Former Akwa Ibom State Deputy Governor Patrick Ekpotu has described as insulting and insensitive the plot by Senator Goodwill Akpabio to take over the state.
Ekpotu, in a statement yesterday, decried the former Senate Minority leader’s comment, as “unfortunate, insulting to Akwa Ibom people and a threat to peace in the state”.
He noted that such attitude is unbecoming of a former governor, who ruled the state for eight years.
Ekpotu said: “ It is a sign of unpardonable naiveté for anyone who has acquired the status of a statesman to make a statement, which alludes to a lack of feeling for that senseless sacrifice of great number of human lives. This is where I differ in accepting that there must be a background limitation to freedom. Akpabio is my former governor who I deeply respect and he knows this.
‘’But he does not have to be like most Nigerian statesmen whose frame of orientation still remain utterly illusory due to the accidental nature of their statesmanship.
‘’It is only statesmen with such system of orientation that give satisfying meaning to whatever comes out of their mouth, however awkward.
According to the former deputy governor, “every evil arrives in the world a little at a time so that in pushing people into action, a painful experience is added to the voice of pure reason. His various Hitler-like invasions against opposition in the past, had, unknown to him, conditioned the people of Akwa Ibom in readiness for his 2019 intentions.”
He noted that Akpabio, for many reasons, cannot seek to replay the cited invasion in present-day Nigeria.
“First, the Poland invasion was a joint one claimed to be a defensive action, with the Soviet Union, Danzig, and the Slovak contingent and the senator has no allies except the two House of Assembly and two representatives from his community that defected with him.
Secondly, Britain and France were not convinced and declared war on Germany, and this is bound to play out during his invasion scheme following Akwa Ibom’s readiness and mistrust of his defection intentions.
Thirdly, it led to the beginning of World War II with huge cost in human lives, which no statesman should gamble with.
Fourthly, Germany was to pay for it dearly and Hitler, unable to face the world he thought was in his pocket, was said to have committed suicide. That, essentially, led to the rule of force being supplanted by the rule of law.”
Ekpotu added: “What will Akpabio be defending? With who, I mean allies, is he invading Akwa Ibom on APC’s behalf? What is his readiness to play the Hitler figure in his envisaged invasion?
‘’Hitler was Germany’s commander-in-chief and the last time I asked, the senator is not the C-in-C in Nigeria. And the current C-in-C is different from the one he knew who could readily surrender a large degree of control of his security forces to him. And if Akpabio had such elastic endurance for tough times, why did he defect from the party he had everyone believe belonged to him? He would have acted like Hitler or surrendered himself to the consequences of his past.
“We are thought that man’s first act of freedom was disobedience to high command for which he suffered, got sanctioned and expelled from the garden, thus bringing eternal suffering upon us.”