Re: Akwa Ibom APC Candidates In Tribunal To Make Noise, Get Appointments – Mike Igini.

Barr. Michael Igini, the Akwa Ibom State Resident Electoral Commissioner, like teenagers who disdain authority, has never pretended about his hatred, disgust and disdain for anything APC in the State. He and his co-conspirators in the PDP he represents, were “right”, when they boasted that they could get away with almost anything – a factor that has culminated in an even more unchained Igini and his INEC of commotion and scandals.

If almighty Igini has succeeded in achieving anything since his assumption of office as the State’s REC, it is the fact that he has elevated comedy, insentivity and haughtiness to an inconceivable height; and this is succinctly captured in Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah’s (Catholic Cleric’s) postulation that, “Quacks have taken over every institution in Nigeria, including the political space”. And being a lawyer by profession, Igini, as the Bishop’s position shows, has yet to elevate himself above this quackery sentiments in his handling of affairs as an electoral umpire, based on his gross incapacity to neutrally manage diversity of political parties in a general election.

His claim therefore that the APC’s candidates are in the Tribunal to “make noise and to get appointments”, can merely be seen in the light of his desperate attempts to obviate the fundamental issue of guilt and innocence which like a kindred spirit is daily giving him nightmares. It is now he knows how difficult it is to cover one’s dirty tracks, having lawlessly buffeted all APC candidates’ elections victory in collusion with his PDP predators.

And if I may ask, who would blame Mike Igini for his brazen lawlessness? Who can question his asphyxiating see-Akwa-Ibom-finish disposition? So far, he has thrived in the freewheeling milieu the budgeoning conspirators in the PDP, as well as betrayers in the APC have offered. An Ibibio axiom posits that, ekpu ufok asie akod ekpu ikot ndia (it is the resident rat that invites the external ones to a banquet) and what follows is a “street party” in such a household that falls prey and there lies where Igini’s guts is bolstered.

It further informs why Igini in a clear demonstration of his quid pro quo involvement oftentimes hosts kangaroo press conferences with unfounded alibi, where he releases vile attacks against the APC or outrightly raises agents in both the PDP and INEC as human barriers (this encompasses electoral agents, etc) to willingly blight the chances of the APC candidates in the electoral process, even as the unsuspecting electorates sheepishly overlook his clandestinely deepening and thriving venal enterprise within the Akwa Ibom State’s corridors of power, within INEC at the national and also his agent provocateurs in Abuja.

In the short span of Mike Igini in the AKS INEC, he has not only become a norm-busting REC, but is also embrioled in a quantum of controversies and marriage of convenience with the PDP, thus making him an established venal electoral umpire. In his venality and obvious vendetta-seeking state, he has deeply entrenched bureaucratic and institutional corruption in AKS INEC, with the PDP consciously and overtly lubricating its wheel of embarrassing and nauseating electoral perfidy.

Let me further ask:
(i) If the APC candidates are making noise, why did INEC attempt to smuggle-in bags of ballot papers labelled Ikono, Etim Ekpo, Ika to INEC strong room only to shamelessly and inexplicably ram into Sen. Akpabio’s Legal Team that had arrived INEC office earlier than they must have anticipated? It happened two days into the election materials sorting exercise, granted by the Tribunal sitting in Uyo.
(ii) To establish Igini’s quackery and venal romance with the PDP, why are all ballot papers in INEC strong room for the general elections lumped together? Is it to demonstrate professionalism or a failed bid to scare potential election materials inspectors, because the guilty are always afraid?
(iii) Why has it taken Igini’s INEC more than two months to be ready with election materials even when he keeps deceiving himself that the elections were free and fair?
(iv) If Igini preposterously sees the APC candidates as making noise and or seeking appointments, would it be deduced that, Atiku Abubakar and other PDP candidates (he fraternizes with) contesting various election results are also making noise and indeed using it as cloak for political appointments.
(v) Has this claim assuaged his temerity to cancel elections won by APC candidates at will without recourse to enabling electoral laws during the general elections?
(vi) By such spurious insinuations, would Mike Igini be telling the Akwa Ibom electorates (who went out in their numbers to vote for the APC at all levels but were senselessly short-changed by him) that he has now become the Tribunal’s arbiter in the electoral cases given his prejudicial attacks on the APC candidates? Or would he rather it were the PDP members as the petitioners?

Igini has with all these questions only affirmed the word of God in Eccl. 8:11 that, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil”. Because Igini’s heart is fully set to do evil in Akwa Ibom State, he has become unbriddled in his effrontery and unchained in his fraternity with the PDP to spite the APC. But when an individual is as mad as a hatter, his take home is located in the Book of Eccl. 7:12 which says, “For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it”. This is further strengthened by Isaiah 5:21 that, “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight”. This revelation signposts the truism that the APC candidates are at the Tribunal to right what was and has continued to be muzzled in the entirety of the electoral processes.

By Victoria Johnson