Date Published: 03/11/11

Know the ACN Gubernatorial Candidate - Senator John Akpan Udoedeghe by Hope Umana, Esq.

Senator John Akpan Udoedeghe

John Udoedeghe is a former Senator from Akwa Ibom Central on the platform of PDP and a former Minister of State, but presently the flag bearer of ACN in the governorship campaign.   Udoedeghe is from Akwa Ibom Central and waged a hard fought psychological battle with the incumbent for the PDP ticket but decided to take his fight to ACN when it appeared to all that Akpabio will win within the party.  

Udoedeghe has however not gone from PDP without leaving flares behind and his sponsored candidate is presently suing PDP and Akpabio on issues around the PDP re-run primaries.  In a not so veiled strategy this “PDP candidate” is leading the litigation route with Udoedeghe’s campaign manager and attorney from ACN.  This kind of roughshod fighting style is at once Udoedeghe’s strength and his albatross.

Udoedeghe is a veteran of many political campaigns and is no stranger to Akpabio.  He was Akpabio’s lieutenant in the Attah-Ekpenyong second gubernatorial contest which Akpabio chaired.  After Udoedeghe fell out with Attah, he was also brought in as brawn for Akpabio during the hefty knock-down-drag-out fight with Akpabio’s predecessor that gave Akpabio his first term ticket.  Observers of both these individuals know that Udoedeghe can play the “hardy game” and are therefore surprised that in an ironic twist he almost succeeded in painting Akpabio as the rough player of the two. 

Udoedeghe has also risen within the political ranks rather quickly, thanks to the lethargy and fear created during the Abacha era political gamesmanship that deterred many able candidates.  His connection to the Abacha clique and their tactics from his Uyo motor park days encapsulates his core.  His grasp then of the Uyo Senatorial seat (on the platform of a now defunct party) from the Uyo Chairmanship seat in the face of intimidated and limp opposition immediately put him in serious spotlight.  That win made it possible for him to take a pole position when civilian rule returned in the Third Republic after Abacha’s demise. 

As the first Ibibio male to be made Federal Minister in Nigeria Udoedeghe retains some prominence with Ibibio “patriots,” and this has morphed into some support from elements who would not vote for a statewide candidate of non Ibibio extraction.  Udoedeghe has tailored his campaign around this particular theme and that has served him well especially with a small group of very vocal and boisterous adherents who would rather have the Ibibio’s run the affairs of the state in perpetuity. 

On the downside, Udoedeghe’s campaign is mainly negative and is long on fear and ethnic mongering but short on substance.  His campaign gear is high on vote against Akpabio, but offers little as to why the vote should be for the former Senator.  He highlights kidnapping and cultism in government without proof and worse still without identifying how he can deal with those issues if elected. 

Strangely also, Udoedeghe who has been a local government Chairman, Senator and Minister has failed to campaign on his record.   Observers note that he has no meaningful achievement that is not self serving.  While his website is replete with committees that he sat on as Senator, a matter of routine legislative privilege, he has not identified even one bill or initiative that he authored or co-authored that bears his vigor, fingerprint let alone imprimatur.  

But followers of his career are most unforgiving that he took sides with Obasanjo (another Yoruba man, as Awolowo before him) against the state in the fight for fiscal fairness from the off shore oil wells dispute.  Udoedeghe was Senator from Uyo at that time and what he fought against in fact was his core senatorial responsibility to the state, as part of the state’s federal legislative delegation.  Today, he unabashedly desires to control this same resource that he fought assiduously against and the Ibibio’s and Akwa Ibom people generally do not feel that he merits that responsibility and trust. 

The ACN candidates also cannot explain satisfactorily the yawning gap in his personal resume which defines him as without much intellect.  As a son of a prominent Uyo business man of the Akamasio driving school and business fame, John had dismal educational attainment until he became a local government Chairman.  He got his Chairmanship from his tightfisted control of the Uyo motor park and his connection to the Abacha and military goons.  The joke behind him has always been that he could only go to university when he was able to “buy” the degree.  He did not attend University with his contemporaries, and not because his parents could not pay for his education.  Both Governor Akpabio and Larry Esin, years younger than John finished university long before Udoedeghe even enrolled.  Born in 1960 he first enrolled in University by 1990, a whopping thirty years after to study Sociology.  This was one of the major reasons many Ibibio kin opposed his recommendation for Minister and passed that he was unqualified.   Ibibio’s wanted the first Ibibio male Minister to be somebody of intellect and wisdom, but he put a “gun” to the Governor’s head and got his wish. 

The other issues related to this lack of intellectual acumen is what caused him not to, and why he did not go to college timely and what he was doing then.  The “what” is explained by his attraction to street mentality and the “why” was his domination and leadership of the motor park tout clique in his early adult years.  This background as a motor park enforcer still haunts him and creates an inferiority complex around him.  It appears that unable to make it in school, he found resourcefulness in the Uyo motor park in those volatile years of the eighties.  That mindset defines the way he does business and how he presents himself.  He is described as conceited and sometimes egotistic.  On his website for example, he takes pains to highlight that he beat the person who defeated his father in an earlier election and his boasts about his Rolls Royce is not news any longer in civilized circles.  It is also true that he was fired by the largely ineffectual President Yar’Adua after only a very short time as Minister, because of his overbearing boasts and habitual fights with his substantive Minister, including parking his Rolls in the Minister’s official parking spot and telling that boss to “go to hell.” 

Udoedeghe is also alleged to be vain, vile and vindictive by those who know him intimately.  He fell out with Akpabio’s predecessor because that Governor refused to provide him the funding to buy the Paper Mill at Oku Iboku.   His earlier support for Akpabio against that prior Governor was grounded in part on the hope that Akpabio will allow him resurrect that purchase plan.  When Akpabio also balked and denied funding after noting rightly that the purchase plan was geared to socialize the losses (to the state treasury) and privatize the profits (to Udoedeghe) he was livid.  Since then he has become Akpabio’s nemesis including spreading falsehood that denying the funding was part of a plan to strangulate Ibibio’s economically.  Logically, by making that accusation Udoedeghe insinuates that Obong Victor Attah also had a grand plan to strangulate the Ibibio’s economically when Attah also denied him the funding for the Mill.  That rubs off clear thinking Ibibio people wrongly and underscores the perception that he is dubious and fickle.  

What John Udoedeghe lacks in brains he makes up for in muscle.  And that can be a good thing sometimes in the rough and tumble of Nigeria’s brand of political gamesmanship.  Being seen as a strong man has its merits but Akwa Ibom State has seen its fair share of strong men being shunted aside for progressive minded democrats.  Analysts posit that Udoedeghe’s real hope of taking the Governor’s seat is through the courts and the efforts by his proxy within the PDP has telegraphed this strategy further to the PDP.  PDP is therefore leaving no stone unturned to ensure that it does not default and offer that asymmetrical shot to this ACN candidate.  On Election Day he may very well get an Atiku.