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Akpabio faces higher political risk after Appeal Court victory

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4 years ago

November 10, 2019

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The Minister of Niger Delta and former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Obong Godswill Akpabio, may have little or nothing to celebrate over the annulment of Senator Chris Ekpeyong election in one of the 10 lical governments and ordering of rerun election by the INEC.

Ironically, Akpabio pursued very narrow case at the tribunal unto the Court of Appeal, claiming 61,329 votes from one local government, Essien Udom LGA, while INEC certified that 19,455 voters were accredited in the LG.

Statistics shows that Ekpeyoung leads conveniently in the 9 LGs not in contention with a total of 114,973 votes while Akpabio has 76,917 votes. In the overall result, Ekpeyong has 118,215 votes and Akpabio 83,158 votes, leading with 38,056 votes.

Meanwhile, except magic figures emerge, the winning votes remains wide and higher than the votes to be contested.

Besides, Akpabio will have to resign his ministerial appointment to contest in the rerun election in the one LG. There’s no certainly that he will sweep 100% of the votes to beat Ekpeyong, except again, magic figures are used for the rerun election.

More so, the time for replacement of candidates have also elapsed. The risk of resigning the ministerial appointment may be too high for Akpabio to take. The Appeal Court had ordered that the rerun election be conducted within 90 days.