By OWEI DEBEKEME
Niger Delta Affairs Minister, Godswill Akpabio, is clearly hell-bent on insisting he is entitled to break the law, ignore the Constitution, and conduct governance in accordance with principles that are completely out of sync with the ethos of democratic rule, all in the name of auditing himself through a patently unlawful Steering Committee at the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC.
Ignoring the fact that he has been a chief interested party in the affairs of the commission through the years by being appointor of top members of its board and thus by implication a prime beneficiary of the rot to be audited and unearthed, he pontifically claims the competence to be a judge in his own case through his three-man committee of persons who have, through their pitiable outings thus far, profusely exposed themselves as woefully neither capable nor competent to supervise the audit of a provisions store much less a behemoth like the NDDC!
Already, Akpabio, apparently disdainfully confident that the Buhari administration is a free-for-all in which anything goes has severally mocked the President by de facto overuling him consistently.
As such, he has effectively sought to suspend an NDDC board that has just been constituted by none other than the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of our country and confirmed by no less than the Senate of the Federal Republic! What a Minister!
Taking her cue from her clueless master, his handpicked stooge of an interim MD/CEO at the NDDC has seen fit to lampoon the competence of Mr. President by disparaging his rationale for constituting the board of which she is supposed to be a part by raising issues with the appointment of the NDDC Chairman from Edo State.
Thus, we have a macabre situation of an appointee of an appointee of Mr. President questioning the judgment of her boss’s boss and lecturing our collective President on good governance!
Surely this madness just has to come to a stop and immediately so!
Akpabio’s disdain for his President and boss; his contempt for the Senate of which he used to be a part; his complete disregard for the sensitivities of the Niger Deltan people as well as his thugish approach to governance clearly expose him as uniquely unsuited to public service while revealing him to be particularly inimical to the public good.
Akpabio has demonstrated most generously that he is incapable of functioning under supervening constituted authority. Having been a tin god in Akwa Ibom and a most divisive rabblerouser at the Senate, the man simply lacks the discipline to be a team player in cabinet or loyal servant, even to a President.
As for his erswhile brethren at the Senate, the fellow has nothing but the lowest regard for the elected representatives of the people.
It is clearly not God’s will for Godswill Akpabio to be a Minister. Finding him to be alarmingly unsuitable for that role, God, in His Infinite Mercy and boundless providence has come to his rescue by granting him victory at the Court of Appeal which has now ordered a rerun to be restricted to Akpabio’s own local government area! What a divine gift served on a platter of gold for that matter!
If hitherto, God’s will for Godswill Akpabio’s life had not been clear to Akpabio, nothing could have possibly illuminated it as this court judgment has done!
Surely, Akpabio would want to increase the number of APC senators at the National Assembly and it cannot possibly be that he so enjoys being a Minister that he cannot resign his position to make the sacrifice of going to fight for his party and serving his people by reclaiming his mandate for the purpose of giving them quality representation at the upper house!
The handwriting is on the wall and it was written by the Finger of God. Needless to say, God’s will must be done in the life of Godswill Akpabio.
He must now resign and go and reclaim his mandate unless it is indeed something untoward and altogether rather questionable that is his real mission in the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and particularly in the NDDC.
Mr. Debekeme, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Warri.
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