Ekpo Okon: An exercise in amateurish propaganda

By Ushie Ukaani
There is no doubt that the fuji house of commotion that has become of the All Progressives Party (APC), has gravely taken a huge toll on its factional elements led by Mr. John Owan Enoh.
Having lost in an attritive fight for the soul of the party to one of the most calculative politicians in the state, Pastor Uguru Sani Uguru on one hand, and terminally given a hiding a few days ago, by the Court of Appeal, it could not be more sapping and traumatizing for Ekpo Okon who has seen his deputy governorship aspiration vaporized into thin air. What a tragic end to an inordinate ambition!
For a drowning man clutching at the straw, a descent into unscrupulousness and mendacity cannot be considered base. Such was at play yesterday when Ekpo Okon engaged in what his party would have conveniently described as a hate speech by juvenilely reducing himself to a purveyor of fake news.
A crooked and a con man that he has become of late, an attribute that starkly defines his brand of politics, Ekpo Okon would allow his failed deputy governorship ambition get a better of him by peddling rumours of alleged sacking of Governor Ben Ayade as the PDP’s candidate in the Saturday governorship election by an Appeal Court in Lagos.
The reality that Ntufam Ekpo Okon will never be deputy governor is becoming ever too painful for him to bear, validating the suspicion in many quarters that he has lost not only his mind but also his memory and can no longer connect with fact, reality or objectivity.
Else, why is he unaware that Emmanuel Ibeshi filed for a discontinuation of the suit against Ayade at the Federal High Court, Abuja and hence did not go on appeal?
If I did not know this man whose rise to prominence was on the coattails of the PDP since 1999 until he recently became a turncoat, I would have concluded that he was either on a codeine or tramadol diet.
But while it is still difficult to decipher Ekpo Okon’s state of mind, culminating in the fabrication of the fake news about Appeal Court’s purported sacking of Ayade, my take on his impishness is that he was probably recovering from a hallucination induced by an excessive intake of psychotropic substance, the kind that first of all knocks you off, numbs your brain and leaves you with both abject amnesia and dementia.
Steadily, he is graduating into an unstable character less worthy of any leadership reckoning.
If this is the kind of leadership he and his co-travellers of the factional APC hope to offer Cross Riverians, there is no denying the fact that it would have been such a huge disincentive that would terribly help in disorientating the minds of younger generation in the state who look up to him.
Rather than dissipate his already sagging energy on gossip and spreading fake news, Ekpo Okon would fare better helping his principal and factional governorship candidate explain to the national APC how funds released to him for presidential campaign was roguishly diverted for his governorship campaign. But his twisted mind and energy would rather be deployed to inanities that verge on deviousness and ludicrousness.
With his latest slyness, I shudder to wonder what portrait of a father he evinces to his children who by now should be too ashamed to call him daddy with this infamous rubbish of Appeal Court’s sacking of Ayade. Ekpo Okon, again you failed in your amateurish propaganda.

Ushie Ukaani, a commentator on national issues writes from Calabar.

Politics is a dirty game take or leave it