The defection of Nelson Effiong who represents Akwa Ibom South senatorial district from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) was least expected and has generated much controversy. Effiong has claimed that he left his former party because Governor Udom Emmanuel looks set to renege on an agreement that he would serve for only one term. In this interview, with ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK, Iniobong Emembong, publicity secretary of PDP in the state, spoke on the purported agreement and other issues. Excerpts:
What has been the relationship between Nelson Effiong and the party in the state before his defection?
You have to ask party leaders in Oron and the vice chairman of the senatorial district, Mfon Nkantion. You have to ask chapter chairmen Oron Federal constituency and Eket Federal constituency. If it is only what you can see and hear on radio, you have not heard well. Nkantion says that since the emergence of Nelson Effiong as a senator, he has called the senator repeatedly and he has never picked his call. He has sent text messages repeatedly so that both of them can convene a senatorial meeting. The is the reason why Eket senatorial district is the only senatorial district that has had a senatorial briefing since the inception of government, the first being the one held last week. Uyo has had severally, Ikot Ekpene has had theirs. The chairman of Eket senatorial district of the party said he considered it absurd to hold a senatorial briefing without a senator. Therefore, they were trying to cover his nakedness. At some point, he said he was ill and travelled. So it was from one excuse to another. And because PDP is in the business of giving second chances, because God is God of second chance. The disposition of the party hierarchy then was that coming from a near political oblivion that he has been, that he has learnt sufficient lessons and he has shown remorse, but we may have forgotten that a leopard does not change its spots.
One of the reasons Effiong gave for defecting is that there was an agreement that Governor Udom Emmanuel should serve for only one term. Was there any such agreement?
The position of the law on this matter is very clear. He who alleges must prove. If he says there was an agreement for the governor to run a term, the need is to prove beyond every reasonable doubt but you know that leadership is a continuum. There is no way such agreement would have been held and the party would not have been available and the person who was chairman as at the time in question was the person who is chairman today and the chairman has told us and I sincerely believe him that no such agreement occurred. Invariably, such agreement if there were to be there, why then is the party at the front burner of the endorsement of the governor? It clearly negates the fact that there was an agreement, it was incumbent on the party to enforce the agreement but where no such agreement occurred, you discover that the party in Eket senatorial district without any prompting decided that having seen the achievements of the state government decided that the governor deserves a second term without any prompting. They took that position to the state caucus of the party where he, Nelson Effiong, was there seated and the first to speak and endorsed the governor on behalf of Eket senatorial district. The difference here is when we attend a caucus meeting, we don’t like to record the proceedings, and we believe that people should be honest enough. We don’t bring video tapes into our meeting. Nelson Effiong was the first to speak which I am sure he has not denied. He was the one that endorsed the governor on behalf of Eket senatorial district. He has done it and interviews are coming forth, the interview he granted a year ago and has been circulated widely. He endorsed the governor on behalf of Uyo senatorial district and Uyo senatorial district followed same and the entire resolution of the caucus was read to the hearing of everyone. A member of the National Assembly, Henry Achibong moved the motion which was supported by a member of the state House of Assembly and deputy speaker of the state House of Assembly, supporting the motion for endorsement. It was a unanimous motion and there was absolutely no dissension, none whatsoever with Nelson Effiong seated there. Granted that the man has a right to change his mind but when you change your mind, you should be able to adduce cogent and verifiable reasons why that should be so. However, Nelson Effiong has said and has shown that he is afraid of a woman called Akon Eyakenyi, he has not been able to lead evidence to show the governor is endorsing Akon Eyakenyi publicly or privately to replace him. If you are not afraid of Akon by way of your dismal performance, you are the one declaring on behalf of Akon, there is no news item at least to my knowledge where Akon Eyakenyi has declared for Senate and you have two years before nomination and you are beginning to be afraid of tomorrow today. Now the question is Akon Eyakenyi is a board chairman of Akwa Ibom Polytechnic and you are a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I do not get the comparison where you are now afraid two years into nominations except for the fact that you know that your people have already rejected you. That is the only reason why someone should be afraid. We were in this state where people were not the preferred candidate for the Senate and they still won their nominations.Assuming but not conceding that Nelson Effiong has the spiritual capacity to predict that people will support Akon Eyakenyi over himself, I think that two years to that period is too premature, is too early to come to such a conclusion. At the meeting where the endorsement was made, representatives were encouraged to relate more and have community engagements with their constituents. So, if there have been pressures from Oron Federal constituency and people from Eket senatorial district demanding more community engagements, it is not for Nelson Effiong to accuse the governor. There is no public or private statement that Nelson Effiong can lay claim to show that the governor disrespects him or that the governor does not value his representation or that the governor prefers another. This is the governor who has left clearly the administration of the party for the party. When we were running ward, chapter and state primaries for the party, this governor returned the processes of selecting party officials to the stakeholders in the various places. So you discover that the stakeholder participation led to very peaceful processes that led to the emergence of party officials in a way that has not been before.
When you talk about leaving is not the first time people have left a party; as people are leaving, people are coming in. The PDP in Akwa Ibom has an open front door and a closed back door policy. We keep our doors open for people to come in we shut the back door for retention, so when someone breaks the window and run away, there is just nothing you can do. It’s like a marriage, when the woman or man is set to leave the marriage, you can only postpone it. The people who are accusing people of faction and imposition are great beneficiaries. Remember that until 2007 that some opposition parties never held a nomination that people’s names were just written by the national leaders, so when we talk about internal politics you should applaud PDP. PDP is like a church, every candidate of the opposition was donated to them by the PDP, the ones we rejected became the darling of other parties.
The senator also accused the governor of not showing any interest in the bill before the Senate that he is sponsoring to upgrade Maritime Academy of Nigeria to a degree-awarding institution; what is your take on this?
Let me refer you to the speech by Rotimi Amaechi, the minister of transport at the town hall meeting held in Uyo. Rotimi Amaechi is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), he said without any prompting that over the issue of the conversion of the academy to a university, that the governor of Akwa Ibom State has repeatedly disturbed him and that he has shown concern over these processes and that he is inclined with the governor to bring that to bear. So between Rotimi Amaechi who said this and Nelson Effiong, who would you believe? I leave that to you. I match his words with that of Rotimi Amaechi.
He has also alleged that he has been sidelined and that the governor has repeatedly ignored his input, especially when it comes to appointments?
Facts will emerge, evidence will emerge that the person who served as secretary of the transition committee, one Affiong was nominated by Nelson Effiong. Currently, in the transition committee, it has been stated without equivocation that one Ifang Ifang is his nominee in the transition committee. We have the harmonised list of PDP ward executives in Oron where he took time to sign. I’m going to give you the photocopies for sighting, when the time comes I will bring the original. You see, liars should have the memory of elephants. When time also comes, I will reveal communication between Nelson Effiong and myself that will reveal his nominees for various government positions.
How has his defection affected the party in Akwa Ibom State?
There is no seriousness in it. But let me now balance that, you see, while we are careful to reply and every consequential statement made by and on behalf of Nelson Effiong is that any lie not replied in 24 hours assumes the status of truth and that would become the position until debunked, like the one you asked about the agreement. Everyone in Akwa Ibom knows that there is no such agreement, it could not have been there, but because you have asked, we must answer. Ordinarily, it is something the party would choose to ignore. In talking about the political value, as journalists you went to Eket for the town hall meeting, I’m sure you were shocked to see that even from his own area, there was nobody who ought to have been there that was not there.
The party gave him ticket, the party at this moment may regret what happened but the truth is that at this moment, the politics of nomination is surrounded by a lot of factors that are engulfed in a concentric circle of intrigues, and those decisions are made at the spur of the moment. There are so many things you take into cognizance, and sometimes emotions come to bare. People come around you, kneel down and beg and sometimes you look at the thinking of the hierarchy of the party as at that time favoured that Effiong should be allowed. Remember that at one of the rallies, Nelson said that PDP is a party that has the capacity of raising someone from the dead. Today, having given him life again, through the instrumentality of God, using our party, he has decided to remove the oxygen mask. That is why we said that that is Nelson Effiong’s political swan song is his last political outing, he just signed his retirement letter, having sang that song, he should expect his conscious, speedy descent into an abyss of political oblivion.
Given the fact that this individual was seemingly handpicked by the party and not nominated by the people he was to represent, is the party learning any lesson from this?
That is not really true. That’s why I told you that the politics of nomination and election are different politics, the circumstances of what come to bare at that point are different and the party would decide, the electorate would decide on the strength of what is available at that time. If good people refused to contest or in the process of contesting made some tactical mistakes and error, it would only allow the bad people attract sympathy because when the desirable is not available, the available becomes desirable. So to that extent it is not entirely true that the party handpicks candidates. But the hierarchy of the party in approaching every election, would look beyond the candidate of the opposition to the surrounding circumstances and bring a candidate that can match. In the other circumstance the party would look at someone who almost died of poverty and hunger and assumes that if you bring someone who has had a deep romance with serious poverty and give him a ticket, that when he wins he would not neglect the poor people. How would you know that immediately he is resuscitated he would forget so soon that few days before nomination he didn’t have something to eat? So, there are things that condition the mind of the party while giving tickets, which the electorate also sees. You remember that people are voted during nomination, so the party does not handpick.. There is no science or art, according to Shakespeare to decipher the construction of the mind on the face.
Looking outside Akwa Ibom, we have also heard that some key members have either left PDP or have indicated interest to defect to APC and other parties; what does this portend for PDP
When you talk about leaving is not the first time people have left a party; as people are leaving, people are coming in. The PDP in Akwa Ibom has an open front door and a closed back door policy. We keep our doors open for people to come in we shut the back door for retention, so when someone breaks the window and run away, there is just nothing you can do. It’s like a marriage, when the woman or man is set to leave the marriage, you can only postpone it. The people who are accusing people of faction and imposition are great beneficiaries. Remember that until 2007 that some opposition parties never held a nomination that people’s names were just written by the national leaders, so when we talk about internal politics you should applaud PDP. PDP is like a church, every candidate of the opposition was donated to them by the PDP, the ones we rejected became the darling of other parties.
You have mentioned plans by the party to recall him, how easy do you think this will be?
Well, the law is there for man to experiment. The process of vacating the senatorial seat was also seen as cumbersome until the people of Ondo State and some other states decided to take their fates in their hands and seat of the affected senator was declared vacant by the Supreme Court. People must try because the law is made for man. Man must try out the law. The law was made for possibility and not impossibility. So the law is made for us to test and that is why the courts are there.
