akpan – OBA and demanded that he should lead them out of the wilderness, from the grips of a Pharoah who was voted into power to LEAD but has chosen to RULE. They asked for a journey to a new dawn of economic prosperity.

OBA, himself, having been shut out of a party primary that bore no semblance of democracy, realized that refusal to such request will not only harm the State further but will become  toxic to his burning desire to offload the flaming fire of service to Akwa Ibom State. Hence, he had no choice but to succumb to the wishes of the people.

In reaction to OBA’s submission to the call of the masses, Elder in Eket and former Commissioner For Youths & Sports in Akwa Ibom State and later a gubernatorial aspirant in the 2015 election, Pastor Ita Umo Udo said, “by OBA’s decision to quit the PDP and chart a new course for himself, he has refused to be a victim of impunity but a Victor”

Continuing, he said, “Senator Bassey Albert Akpan’s movement to the Young Progressives Party, YPP, is not just because he must be governor of Akwa Ibom State but to remind the PDP of the need to move away from an organisation where one person takes the glory to crown a king against the tenets of democracy”. A primitive module overtaken by time.

OBA himself has told the world that he is not desperate to be governor but that he can not equally abandoned a people who have, over the years, built confidence and trust in him. His covenant with the people is;

(1) To Recover Akwa Ibom State from the grips of poverty and hunger, deprivation, joblessness and social inequality.

(2) To Reconcile the state truly back God in sincerity, service to humanity and justice.

(3) To Reposition Akwa Ibom State on the path of steady economic growth, using micro-economic dynamisms in a mixture of visible Industrialization policies to stimulate private partnership investments.

Senator Bassey Albert Akpan is a man of his words. His integrity has never been in doubt. His ability to translate policies into human-touching impacts is not disputable as evidenced by the successes recorded during the good days of Inter Ministerial Direct Labour Committee which he chaired as the State Commissioner for Finance, during Governor Godswill Akpabio’s tenure.

Given his antecedent, the covenant entered into with the people of the State, is realizable and within his ability to keep.

When a people are pushed to the extreme of their perseverance, they have no other option but to revolt. Akwa Ibom people are on revolt mood. A peaceful revolution through the ballot box is what the people have coined as 2023 BALLOT REVOLUTION.

The will of the people must prevail against the autocratic mechanization of a cabal holed-in  by one man who plays God. Freedom is coming with OBA as the servant leader. Akwa Ibom State will be GREAT again. Join the train now and be a part of the history!

By Assam Abia

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