Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio has debunked the impression that the crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had worsened following the absence of most of his colleagues and other stalwarts at the party’s reconciliation/peace rally in Abuja on Sunday.
He said the function was not boycotted but that the governors were not properly informed, explaining that he got to know about the function a day to the event, while the Kogi Governor, Idris Wada heard about it the morning of the event.
Akpabio was one of the two governors who attended the event at the International Conference Centre, chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo, but also largely shunned by senators and several bigwigs.
Speaking to State House correspondents after a closed-door meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan, Akpabio denied that there was crisis in the party, and blamed the poor attendance on late invitation sent out to the party’s officials.
According to him: “There is really no crisis in PDP, honestly speaking the one year anniversary of the National Working Committee (NWC) at the International Conference Centre (ICC) was not well publicised. Many governors were not aware of that ceremony.
I got to know about the ceremony just a night before the event. I had a visit from the national publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh and he mentioned to me if I will be at the grand finale of the zonal meetings of the national chairman.
I struggled to get to the international conference to represent the PDP governors who definitely were not aware and I knew if there were no governors there the next thing Nigerians would think that governors boycotted.
I was even surprised the governor of Kogi State heard about it the morning of the event and managed to be there. Also reacting to news item on social media that he admitted to rigging election in his state, Akpabio said those behind it were only mischievous. He said: “If you look at that issues, the social media was mischievous.
They just took a portion of what I said about my senatorial election at 2007. And it was not about the election it was about the primaries.
What happened was that we had many people who contested in my senatorial district when I became the governorship candidate eventually. We looked at the area to which we zoned the senatorial seat to, we have 10 LGAs and two of them are Ibibio while the other eight are Anang.
We felt that since I am an Anang man, the Ibibios should produce the senator and that of course meant that we should shift power to them. So we picked the candidate from the Ibibio who had the highest votes to contest that primaries and eventually he became the candidate of the PDP and contested election.
JD:He put his foot in it again,so as an educated enlightened person i am expected to beleive this b…….t!I say the guy nees help
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