By Eld. Emmanuel Udosen.
Permit me to start this discourse with a direct response to one Mr. Obong Ubong Edem of Urua Ekpa reportedly writing from Offot Ukwa Mbana Nkan Ikwa, whatever that means. His attempt to articulate an argument in support of an illustrious Itu/Ibiono son in the person of Akan Okon while being an ardent fan of OBA impresses me.
The article suggests that at least, there is one OBA’s fan, whether writing from the Uyo raven or not, who has some intellectual coordination, though their number may be in limited supply.
First, he asked if the FUEL I represent is our regular fossil product used in running our generators. No sir. Mine is an acronym for Friends of Umo Eno League (FUEL), the leading sociopolitical group in support of the incoming Akwa Ibom State Governor.
Secondly, he quarreled with my position that Akan Okon did not exhibit sufficient intelligence when the latter instituted a court action challenging the integrity of the PDP guber candidate in the state, Pst Umo Bassey Eno, before setting out to investigate the veracity of his claim. The bases for Mr. Edem’s argument is the fact that Akan Okon, having served as a Commissioner in various ministries in the state for about nine years, is sufficient proof of intelligence and leadership. I earlier thought as much.
But consider this argument. Would it not amount to lack of intelligence if an aspirant should forge two school certificates with pass grades in only four subjects respectively? That is what would be said of Pst Umo Bassey Eno, if, and only if the court finally agrees that the certificates he has used for about forty years and finally presented for party screening were forged. But by reason of my privileged career in the justice subsector of Nigeria, I have seen and touched forged certificates and I can tell you for free that 99% of forgers allot very high grades to themselves and they clear all subjects at a sitting and not the reverse.
Flip it to a man who, after serving in various ministries as a commissioner with every imaginable exposure and understanding of the legal import, first filed a suit with a strong defamatory elements and thereafter started the verification process of his facts. Doesn’t that smack gross intelligent deficiency?
Let me agree for once with Mr. Edem’s analogy that politics is like getting inside the kitchen and one should be prepared to face the heat. Any level headed person should differentiate the normal kitchen heat from when carbide or dynamite is mixed. Akan Okon has displayed infantility by mixing carbide with the normal kitchen heat and he wants the right thinking Akwa Ibomites to share his egghead that it is all politics. No sir. This is politics unusual.
Well, let’s leave this subject hanging here until the controversy receives judicial node on who truly is unintelligent.
I share in the sentiment of an average Itu/Ibiono Ibom person that it would have given them joy if the governorship was micro zoned to their federal constituency. In politics, you don’t bargain to have all you want all the time. The spirit of sportsmanship will guide one to know when to accept a realistic outcome and renegotiate the next available and realistic options. Our Igbo brothers, and indeed the Southern Nigeria, canvassed the same micro zoning in the presidency. But when it turned out otherwise, it became expedient to restrategize. You don’t spit fire and brimstone when the result falls short of your expectation because there is always another day. Besides, when the Ibiono Ibom macho man, Obong Bassey Albert, twice used threats of bloodshed and intimidation to usurp the senatorial chance of Uyo Federal constituency, the Uyo people did not go gaga.
That aside, as I am writing this piece, I am baffled to read from the reply to statement of defence of Akan Okon that because two school certificates have the names, Eno Umo Bassey and Bassey Umo Eno, it is reasonably suspected that they belong to different people and may have only been issued to, signed, collected and used by one person for about forty years without the true owner of the other copy protesting to the issuing body or complaining of his missing certificate. By Akan Okon’s standard of reasoning as posited in his reply to the statement of defence, the presiding Judge should construe that Umo Bassey Eno who applied for verification of result from WAEC is different from Eno Umo Bassey whose name appears on the certificate. To me, while Akan Okon has the political right to peg his level of reasoning, my only quarrel is why a section of the intellectual Akwa Ibom population should choose to sheepishly align with him to maintain the heat in his political “kitchen”.
Again, I am still struggling to understand which argument Akan Okon seeks to sustain in his reply to the statement of defence.
Among other trivial dents, he is alleging;
1. a certificate forgery, but also admitting that the certificates are issued by WAEC but that they belong to different people with none having the semblance of being the property of the PDP guber candidate.
2. that the certificates and the verification report from WAEC are different because the serial numbers have a slash (/) in one but not in the other. Yet WAEC does not deny issuing the certificate with the numbers without the slash (/), and neither does it deny issuing the verification with serialization containing a slash (/). Assuming, but not conceding, that there is serialization error by the issuing body, how does that support forgery by Umo Bassey Eno?
3. that he pleads a verification report of one faceless NGO called “Association for Advancement of Democracy in Nigeria (AADN)” where a branch office of WAEC in Ogba Estate, Lagos State denied having the PDP candidate’s details in their database. Invariably, Akan Okon is saying there was no exams at all which gave birth to the certificates presented by the PDP candidate at the screening. In law, you don’t approbate and reprobate at the same time.
Now that the two certificates are already in the public domain, verification and authentication of same is not rocket science. All that one needs to do is to buy WAEC scratch card and type the PIN to get information about the result. I have done so in respect of the 1983 result and will advise the curious public to follow suit. So far, only the 1981 certificate will not pop up because, according to WAEC source, same is yet to be uploaded. But even at that, I believe the database of Victory High School where the master sheet of results are kept can clear every iota of doubt and same is also accessible to the public on demand. (Find above, the verification result using the WAEC scratch card). One will stand to wonder how the same WAEC can turn around and write to a faceless NGO denying having such particulars in their database.
If the latest social media report making rounds that some WAEC staff are helping the police to unravel the contradictory reports from the agency is anything to go by, then we are yet to hear how many more persons from within and without the agency will be complicit in the deal.
It beats my imagination what level of spell will make some experienced Akwa Ibomites queue behind an argument that is wanting in substance and in coherence.
Agreed that the Nigerian judicial system, like other sectors of the country, is corrupt. Agreed that we have judges who sometime misjudge. But my 35 years in this industry has proven to me that we still have sound and uncompromising judges who will rather choose the part of honor and decide cases based on merit than on technicalities.
I can pardon the 6-3-3-4 generation of School Cert holders who may not know that there was a time Nigerian universities admitted candidates with four credits. There was a time registration of internal WASC accepted less than eight subjects. There was, and there are still occasions when peoples’ surname come first, followed by other names and yet other times when peoples’ first name comes first followed by other names. It might also interest you to know that still in this country, some tribes or group of persons choose to bear all three or two names belonging to the same person without necessarily aligning any to the family names. To Akan Okon and his egghead followers, such people will be subhumans because their names don’t rhyme with the imagination of this political neophyte.
Go home with this my final nugget. If the certificate forgery propaganda against Pst. Umo Bassey Eno had any substance in it, the political juggernauts like Onofiok Luke, OBA, and or the chronic aspirants like Aniema would not have waited for Akan Okon to come and muddle himself with that fiction.