By Chidiebere Onyemaizu

His rapid rise in Nigeria’s political ladder started with his appointment as a Commissioner in his home state, Akwa Ibom. With that appointment as a stepping stone, there was no looking back for Senator Godswill Akpabio in terms of political ascendancy. His political trajectory has largely been replete with effusive praises until he became the Senate President June last year and critics began to dissect his leadership style and achievements which they insist have not been elegant compared to his performance as Governor.

As Governor of the oil rich Akwa Ibom state, Senator Akpabio left a legacy of unprecedented transformational development of the state, especially, the capital, Uyo.Once a glorified local government headquarters,he transformed Uyo to become one of the mordern, well planned, beautiful state capital cities in Nigeria.Akpabio indeed, came, saw and performed and in the maze of the cheers, adulation and thumb ups that greeted his superlative performance, he rightly christened himself “ the Uncommon Governor”.And many Nigerians, indeed agreed with him for he brought uncommon, rapid and exceptional development to his state and in the in the process earned tremendous goodwill and respect among his people and other Nigerians.

However, Akpabio as Senate President, his critics and some political analysts argue, is a blurred photocopy of the celebrated “uncommon” performer that he was as governor.

Though in the words of Ludwig Borne, “goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy” , keen followers of Akpabio’s political journey opine that since becoming the Senate President, he has turned the Senate into an effeminate,  rubber stamp institution and subservient to the Executive arm of government thus frittering away the the enormous goodwill he had earned and enjoyed over the years.

However, Eseme Eyiboh, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Senate President faults this narrative.According to him, what the Senate under Senator Akpabio has with the Executive branch of government is a symbiotic relationship with huge benefits to Nigerians, insisting that those accusing the Senate under the leadership of his principal of being rubber stamp to the Executive of lacking an understanding of modern democratic practices.

“Most of these people making this allegation know nothing about modern democracy. Modern democracy is about governance, participation of the people and promotion of the welfare of the people and not activism.

“Modern democracy, and of course the intention of democracy is all about participation and good governance, and the reason for making the legislature what it is is to promote the welfare of the citizens and not to go into confrontation or battle that will not bring any benefit to the people. Now the question you and I must ask is, has Senator Akpabio’s leadership of the National Assembly brought benefits to the people? The answer is yes! And what are these benefits? What the National Assembly is having now with the Executive does not translate to undermining the institutional independence of the legislature.No! It is the issue of collaborating with the Executive.It is a constructive collaboration that the Senate under Senator Akpabio has with the Executive. When the legislature goes into things like oversight functions, the Executive are the who are implementing, so the cordial relationship between the legislature and the Executive has brought about a seamless development objectives.

“The Senate President has revolutionized legislative oversighting, introducing vigour, vibrancy and openness to the process…the Senate under him has been able to expand the jurisprudence of oversight…Akpabio is a connecting rod to good governance in this country”, Eyiboh told Daily Sun.

Senator Akpabio’s critics also rued what they describe as his unsettling filipancy and unpardonable gaffes which according to them, project him as unserious and  unprepared for the exalted office of the President of the Senate.

In the words of  Effiong Joseph, a public affairs commentator and an indigene of Akwa Ibom state, “as governor, Akpabio out classed other governors with his achievements, he brought purposeful and people centred- leadership,  he brought unprecedented development to our state and many love him for that and still love him till date but the truth must be said: Since leaving office, especially since joining the All Progressives Congress, APC, our dear beloved Godswill Akpabio has practically become a blurred photocopy of the original Godswill we all love and adore”

Senate sources told Daily Sun that Senate Akpabio owes his continued occupation of the office of the Senate President to President Tinubu’s insistence that he remains in that position. On many occasions, Daily Sun was further informed, his colleagues had at several sittings came close to removing him but had to pull back each time following the President’s intervention.

“You know Akpobio was never the choice of the Senators.

“He was the choice of the President but the Senators, especially those of the APC who constitute majority in the Senate, had no choice than to defeer to Mr. President and queued behind his choice, so the president was instrumental to his emergence as Senate President and is also his staying power.

“The Senators are holding back in ousting Akpabio out of respect for Mr president.I can tell you authoritatively that any day the body language of the President indicates indifference to what becomes of Senator Akpabio, he will be kicked out immediately by his colleagues for they are tired of his leadership style and are alarmed by his many gaffes”, the source added.

The Senate President’s alleged subservience to the Executive, Daily Sun sources reveal, is conditioned by the role the President played in his emergence as leader of the National Assembly.”It is a way of showing gratitude to the President for facilitating his ascendancy and always intervening to save his skin whenever his position was threatened”, an Aso Rock source told Daily Sun.

The source further revealed that the Presidency is increasingly becoming uncomfortable and embarrassed by Akpabio’s filipancy.

“While the President will continue to shield Akpabio from removal, his return as Senate President is not certain.His gaffes and his carriage as the occupier of the third highest office in the land are minus for the APC and the presidency is becoming increasingly embarrassed. “Though the Senate President, through his media handlers,  denied ever making such remark, the “we will be eating while they are protesting” remark few days before the nationwide hunger protest greatly embarrassed the presidency. That remark, whether false or true, which was attributed to him at a time the federal government was frantically trying to stave off the protest may have rather played a major role in fuelling it.

“A search for a less controversial and less filipant Senate President has started in ernest and I can confirm to you that a former Senate President from the South east and two ranking Senators from the South south are on the radar as a possible replacement for Akpabio in 2027”, the source added

According to Ephraim Ajobane, a political analyst, Senator Akpabio is a great leader, kind and humane but he missed the opportunity to prove himself a great Senate President because he chose to be politically correct and pander to the whims and caprices of the political forces that made him Senate President.

“Had he manifestly asserted the independence of the Senate rather than kowtowing to the Executive, the commentary about him would have been different today but what do we see? The worst rubber stamp Senate and rubber stamp Senate President ever. Akpabio is probably still basking in the glory of his superlative performance as governor hence once in a while he describes himself an “uncommon Senate President” but you and I know that this new “uncommon” is   in the negative.Talk of two sides of the same coin that took on contrasting features with a passage of time and the Senate President readily comes to mind. As governor of Akwa Ibom, he was focused and purpose driven but as Senate President,Akpabio courts unnecessary controversies and runs the senate like a department in Aso Rock and this does not speak well of the APC as a ruling party and for our democracy”, Ajobane told Daily Sun.

X-raying Senator Akpabio’s leadership of the Senate and the gaffes attributed to him, Dr Tunde Olusunle, a poet, journalist, scholar and author wrote in a March article entitled  Fela, ‘basket mouth’ and Godswill Akpabio”: In the Nigerian order of state protocol, Akpabio is the Number Three Citizen, only behind the president and his deputy. Video clips of the interminable convoys of automobiles which accompany him like similar very senior government officials regularly assail our sensibilities on social media. Such wasteful grandeur, such flamboyance in a land ravaged by mass hunger, poverty and insecurity is not the way to demonstrate commitment to fiscal conservatism in governance.

“My more urgent concern in this piece is the reflex predilection of Akpabio to logorrhoea. Oftentimes, he seems to lack environmental awareness, public sensitivity and verbal tact. In less than one year of holding office as President of the Senate, Akpabio has committed several gaffes incompatible with expectations from his person and position. At the height of the horse-trading which preceded the emergence of the leadership of the legislature, Akpabio showed up at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, at a meeting of members-elect of the House of Representatives. In a veiled threat to the parliamentarians to whip them into line and support the president’s preference, Akpabio purportedly admonished them to beware of the “dangerous” 3Gs. “Suggesting that the acronym was derived from the advice of his mother, Akpabio said the 3Gs imply God, the Gun and the Government. It was allegedly a way of bullying the members-elect about the omnibus capacities of the president, who is concurrently commander-in-chief.

“Akpabio drew the ire of his colleagues last August when he said on live television while the senate was in session, that “a token had been sent to the various accounts of senators by the Clerk of the National Assembly”. He spontaneously recast his gaffe to the effect that his office had sent prayers to the mailboxes of the lawmakers to enable them to travel safely during the legislative holiday. Senate Chief Whip, Ali Ndume indeed warned that the senate took a very strong view of Akpabio’s flippancy and may sanction him. Not too long after, Akpabio made light of the issue of “letting the poor breathe” which became topical in the early days of the hastily announced, multipronged, unfriendly “reforms” of the incumbent administration. His body language was considered derisory of the underprivileged.

“Last month, loose-tongued Akpabio publicly said that state governors received N30 billion from President Bola Tinubu for the provision of palliatives to cushion biting inflation. Oyo state governor Seyi described Akpabio’s claim as reckless and unfounded such that Eseme Eyiboh his media adviser retracted his principal’s goof. More recently, Akpabio in total disregard of the global lachrymose which attended the tragic transition of former Access Bank Chief Executive, Herbert Wigwe, his wife Chizoba and his son, Chizzy, angered not a few people. Banker and entrepreneur, Atedo Peterside, was miffed about Akpabio’s lack of sensitivity at the solemn church programme held in honour of the departed. Akpabio had upbraided the congregation for not applauding him as much as they did Peter Obi, flagbearer of the Labour Party (LP) at the 2023 presidential poll. In an obvious lack of spatial awareness, Akpabio also commiserated with the “wife of the deceased” whose remains were also in one of the three caskets at the service. He corrected himself immediately though while still speaking on real-time television.

“Akpabio does have a history of verbal indiscretion beginning from his years as a super-rich and remarkably generous governor of the oil-bearing Akwa Ibom state. He shocked Nigerians in March 2013 when he confessed on live television that he rigged the senatorial primary of the PDP in his state. He is also credited with the refrain that “what money cannot do, more money can do,” a tacit endorsement of corruption in our national politics which seems to advance that everybody has a price. A lot more verbal discipline and more circumspection are expected of a man who has been privileged to occupy some of the highest offices in the land except the presidency.

“Akpabio is a witty, jolly fellow no doubt. He loves to ignite the space around him with wisecracks. He cannot, however, afford to be an uncontrollable basketmouth during national emergencies such as we have on our hands as a nation. Not against the backdrop of his enviable attainments over time and space which confer specific responsibilities on him. Not at this period of variegated national traumas which calls for sobriety and introspection. Akpabio must live up to what his aggregate experiences confer on him. He should play the father figure and statesman in a country in the throes of psychological depression. These are no times for comic buffoonery and dramatised tomfoolery. These are times when the words from the mouths of our leaders should be the “shea butter” to assuage creased foreheads, soothe frayed nerves and mitigate dripping discomfort”

Between March when Dr Olusunle penned the above piece and now,  Senator Akpabio has made what a former Senator from the Southwest described as “ additional regrettable and embarrassing gaffes and mistalk unbecoming of a leader of his pedigree”,  in the course of discharging his duty as the President of the Nigerian Senate.

For example, apart from the alleged “We will be eating while they are protesting” remark,  during a sitting of  the Senate in July, the President incurred the wrath of Nigerian women, especially female National Assembly members, with a sexist remark directed at Senator Natasha Akpoti- Uduaghan representing Kogi central senatorial district.

Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan had made to speak at the floor of the Senate without comforming to Senate rule which dictates that a Senator must be recognized before being allowed to speak, and  Akpabio, apparently offended by that breach, had shut her down  saying “Senator Natasha, you cannot speak without being asked or invited to speak in the Senate. This is not a nightclub”

This remark triggered octane outrage on the social media and among women groups with many describing the Senate President as the worst Senate President since 1999.They also alleged that Nigerians have lost trust in him and the Senate he leads.

A coalition of several hundreds of women advocates and groups under the aegies of WOMANIFESTO had come down heavily on the Senator Akpabio, describing his tirade against Senator Akpoti- Uduaghan as “misogynistic and derogatory attitude that has no place in our society or our governmental institutions”

While demanding an apology for Nigerian  women,  the group lamented that “Akpabio has taken his pitch against women a notch too far.”

Overwhelmed by insults and attacks on his person the remark generated, Akpabio was later to eat the humble pie by issuing an apology to the Kogi Senator: “I will not intentionally denigrate any woman and I always pray that God will uplift women. Distinguished Senator Natasha, I want to apologise to you..the interest shown on social media indicates that we have enemies. I felt I should tender a public apology to you…I do not mean any harm”, he apologised.

Akpabio, lawyer,  who Eyiboh described as “kind in heart and act” started his public career as teacher, however, shortly afterwards he was called to the Nigerian bar.

Since his entry into politics which began with his appointment as Commissioner for Special Duties and Petroleum Resources in Akwa Ibom during the administration of Governor Victor Attah, Akpabio has enjoyed rapid, and robust ascendancy in the political ladder.He contested and won the Akwa Ibom governorship seat in 2007, serving two terms until 2015 when his tenure elapsed and he successfully transitioned to the role of a Senate Minority Leader and Senator representing Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District from 2015 to 2019.

His surprise defeat in the 2019 Senatorial election on the platform of the APC having left the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, shocked many of his supporters. Till today some of his supporters still blame his estranged godson and former governor of the state, Udom Emmanuel, for allegedly rigging out Akpabio in the 2019 Senatorial contest.However, his appointment by former President Muhammadu Buhari as Minister for Niger Delta after the Senatorial loss ensured that Akpabio remained a political force to reckone with in the national political calculus. Having successfully won the APC senatorial ticket for the 2023 senatorial  election after a titanic legal battle with the initial holder of the ticket and a retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Udom Ekpoudom, Akpabio coasted home to victory in the main election and went ahead to emerge president of the 10th Senate after defeating his main rival for the position, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, 63 to 46 votes.

Edgar Iwendi, a retired civil servant and a member of the APC in Delta state who said he admires the Senate President’s leadership qualities believes that his political career  is just starting. “Leave politics and partisan interests aside, all the negative things and criticisms against Akpabio are cooked up and targeted at his rising political career but take this to the bank, there is nothing anybody can do to dim a rising and shining star. Akpabio’s political ascendancy is just starting and it can’t be dimmed. He is destined for the greatest political height in this country”, he told Daily Sun.