MOSES EKPO’S SAD GAFFE AND THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE

MOSES EKPO’S SAD GAFFE AND THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE

By Sampson Sampson

The deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State is a man blessed with good age. He has attained the age that allows wisdom to come to him naturally. He has also through the benevolence of GOD enjoyed extensive exposure. It is why his utterances and actions are hardly excusable if they fall short of expected moral and ethical standards.

But Mr Moses Ekpo has continued to fall short of these expectations while the public have continued to look the other way out of respect for his age and submission to a value system that he himself is leading the unsuspecting public to invert. I hold this opinion because his unfortunate references at any fora to Senator Godswill Akpabio, the erstwhile governor of Akwa Ibom State who single handedly made him deputy governor at the chagrin of many illustrate an inversion of our value system of gratitude.

During the last election, Mr Ekpo was not only a part of the high wired conspiracy against Akpabio, he also used every occasion he had to malign Akpabio by describing him in sordid and despicable terms. He relegated the fact that if the need for a referendum over his choice as deputy governor had arisen, not even his family members would have chosen him. But someone took the risk, bore the unrelenting insults that have continued till today and presented him for the office of deputy governor. Today that person is his butt of unwarranted attacks and acerbic vituperations. What is Moses Ekpo teaching the younger generation? Is he championing that gratitude should be expunged from our value system? What legacy would Moses Ekpo actually hand down to the generations that would succeed him when he is tired of this unbeneficial over time that he is doing?

A few days ago, the deputy governor, Mr Moses Ekpo was quoted to have said at the Ati Annang event that when the time comes, Annang would sit down to choose someone that would take them to Nigeria, insinuating that his benefactor, Senator Godswill Akpabio who through God’s uncommon benevolence is the MINISTER DESIGNATE is not the man to take Annang to the centre. This divisive and injurious statement which lacks both sense and logic shows that much more than politics have made inroad into our social relations predisposing the people to hate and reject the things that would bring enormous benefits to them in acquiescence to the teachings of the likes of Moses Ekpo. This is the kind of legacy that Ekpo who is said to have a glorious public service career that spans more that four decades but who can not point at a single person whose life he has improved wants to live behind. Moses career which started before Nigeria’s Independence in the 60s has seen him occupy high offices but without any individual attaining any level of career, professional, social or economic independence through his effort

Well, Mr Ekpo may just be flying a kite. Being a man that does not work for the things that come to him, he may be suffering the delusion that they may come a time that ethnic nationalities may need to “choose” not “elect” (he knows he can never win election) people to represent them at the centre without any election . Having failed woefully when he vied for the SENATE in the 90s and not wishing for any such experience again, Moses thinks that what happened in Akpabio’s time would repeat itself. Far from it. That is when he would know that the people of Abak, Abak Five and indeed the entire Annamg do not reckon with him as their leader. In fact the people are always happy to forget that he exist in their political calculation. What do they want with a man whose presence in government has benefitted no one including his immediate family? What do they want with a man who could not use his office as deputy governor to fix Hospital Road for close to two years when erosion ate up that part of the road and cut off several communities from accessing Abak Town? It is to his eternal shame that NDDC had to finally intervene to salvage the road while he still serves as deputy governor and now delights to ply the road to his country home.

It is against the grain of logic that such a lesser man of no public impact and importance is the one regaling himself in a demagogy of publicly repudiating a man whose achievements across the State acquit him as a natural leader. Senator Akpabio’s public impact is not only replete in Akwa Ibom State, it is immense even in the life of the deputy governor who was on the verge of destitution before Akpabio extended a helping hand but who shamelessly stands in public space to condemn the MINISTER DESIGNATE using inane and illogical reasoning. . If people of his generation were given to pettiness and jealousy, let him not hand that down. There are no legacies. Let him rather copy what what Akpabio used the office of commissioner to achieve, borrow from what he used the office of governor to wrought, familiarise himself with what he used the position of senator to attain and envisage what he would use the office of minister to accomplish if he has any intent to make his life meaningful and leave any modicum of legacy which so far is eloquently lacking in all his deeds.

Sampson Sampson writes from Akwa Ibom State.