Posted by By JOE EFFIONG, Uyo on
For the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Obong Ufot Ekaette, this could be regarded as his best of times.
* SGF, Ufot Ekaette and kinsmen trade blames over each other's usefulness
For the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Obong Ufot Ekaette, this could be regarded as his best of times.
What could be much better than succeeding in putting the wife as a senator just as he is about to round off his durable tenure as the longest serving secretary to the government of the federation. By May 29, he would have served eight solid years in the President Olusegun Obasanjo's dispensation.
Thus when the press started insinuating that his eight years of secretaryship was not beneficial to his home state, Akwa Ibom, it might have been quite painful to the former deputy governor.
Thus when he had the opportunity, on the day his wife was elected senator to represent Akwa Ibom South Senatorial district as from June 3, he did not hesitate to vent his anger on the offending press.
He told the Akwa Ibom NUJ chairman, Mr. Israel Umoh, who led the team of journalists to monitor election in the area, that the publication 'were false, libelous and untrue," and insisted that he is not a political liability in Akwa Ibom State. He was, however, afraid the impression might register in the minds of right-thinking people.
After all, he said all what was required of him as the secretary to the government of the federation, was to be a national figure and to contribute to the smooth running and operation of the government at the national level.
As for his local government of origin, Onna, which he admitted as his primary constituency, he said it was one only out of the local government areas in the state with social amenities like roads, electricity and potable water, among others.
'When people start writing spurious stories that this man does not love his people, and does not contribute to the development of his area; I am always surprised where they get such information," he commented.
To prove that his family was not a political liability to Akwa Ibom State, Ekaette said senator-elect wife, Eme, had established and trained thousands of people from Eket in skills acquisitions. And at the state level, he said he played a major role in ensuring that the People's Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, who won the party's primares last December, Obong Godswill Akpabio, was given a chance to contest the April 14, 2007 poll.
He even recalled that as a federal permanent secretary serving in the federal ministry of information, he had made recommendations for the restructuring of Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and the Federal Radio Coperation of Nigeria (FRCN). That was before he became deputy governor to Air Commodore Idongesit Nkanga in 1990.
But as they say, a prophet is not without honour except in his home town and among his people, the raw materials which snowballed into the so-called liability stories, come from a body known as Akwa Ibom Interest Group, which president, Mr. Slyvanus Ukpong, is a kinsman of Ekaette's.
The group, in its statement, which it copiously circulated in the state, had said that apart from Chief Ekaette being a political liability to Akwa Ibom, his wife's entry into the senatorial race 'was a slap on the face of the people of Akwa Ibom South Senatorial district in particular and the entire state in general."
It said Obong Ufot Ekaette 'has blatantly and persistently refused to recognize the fact that he has a root in one vibrant but forgotten village called Ikot Edor in Onna Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.
'Ufot Ekaette as the current Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) is the most highly placed public officer from Akwa Ibom State and the entire South-South region of Nigeria.
'Today after eight years of political sojourn in Abuja as the SFG, the longest so far in Nigeria's history, Ufot Ekaette and his wife, Eme Ekaette, have no good story to tell our people - their own people - back home, except the story of their personal enjoyment of the effects and affluence associated with this exalted office.
'No single populist project or programme in Ikot Edor Village, let alone the entire Akwa Ibom State is known to have been facilitated by the Ekaettes. The Ekaettes have kept themselves too distant from the people's aspirations and problems.
'It is based on the foregoing that we take exception to the attempt by Obong Ufot Ekaette to impose his wife as senator to represent Eket senatorial district on the platform of PDP.
'We are aware that Eme Ekaette was defeated in the last PDP primaries, but managed to move up to the point of becoming the party's candidate because of the new undemocratic and retrogressive doctrine of ‘carry-go' in the nation's politics."
But, Mrs. Ekaette, then expressed her surprise that the group was out to malign her family, stressing that her husband as a deputy governor brought the first electricity project to the area in 1990.
'The tap in our house in the village runs for people to fetch free of charge, so I don't know what they want. If I see Sylvanus Ukpong on the road, I wouldn't know him. I have talked with his uncle, the former chairman of Onna, complaining about their activities, but he said they are independent people; so they can do what they feel is good for them."