Akpabio Denies Bribing A’Ibom REC
Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State has denied ever bribing the State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Austin Eni Okojie to write the March 28th presidential result, describing such insinuations as false and malicious.
The explanation is coming at the time there is tension in the State as the Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC) yesterday distributed the sensitive materials to the 31 local government areas of the state.
The Governor, who spoke through his Information and Communications Commissioner, Mr. Aniekan Umanah, said his purported bribe of the REC with the sum of N2.5 billion and a Prado Jeep was a cheap talk.
He said it was simple hyperbolic blackmail by opposition and their cohorts in the state, the height of desperation, which reveals the poverty of their reasoning faculties.
Akpabio wondered how, where and when the transaction was made, and challenged the purveyors of the story, which he explained, remains a figment of their miserable imaginations, to expose to the public, how such an incredible sum was given out, transferred or paid, including details of the banks, agents or account details, which made or received the payments.
He acknowledged that, some desperate politicians are going for broke in their selfish bid to win elections at all cost, reminding them that, power resides with the voters, who will either elect or reject them at the polls and that, no amount of hate mongering or smear campaign against his person will buoy their cause, as Akwa Ibom people are already firmly decided on how and who to vote for.
Akpabio however reiterated his call for peaceful polls and issuebased campaigns, regretting that, the willful resort to relentless blackmail, falsehood and mendacity by those who have little or nothing to offer the people has been elevated to such perfidy that takes the shine of our democracy.
Akpabio accordingly urged the people to discountenance the vicious campaign of calumny by these peddlers of fiction and demonstrate their condemnation of their stock in trade by voting for the credible candidates put forward by the PDP in the April 11, 2015 governorship and House of Assembly elections.
He charged officials and staff of the electoral body to remain focused on their constitutionally prescribed duty of delivering a credible, free and fair election once again in the state.
Meanwhile, THISDAY has gathered that agents of political parties and politicians had on Wednesday kept vigil at the State headquarters of INEC along Udo Udoma Avenue to monitor the movement of the materials to different location or distribution point in the state.