TEXT OF A PRESS CONFERENCE DELIVERED BY COMRADE OKON OSUNG, CHAIRMAN, ORO THINK TANK ON BEHALF OF THE ORO ETHNIC NATIONALITY OF AKWA IBOM STATE ON WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 15, 2014 AT ABUJA. AKWA IBOM GOVERNORSHIP 2015: AWAKENING NIGERIA TO THE DIRE CONSEQUENCES OF UNCOMMON JUSTICE PERPETRATED BY AN UNCOMMON GOVERNOR AGAINST ORO PEOPLE IN AKWA IBOM POLITICS. Time is eternal for no human being or group. Certainly not the Oro people who inhabit a piece of prime real estate strategically situated on the West Bank of the Cross River estuary in the Gulf of Guinea, where Nigeria shares a boundary with Cameroun and Equatorial Guinea on the Atlantic Coast. We cannot leave for posterity a struggle we must wage and remedy we must seek now for the wrongs we suffer today as a people. Moreover, it is often said that great sorrows are suffered in silence. But when your woes become unrelenting and unbearable, stoic silence ceases to be a virtue and patriotic spirit challenges men to resolute remedial action. Gentlemen of the Press, we come before you today and through you to tell Nigeria and the world that Oro Ethnic Nationality, the third Largest Ethnic group in Akwa Ibom State, has been pushed to the wall!. Oro people have been pitilessly marginalized, wantonly exploited, mercilessly improvished and humiliatingly discounted in the affairs of Akwa Ibom State. Oro appears to be tolerated as the inconvenient fifth wheel of the wagon, better discarded. The current generation of Oro People is represented at this event made up of the Oro Union (founded in 1925), the Council of Oro Traditional Rulers (COTR), the Oro Think Tank (OTT) and other stakeholders. Present also are some of the most promising Governorship Aspirants Akwa Ibom has had the privilege to produce this time around. They are Barr. Asuquo A Okpo, Barr. Ekpeyong Ntekem, Barr Effiong Abia and Engr Larry Esin. It is fair to say that collectively , in the matter of the Governorship race in 2015, in any of these people, the hour will find its man. We stridently call on Nigeria to sit up and take notice of the story detailed below on the plight of the Oro people in the face of what is touted as “uncommon transformation” in our State. Nigeria should stand up for the weak and the vulnerable, not only as a measure of our claim to be passionately religious and compassionate about society but also as a firewall against the excesses of the majority and the threat of rampaging tyranny at the lower levels of governance. BACKGROUND Akwa Ibom, at the creation was envisioned and acknowledged as standing on an ethnic tripod. The largest ethnic group, Ibibio, is made up of 14 LGAs, followed by the Annangs with 8 LGAs and Oro, along with its ethnic kins in Ekid and Obolo made up 9 LGAs. The concept of the tripod simplifies the idea of power rotation and the distribution of practical benefits generally. Thusly, Akwa Ibom initiated and sustained the practice and hope of a stable, just and equitable socio political order. TRADITIONAL INJUNCTION It is pertinent to recall that during the first Solemn Assembly conducted at the Uyo Township Stadium after the creation of Akwa Ibom State, Paramount rulers of the 10 LGAs of the State had resolved that for peace to reign in the new State administrative and political offices and other perquisites in the State should be shared equitably among the Ibibio, Annang and Oro, the three major ethnic nationalities that comprise the State. The 10 Paramount Rulers who invoked this traditional injunction were: i) Eket - Edidem Thompson Udo Uyo Ata Akpabio III ii) Oron - Ahta Uwe Otoyo Akan I, JP iii) Uyo - Obong M U Eka iv) Abak - Obong E U Akpan Arthur v) Ikot Ekpene - Obong Cosmas Okon Akpan vi) Ukanafun – Obong Sampson Udo Idiong vii) Ikot Abasi – Obong Akpan Akpan Udo viii) Ikono – Obon Nya Udo Inuaeyen ix) Itu - Edidem Ekpe Obong Atakpa x) Etinan – Edidem Simon T Akpan Nsubong II. Moreover, Chief Micheal Afangide (currently the political godfather of Essien Udom where the Governor hails) had during the PDP Governorship Campaign at Ikot Ekpene Stadium in 2007 declared that after Godswill Akpabio’s tenure, it should be the turn of Oro to produce the next Governor, and that the wrath and punishment of God shall be visited on anyone who attempts to derail that arrangement. I. Further, the tripodal rotational order was first put in practice during the Babaginda era and during the administration of Governor Obong Akpan Isemin. The Ibibio, the largest of the group, kick-started it and that slot ran its course under Arc (Obong) Victor Attah between 1999 and 2007. From the outset, for purposes of equitable distribution of political appointments among the 3 major ethnic groups in the State, all Symbolic appointments were grouped into 3 baskets and each ethnic group was entitled to appointments within the respective baskets thus: • Governor + Deputy Speaker • Deputy Speaker + Leader of the House • Party Chairman + Speaker. The unfortunate thing about this well thought-out baskets is that, whereas the Akpan Isemin and Victor Attah administrations had implemented their prescriptions to the letter, the Akpabio Administration has notoriously honored that arrangement only in the breach, particularly as it concerns Oro’s share. For instance, a cursory glance at the distribution of those symbolic appointments during the Akpabio Administration will show ORO SCORING ZERO: i) Governor – Chief (Dr) Godswill Akpabio CON (Annang) ii) Deputy Governor - Engr. Patrick Ekpotu /Obong Nsima Ekere/Noble Lady Valerie Ebe (Ibibio). iii) Party Chairman - Obong Paul Ekpo (Ibibio) iv) Speaker - Rt Hon Sam Ikon (Ibibio) v) Deputy Speaker - Rt. Hon. Udo Kerian Akpan (Annang) Under the Akpabio Administration, Oro suffers complete exclusion from the symbolic appointments in the State. To truncate the pre-existing arrangement to ensure that Oro does not access power is an invitation to certain chaos, a call to a revolution with its attendant consequences, God Forbid, for which Governor Akpabio must singularly be held accountable. During the swearing in of ward and Local Government Chairmen of the PDP at Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District in 2006, Otuekong Sunny Jackson had asked Governor Arc (Obong) Victor Attah whose turn it would be to produce the next Governor of the State, whereupon Arc. (Obong) Victor Attah emphatically replied that in 2007, Governorship of the State would be zoned to Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District with the Annang ethnic Nationality as recipient. Again in 2006 at a Stakeholders meeting which Governor Victor Attah summoned at Ibom Hall, the same resolution on zoning from Uyo to Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District with emphasis on Annang ethnic group was moved and was unanimously carried. The late Paramount ruler of Oron, The Ahta of Oro, Edidem Inyang Effiong Nyong, also moved another resolution that after the tenure of the Annang Governor, Governorship of the State should go to Oro. This latter resolution was equally unanimously carried. By 2015 Chief (Dr) Godswill Akpabio, CON will complete two terms of 8 years for the Annang, the second leg of the ethnic tripod. As the turn of third leg, Oro and its kindred - the combined smaller minorities of 9 LGAs - has approached, politically civility has been thrown to the winds by the incumbent Governor, in order to ensure that it does not happen. Consequently, Akwa Ibom State has been plunged recklessly into a ravine of confusion requiring the collective intervention of Nigeria to save it from impending catastrophe. In order to underscore the point that zoning in the State until now, has always been based on the ethnicity, it is important to recall that when Obong Attah announced the zoning of Governorship in 2007 to Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District, a meeting was held among the Ibibios of that district insisting that both Governorship and Senatorial slots should not be zoned to Annang alone, but rather that if Governorship went to Annang, then, the Senatorial slot should go to the Ibibio component of the Senatorial District (Ikono/Ini LGAs). Consequently, the Senatorial slot was eventually grabbed by Senator Aloysius Etok, an Ibibio from Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District. Governor Akpabio has brought out his serving Secretary to the State Government, Obong Udom Gabriel Emmanuel, as his preferred candidate on the alien arrangement of Senatorial zoning, which flies in the face of ethnic-based zoning which is conventional in the State. Udom of the Ibibio Ethnic stock which already had its turn to produce a governor for 2 terms, has gleefully and with malicious satisfaction, accepted to wear Akpabios mask of unjust benevolence. When subjected to inscrutable and sedulous scrutiny, it is evident that Gov. Akpabio seeks to create and exploit the chaotic uncertainties of a State in transition, to engineer his after-the-office self-preservation at the expense of peace, stability and harmony in a State critically relevant to the economic progress of Nigeria and the oil consuming world. The imposition of Udom Emmanuel (an Ibibio from Eket Senatorial District, which is tantamount to “targeted zoning” has the deleterious effect that after Udom’s putative 8 years as an Akwa Ibom Governor of Ibibio extraction it immediately becomes the legitimate turn of the Ibibio of Uyo Senatorial District to produce a Governor for another 8 years – thereby having Ibibio Governor for 16 straight years – whereas if it becomes the turn of Ikot Ekpene to produce a State Governor, the Annang would never allow a minority ethnic group in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District (Ikono/Ini LGAs) to produce such. The attempt to deny Oro and other associated minorities a shot at Governorship power in 2015 is the culmination a long-drawn battle of deliberate marginalization, exclusion and disinheritance, bordering on ethnicide waged since the inception of his tenure. While Governor Akpabio’s part of the State is embroidered in a lavish elegance of modern infrastructure and overnight billionaires, the minority areas, by the grace of God, the only oil-producing section of the state, has been left debased by abject poverty and decadent infrastructure. Such attitude erodes confidence and pride which suppress robust spirit and strength and compel a people to surrender. Never, we shall not surrender. No visitor has ever been given a conducted tour of any reasonable project completed in any of the oil producing communities in almost 8 years. Besides, Akwa Ibom State is an exemplary PDP state. The minority oil-producing communities have from inception remained and always voted resolutely for PDP. The PDP therefore must not be taken in by Governor Akpabio’s scheming. It must not brush aside the flurry of protestations from a people forced to see government only as an impersonal mass of sensational media reports and misleading statistics frequently celebrated with raucous pomposity. It will signal a great insensitivity to a people’s suffering, a vote of rejection and a symptom of moral cowardice that could induce a resort to self help and rebelliousness. WHY ORO IN 2015? Oro and its associate minorities have rightfully earned the opportunity to govern Akwa Ibom state under PDP. Some highlights will bring into bolder relief why we cannot persist in the error of making the State safe for hypocrisy. II. Oro and it kith and kin produce 99% of the oil wealth of Akwa Ibom State. In practical terms, what this means is that if the state is entitled to N10 Billion from the Federation Account, we are responsible for over N9 Billion of that amount. We have 8 oil companies operating on our territory, both onshore and offshore, namely: ExxonMobil, Addax, Moni Pulo, Associated Oil, Septre Energy, Universal Energy, TotalFinaElf and Afren. We dear say that if Akwa Ibom State is the largest producer of Oil and we are the Largest producer of Oil in Akwa Ibom, taken into account Nigeria’s status as the Largest producer in Africa, it is safe to consider us as the largest Oil producing community in Africa. Yet, under the present dispensation there is absolutely nothing done to acknowledge this reality other than the recent appointment of Etim Inyang Jnr into the board of the NDDC. III. Oron has consistently deployed its resources in terms of money and goodwill to assist citizens of other ethnic groups to access governorship office, from Dr. Clement Isong and Sen Donald Etiebet in Cross River to Obong Akpan Isemin and Arc. (Obong) Victor Attah and Chief Godswill Akpabio, in the current dispensation. Oro acted in good faith, co-oporation, patience and hope. It is absolutely unacceptable for Gov. Akpabio to Act like a sponge, erasing the past and soaking up the future. The duty of Government is to calm rather that excite agitation. Governor Akpabio cannot change the rule in the middle of the game. When all the beneficiaries have taken their respective turns, the State’s stakeholders could meet and change the power sharing arrangement but not now. IV. Oron people are not second class citizens. As already highlighted above they contributed first class resources that have promoted the development of first class infrastructure in other sections of the State. Minority Status is an Act of God and not a crime. It is not a mark of inferiority, especially for a people who bore the distinction of embracing westernization first and taking same to others in the hinterland. It is instructive that the first girls’ school in Akwa Ibom State (Mary Hanney Secondary School) was opened in Oron in 1896 with the inspiration of Mary Slessor and Mary Hanney. The first Secondary School (Methodist Boys High School, Oron) was founded in 1905. Oro Union which started sponsoring its sons and daughters abroad for higher education since the 1920s may probably have been one of the first and best funded ethnic associations in Nigeria. Obolo National Union a proud heritage, was founded in 1903, with Obolo indigenes in Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River and Rivers States presently. Oro was one of the few communities not conquered by the British in the process of colonial pacification. We will not back down. We will serve peacefully but we must fight for our right. We expect that 2015 will be a pay-back time for the Oro Nation, the proverbial Kingsmaker since the haydays of the former South Eastern State and God who is a God of Justice, Equity and Fairplay will bring it to fruition. V) In 2007, when the former PDP state secretary, Anietie Ekong, raised the issue of power rotation at a stakeholders meeting in Uyo, attended by President Olusegun Obasanjo, the leader of the Party, he advised that zoning in Akwa Ibom State, should uphold the ethnic tripod. Using Ogun State, his own State, as example, President Obasanjo revealed that power is rotated among 3 pronounced ethnic tendencies in Ogun State: Egba, Ijebu and Owu. He then Advised Akwa Ibom State to follow that example for peace and stability. On that solid advice, we stand unshakably in compliance. vi) Governor Akpabio confuses his subjects When the former Secretary to the State Government, Umana Okon Umana, was sacked, the operative Government rationalization was that he had started campaigning before time and without resigning from office. The same government has painted the state red with Udom Emmanuel’s campaigns and endorsement. Just yesterday Tuesday 14th of October, the State Government organized a kangaroo endorsement by Eket Federal Constituency, deploying the machinery and paraphernalia of Government in its entirety to the event. The Deputy Governor Noble Lady Valerie Ebe was there representing the Governor. Akwa Ibom First Lady, the wife of the Governor, Mrs Ekeatte Unoma Akpabio was there. Also present were Members of the State Executive Council. In fact, few elected and appointed politicians were coerced to be in attendance, as it is typical of Udom’s campaign rallies everywhere, in flagrant violation of PDP official policy on campaigns and endorsement. The Federal Government and the PDP should not play along and remain silent in a national solidarity of aberration Gov Akpabio has demonstrated that he is not a believer in zoning. By resorting to targeted zoning instead of ethnic based zoning which has been the tradition in the state, Gov, Akpabio has unconscionably thrown the Governorship contest open to all comers across the State. CONCLUSION We have taken the trouble to argue with passionate intensity before the entire nation the cause of Akwa Ibom Governor of Oro extraction in 2015. We have laid bare the case of monumental injustice worked against Oro and its associated minorities who, collectively produce all the wealth that Akwa Ibom is noted for. Before the advent of effective campaign towards elective offices in 2015 Oro detractors were shamelessly propagating that Oro does not have effective manpower to run the State. What a faceless lie!. We used this platform to introduce to the world our illustrious sons who are eminently qualified and competent to rule the State. Lugvckily, after Governor Akpabio had conducted a townhall meeting at Oron on the 31st of August 2014, he made an unambiguous statement on operation of the ethnic tripod in Akwa Ibom State. This was in response to a question posed by an AIT journalist, excerpt which is produced below is transcribed verbatim: AIT JOURNALIST: Your Excellency, this is yet another session. It looks like today focused so much on 2015. GOVERNOR AKPABIO: Well … they were more interested in bringing out their opinion and their stand on 2015 and I was happy. First of all, there is no doubt that they support Eket Senatorial District producing the next Governor, but they were more interested in the Governorship coming to their Federal Constituency, and you cannot blame them because the State is founded on a tripod. So, they are actually the third largest ethnic group in the State: You have the Ibibios, then you have the Annangs, and then you have the Orons. What it means is that the Ibibios had their turn through Obong Victor Attah, the Annangs have their turn through my leadership, and the Orons would like to have their turn in 2015. Gentlemen of the Press, our place in 2015 shall not be at the foot stool of power. God forbid!. We invite the attention of Mr. President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan GCFR, as our party leader and as the Chief Security Officer of this Nation. We also invite the intervention of our National Party Chairman Alh. Adamu Mu’azu, a man so naturally disposed to peace, justice and fair play, to hear our prayers. For, as Martin Luther King Jnr, a statesman who lived and died fighting injustice had observed, “Riot is at base the language of the unheard”. On Oro governorship 2015 we stand. Thank you Comrade Okon Osung Professor Okon Eminue Chairman, Oro Think Tank Secretary, Oro Think Tank
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 21:47:44 +0000
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