By Kay Lord
On Monday by exactly 2.10pm two black SUV cars were cleared into Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s residence on Bourdilon Road, Ikoyi, Lagos. Emerging from the first SUV was the outgoing governor of Akwa Ibom State, Deacon Udom Emmanuel. Accompanied by a well known contact facilitator, Dr Ade, who engineered the visit, Udom was ushered into a 10-minute meeting with Tinubu, the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Reports have it that at the meeting Udom prostrated and begged the APC national leader to help him win his election petition appeal at the Supreme Court. He offered to do whatever it would take to win his appeal at the apex court.
With due credit to Tinubu, Udom met a brick wall. Tinubu reportedly told the Akwa Ibom outgoing governor that he, Tinubu, was not a member of the Supreme Court appeal panel that would hear his case. He added that for the avoidance of doubt he would like to stress the point that the APC has a position to support its candidates in all elections and that he as the national leader of the party cannot betray that position. Udom was absolutely deflated and made for his car looking bereaved and drenched like a fowl in the rain.
While I praise Tinubu for his loyalty to his party over Udom’s filthy lucre and the consistency of the APC national leader’s political position over the years, I want to say that Udom Emmanuel is the worst hypocrite imaginable. Here is Udom Emmanuel going round the homes of Yoruba leaders, offering to trade away even the soul of Akwa Ibom State for support to legalise his stolen mandate, yet back home he is inciting Akwa Ibom compatriots who do not know the facts to rise against Yoruba people because, according to him, Yoruba leaders are backing Umana Okon Umana, the state APC governorship candidate, “so that he would hand over the wealth of Akwa Ibom State to the Yoruba.” What a hypocrite!
Udom Emmanuel has said the same thing of the Hausa Fulani. He has claimed that the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar and other northern politicians in the APC are supporting Umana because the APC governorship candidate has promised to mortgage the wealth of Akwa Ibom State to the Hausa Fulani. But unknown to Akwa Ibom people, Udom had gone to the former Vice President to seek cross-carpet support for his illegal hold on power. When he met a brick wall as he did in Tinubu’s house yesterday, he came up with the claim that Atiku Abubakar is after Akwa Ibom oil money through Umana.
Udom Emmanuel also had a similarly failed meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Udom should tell Akwa Ibom people why he demonises Vice President Osinbajo, Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and other leaders of the APC in public before Akwa Ibom people while outside the state under the cover of darkness or in the loneliness of noonday at private homes he is prostrating before these leaders and offering to give away the state only if they could help him to keep his stolen mandate. Udom has no integrity. Udom is a hypocrite. No one should trust him.
In his broadcast of 25 December 2015 to the people of Akwa Ibom State after the Appeal Court judgment which he lost, Udom made inciting statements against the Hausa Fulani and the Yoruba, whom he described as foreigners and slavers. He said Umana was in cahoots with the Yoruba and the Hausa Fulani to hand over the wealth of the state to “foreigners” and called on Akwa Ibom people to “reject servitude” to Hausa Fulani and Yoruba interests.
After the broadcast, Udom’s propaganda team picked up the cue and has been inciting Akwa Ibom people against the Yoruba and Hausa Fulani on daily basis.
It must rank as the most egregious political chicanery of this era that Udom Emmanuel is whipping up ethnic hatred against the very Yoruba and Hausa Fulani people he is ingratiating himself with for political support to keep his stolen mandate.