Before the landmark judgment that confirmed Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio as the authentic candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2023 Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District election, there was this somewhat ballooning political bubble that the race for the senatorial seat will be a walkover for the candidate of any popular political party. It was the thinking that, without Akpabio, anyone can ride the crest.
However, the trending ripples in many hitherto considered strong political camps outside and within the senatorial district are manifest signs that the judgment has punctured the political bubble: Conversely, the ballooning guarantees that the election was going to be a one-horse race has evaporated.
Currently, there seems to be concerted efforts to push a number of lopsided narratives ranging from a fairy postulation that the 2023 race is an exclusive compensation for a person who has been in conspiratorial cahoot that has led to a near decimation of the once popular PDP in the state.
That conjecturing birthed a false entitlement mentality localised to Abak/ Etim-Ekpo/Ika Federal Constituency and widened as untenable political premise to politicise Abak 5.
Perhaps, while those also promoting the sentiment that the Abak 5 is yet to produce a senator could score a scrawny political point, extending the narrative to portray someone’s personal political ambition as the collective interest of the bloc, there are demands of convincing evidences of what sustainable legacy such persons have ever used the various high public positions they occupied to create in Abak 5 to warrant any ray of hope that their senatorial ambitions, this time, will bring any tangible dividends to the ordinary people of that federal constituency, talk-less of the senatorial district.
Above these trivialities, we must not lose sight of the reality that, going by the projected configuration of political representation of Akwa Ibom State on the national political scene, none of the current senators from the state will return to the Senate in 2023.
Considering the commanding significance of having a ranking senator in the 10th Senate, it is doubtless that electing senators in the three senatorial districts is any longer a matter of serving a few local political interests but an indispensable political obligation to serve the overriding and wider interests of the state.
Evidently, among all the candidates vying for the three senatorial seats across the major political parties, Senator Godswill Akpabio is the only candidate that would return to the Senate as a ranking senator, if elected. Accordingly, his ambition is, indeed, a public interest project.
Therefore, it is expedient that every other personal, sectional or clannish political interests that tend to becloud or ignore this reality be regarded and treated as secondary, primarily because the national political interests of the state is paramount and above every other personal, sectional and even partisan considerations.
Given this scenario, the election of a senator for Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District should not be seen as either attempt to deprive Abak Federal Constituency or a power tussle between parties.
It should be seen more as an existential political demand for optimum representation of the larger political interests of Akwa Ibom State on the national political scene in the overriding interest of all.
This, indeed, is one national assignment that can only be entrusted on the most roundly qualified, who undoubtedly this time is Senator Godswill Akpabio.
Beyond his status as a first term senator, Akpabio has an unparalleled political leadership experience, pedigree and aptitude.
Also, he has a pole-point advantage in legislative experience, capacity, competence, charisma, connections and legacies.
Additionally, his background as a one-time governor of the state has sufficiently emplaced him to play a pan-Akwa Ibom role on the national political scene.
Therefore, electing Senator Akpabio for the Senate come 2023 is both a political priority and prized political investment, not just for Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District, but Akwa Ibom State.
His antecedents and legacies from his days as a commissioner to his tenure as governor and later a senator are not merely inspiring testimonies that Senator Akpabio is exemplary in his love and peerless in his concern for the well-being of both the state and his people but the guarantee that he will use his position to selflessly serve the people.
This trust takes precedent on his documented uncommon commitments to the socio-economic uplift of the people across the state as governor crowned by his unprecedented and record-setting massive empowerment of constituents during his first term as a senator.
Importantly so, as a truly detribalized and patriotic leader, it is doubtless that it is actually in Akpabio’s representation that the people of Abak Federal Constituency and the Senatorial District in particular and Akwa Ibom State as a whole will enjoy greater and more enduring democratic dividends.
Therefore, it is on these and many familiar scores that the benefits of electing Senator Godswill Akpabio to represent Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District in 2023 far outweighs all other ambitions and the anticipated paltry economic gains such ambition portend for a negligible few.
•John, a public affairs commentator and social crusader, writes from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
