Akwa Ibom governorship: Beyond APC Propaganda
The people of the state have also seen from the programmes and polices he has so far put in place, with three private refineries and a fertilizer plant in the pipeline, that he means business in his pledge to leapfrog the state into an industrial hub in t
One of the areas in which the All Progressives Congress (APC) had an age over the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 general elections was effective use of propaganda. The tool proved useful, helped especially by the perceived state of despondency and hopelessness in the country, which brought about the loss of faith in the then ruling party.
Now, having won the election, and even with the government firmly in its control, the party has not seen the need to change or abandon the culture of propaganda. We see it in the manner Lai Mohammed,the information and culture minister, sings different tunes at different times, depending on what the issues are.
When the power situation improved generally all over the country in June and July last year, at a time President Muhammadu had yet to form his cabinet, the then APC publicity secretary attributed it to the body language of the president. But Nigerians knew it was the result of the efforts of the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Now, as the government’s spokesman, he is tactfully silent on the cause of the current worsening power situation. Instead, he chose to blame the former president for the apparently intractable fuel crisis, seven months after the later left office. That was after the government and its relevant agencies had run out of lies to tell Nigerians on the true cause of the crisis that took the shine off the Yuletide celebrations.
The information minister has also laboured in vain to draw a distinction between insurgency and terrorism in the north eastern part of the country, to explain away the failure of the military to meet the December 31 deadline the president gave them.
It appears the APC in Akwa Ibom State has taken a cue from its national body in the use of propaganda. The party has applied the tool at every step of the way, from the electioneering period through the elections up to now.
Before the election, it tried unsuccessfully to sell the dummy of an Udom Emmanuel tenure being a third term for Godswill Akpabio, the former governor. But the people of the state saw the former secretary to the government as the most capable to continue from where Akpabio stopped, and they expressed it through the ballot on April 11.
But the APC which, ab initio, prepared for the courts and not the election, succeeded in using propaganda to frustrate the will of the people, aided by a judiciary that appears to be working to achieve a pre-determined goal. The party got otherwise respectable former political leaders in the state who fell out of favour with Akpabio to stay away from the elections, with video recordings of supposed empty polling stations and scenes of the pockets of violence that took place in a few areas, as alibi in its appeal for cancellation of the election.
Now, with the Supreme Court yet to rule on the appeal that Governor Emmanuel has lodged in respect of the appellate court ruling that granted its prayers for total cancellation of the April 11 election, the APC has resorted again to the use of propaganda in selling the lie that cancellation of the election is a fait accompli. But this is one propaganda stunt that will not achieve its purpose.
More than before, the people of Akwa Ibom have become aware of the antics of the APC in the state to destroy what it cannot get. The party knows it cannot win an election in the state, no matter how many times it is conducted. Its recourse to the courts is simply an effort to frustrate the smooth running of a PDP government, in the vain hope that another election would afford it opportunity to perfect employment of the so-called federal might to win.
The groundswell of support for the governor, which is building in the wake of the questionable ruling of the appeal court, is evidence of a people that is united to ensure there is a limit to the use of propaganda in the affairs of man. Pledges of support that are coming from all segments of the population for Udom’s continuation in office is hinged on what has become apparent, namely, the likelihood of a fresh election. The reason for this is not farfetched.
In the short period that he has been in office, the governor has given a lie to the earlier branding of his government as a continuation of the administration of his predecessor. His retention of some key members of the Akpabio administration was for the purpose of guaranteeing a smooth and seamless transition, especially against the background of the need to build on the legacies of the previous administration.
It is the reason he is building on the foundation laid by Akpabio in key projects that would herald the new era of industrialization that he envisions for the state. Two important examples are the Ibom Deep Seaport, for which he has set up an implementation committee with a December 31, 2016 deadline for take off, and Ibom Power Plant, for which he has obtained a license from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission for increase in generation capacity from its current 190 megawatts to 685 megawatts.
The people of the state have also seen from the programmes and polices he has so far put in place, with three private refineries and a fertilizer plant in the pipeline, that he means business in his pledge to leapfrog the state into an industrial hub in the Gulf of Guinea. This is in addition to the various youth development programmes of the administration.
Another governorship election would provide the people an opportunity to choose between propaganda and reality that is already visible to the eye.
Fakunle writes from Abuja