Ahead of the 2015 elections, desperate Politicians are currently hoodwinking opponents and party officials of a presidential blessing, causing panics and division in their states.<\/p>\n
One of such is the acting chairman of the Presidential Monitoring Committee on the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Professor
\nRichard P. King.<\/p>\n
Sources in Akwa Ibom State and Abuja say Professor King has been going round conning people into believing that President Goodluck Jonathan has endorsed him for governor of Akwa Ibom State come 2015.<\/p>\n
Born of an Eket, Akwa Ibom State mother and an Isoko, Delta State father, Professor King was a schoolmate in the University of Port-Harcourt to Dr Jonathan, Nigeria\u2019s current President. Professor King is exploiting the schoolmate link and the fact that he works for the Presidency to dupe people and cast the President in bad light among his supporters in Akwa Ibom State.<\/p>\n
Rumour swept Akwa Ibom State recently that Dr Jonathan was going to announce the endorsement of Professor King for governor during the President\u2019s visit to the state on 27 October 2012 to commission the new Governor\u2019s Office and other projects. At the time of the visit Professor
\nKing was burying his mother in Eket, the oil city of Akwa Ibom State, and the air was thick with rumour that the President would attend the funeral and endorse King for governor in 2015.<\/p>\n
Sources close to Professor King said he instigated the rumour through his habitual name-dropping stunt to massage his inflated ego. Of course, the President did not go to Eket and did not attend Professor King\u2019s mother\u2019s funeral. A source at Aso Rock Villa said the President couldn\u2019t have attended Professor King\u2019s mother\u2019s funeral because it was not part of the itinerary of the President during the visit to the state, adding that Professor King\u2019s use of the President\u2019s name for personal political gain is a con game that should be disregarded. The President has no plan to endorse King now or in the future for governor of Akwa Ibom State or Delta State, the source said.<\/p>\n
In spite of having been exposed for peddling a cheap lie against the President and for grossly abusing his closeness to Dr Jonathan, Professor King has carried on with his name-dropping enterprise and claimed that Dr Jonathan wants to use him to hound Governor Godswill Akpabio, whom, he added, \u201cthe President is not happy with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Political watchers in Akwa Ibom State say Professor King\u2019s antics fall within a well known pattern. They say King\u2019s current name-dropping campaign is not the first time he would take actions to undermine Governor Akpabio and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Akwa Ibom State. \u201cIt should not be forgotten,\u201d a source said, \u201cthat in 2011 Professor King sponsored his brother, Steve Akpan, to run against Akpabio in the Governorship election. At that time King also boasted that he had the backing of the Presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n
King is a professor of zoology at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.<\/p>\n
He is on leave of absence from the university, and currently works at the Presidency on a committee set up to monitor projects execution by the NDDC, a development intervention agency of the federal government for the Niger Delta region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ahead of the 2015 elections, desperate Politicians are currently hoodwinking opponents and party officials of a presidential blessing, causing panics and division in their states. One of such is the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n