By Ini Morgan

This article is written in the interest of the people of Akwa Ibom State: indigenes and residents alike, who have continued to look up to the hills from where, in the words of the Biblical Psalmist, help would always come to those who look up to God to meet their needs and expectations.

The average indigene of Akwa Ibom State has come to believe that only a circle of people have necesaary access to the benefits accruing to the State economically and socio-politically. This year, a year for Nigeria’s transitional politics, is looked upon with prayers in hearts for the best outcome from the exoevted general elections, which electioneering campaigns would be entertained in the year, this time around.

The processes that would lead to the transit of political power to the next generation of leaders at all levels of governance. Except in States where elections are staggered - due to the promotion of absurd political oversight that prolonged the office tenures of persons rather than stick to the tenures awarded to the true stakes at the various elections. The parties, not the persons, are the ones thrown up as winners in elections.

In the Banquet Hall of the Government House, Uyo, on Sunday 29 January 2022, where stakeholders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the State - elder statesmen, religious leaders and selected civil servants - assembled to honour the invitation extended to them by the State Governor, His Excellency Mr Udom Gabriel Emmanuel, to introduce to them the official commencement of the race of succession to the Hill Top Mansion, Uyo.

There was a reigning clinche to political governance in Akwa Ibom State during the first half of the 4th Republic, which said “Akwa Ibom is PDP”, but since the entrance and the embrace of opposition politics by one of the foremost founding fathers of the PDP in the State, Senator John James Akpanudoedehe, Ph.D, the PDP assumed the struggle to sustain that clinche.

Since 2011, when the father of the opposition struggle in Akwa Ibom State tested the waters against the State's "Czar of Terror", who ruled the State, at that time, with a bloody fist, by contrsting the 2011 governorship election in the State, nobody uses the clinche anymore since then. I needed to introduce this dimension to the entire plot for this article.

Gathered among others in the Banquet Hall of the Hill Top Mansion, Uyo, were critical stakeholders of the PDP, some of whom are members of the State Executive Council, members of the National Assembly, and members of the State House of Assembly, who have helped to sustain the ruling-streak of the PDP in the State.

These men assisted in no mean terms to the actualisation of the succession plan of the predeceased administration that brought Mr Udom Emmanuel as the Governor of Akwa Ibom State. Not only this, these men were also the tributaries that fed the successful re-election bid of the Governor in 2019.

The least thing Governor Emmanuel should have accorded these men and women, would have been to consult them widely as his predecessor in office did when he produced him as his chosen candidate.

There is nothing wrong with Mr Governor nursing an interest in who succeeds him. There are rights that are inalienable, and one of them is the right to choose. Nobody can therefore find justification in quarrelling with Mr Governor for exercising his franchise of Choice.

Stakeholders in the PDP in Akwa Ibom State who have opened up on that meeting held at the instance of the Governor last Sunday, have sensed the building of a tradition that they hope to crush. In their mental picture is how Governor Emmanuel was picked to succeed his predecessor, and the after effect of their support of that decision.

They have contrasted this picture against the performance of the Governor, not only in the governance of the State, but also in the governance of the ruling party in the State.

The logic they have sustained is in their opposing the tactics of the Governor in avoiding wide consultations, side-lining the stakeholders who immensely deployed their resources for his success in the 2 elections in which he contested and won.

In his attempt to establish a tradition out of the political machinery he inherited from his predecessor, Governor Emmanuel has shown a clear departure from the laid down political formula that brought him to leading Akwa Ibom State, and the intolerance of these stakeholders who hold the winning streak of the PDP in the State may cost the Governor a lot of losses, because of his approach to entrench his desired interest. In politics, God delegates his will to "the voice of the people", as it is popularly said "the voice of the people is the voice of God"

God can never speak in his closet as it concerns the will of the people, especially in their rights to determine who governs them (1 Samuel 8:1-19). Otherwise, rather than consign such decisions to a few Church leaders who are not politicians, Governor Emmanuel would have held a Solemn Assembly of all critical stakeholders of the party, who would form a part of the team to consult God for the Governor. I see a man who employs God's name in vain.

In saying a thing about the winning streak of the PDP in the State, I need to clear out the true reason why the All Progressives Congress (APC) has not bern abke to snatched political power from the PDP up till now – until the best man for the job is fielded by the APC in Akwa Ibom State, the man Senator John James Akpanudoedehe; the party will continue to lose the winning-wand she needs to ascend the Hill Top Mansion, Uyo.

At no better time is the Hill Top Mansion made ready for the occupation of the APC than in the desire of Governor Emmanuel to orchestrate a tradition out of his opportunism, and even at that, he also chose to tamper with the strategy used to actualise his reign by his predecessor – that of pulling every fabric of the party together by an all inclusive consultation, and a working together to pursue and achieve the goal of installing a political neophyte as Governor, and as achieved by his predecessor.

Governor Udom Emmanuel’s attempt to create a tradition out of the mistake his predecessor made, and towing a path that is in reverse of that of his predecessor, who has since regretted his act of imposing the Governor, will end in a retarded climax. This is the reason his anticipated establishment of a tradition that tends to entrench the opportunistic deployment of a successor who is a newbie, will collapse in Akwa Ibom State come 2023.