Date Published: 01/28/10

Sir,

The N140m Peace Concert & Thisday Award

When I first heard about the December 20, 2009 stoning of Governor Akpabio by angry audience at the This Day Xmas and Peace Concert , I thought that tale-bearers have come again. But with the silence kept by the Akwa Ibom government regarding the well reported incident indicates that it was real. 

It is being alleged that the governor gave This Day newspaper, the organizers of the Concert, the sum of N140million as donation, whereas Governor Oshinmole of Edo donated only N15million for the Concert that also took place in Benin (earlier before the Uyo’s) on Friday December 8, 2009. Going through the back page of New Nigerian newspaper of Monday December 21, 2009, I saw picture of Governor Oshinmole singing on stage with a microphone which looked like he grabbed from a bewildered pop artiste, P-Square. Oshinmole postured even better than the musician; this could be seen from the gaze with which P-Square had on him - with great admiration. The appreciative mammoth crowd were caught in the photograph with all their two hands in the air, in admiration of the governor’s performance. I know that Akwa Ibomites who read the New Nigeria must have noticed it as a question of “different strokes” – one governor loved by his people and the other forcing himself on his people.

With this, I feel that governor Akpabio should search his mind to find out if there are things he does that are not appreciated by his people because their action against him that night meant much. He should not take what happened lightly; it could be the proper endorsement rather than those ones read in the media. What is now making the round is that This Day newspaper’s award to Akpabio among the 50 Nigerians to watch, could after all be an arrangement induced by the N140million doled out to This Day as the reasons enumerated for including him among the 50 men and women to watch seem not strong enough, most people say.

Mr. Kayode Kelani, Plot 243 Kenya Street, Abuja