ARTICLE: A CHAMELEONIC and MEALY-MOUTHED OPPORTUNIST By ITA AWAK
According to the Premium Times of Friday, 29th April, 2016, Mr. Luke spewed out this wholly incongruent, rascally and irresponsible opinion when he was addressing members of the Young Lawyers’ Forum of the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, who had congregated in Uyo for a summit.
As it is in the character of unscrupulous PDP thugs and leaders all over the country, Onofiok Luke conveniently avoided to furnish his audience with a scintilla of fact or give a known example of Buhari’s "misgovernment" in the last eleven months. In his opinion, when things were wrong in the last eight years, "we had senior lawyers who would hit the streets shouting and making demands in the name of human rights activism...Yet the same things which happened in the last couple of years are happening today, and even taking worrisome dimensions but there seems to be a conspiracy of silence."
When I first read this statement credited to Mr. Onofiok Luke, I couldn't help but wonder which "conspiracy of silence" this dude was talking about. Indeed, exactly what has happened under the about one year government of APC at the national level that warrants Onofiok Luke to schizophrenetically think that national governance has negotiated and/or reached "worrisome dimensions???"
One is asking these questions because since this young chap called Onofiok Luke was elected to represent the people of Nsit Ubium local government in the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly in 2011, not a whimper has ever escaped from his padded lips advocating accountability, good governance and equitable distribution of the resources of the state across the demographic groups and ethnic nationalities.
We recall, for example, that Onofiok Luke was in the House of Assembly that approved a budget of over 120 billion Naira in 2012 for the kleptomaniacal regime of Godswill Obot Akpabio to establish at least one industry in each of our 31 LGAs. What can assume a more "worrisome dimension" than the fact that until now, clearly four years after, the last PDP government of Godswill Akpabio did not establish a single factory or industry anywhere until it expired; not one Akwa Ibom youth got employed despite Akpabio claiming that Tropicana was going to employ 5,000 Akwa Ibom people by 2010; and Onofiok Luke, even now as a second termer and Speaker, has remained conspiratorially silent over this blatant shortchanging and uncommon roguery??? Since he has brought this matter up, it is important we remind Luke that he was one of the spineless sycophants in our House of Assembly choir who were busy praise singing to high heavens the scandalous and thieving government of Godswill Obot Akpabio.
As I write this, I have before me current editions of the Weekend Guide and Global Concord newspapers which reported Akan Okon, Udom Emmanuel’s Commissioner for Finance, as saying that the "Ibom Tropicana Entertainment Complex project is not the priority" of the Udom Emmanuel administration. But this is a vindication of our earlier stand for I've severally declared that the Tropicana project is "a sepulchre of uncommon larceny," a 4-1-9nish scam put together by the Akpabio regime to criminally loot our common patrimony. Has Onofiok Luke ever come out to question why Akpabio did not deliver the project that was started in 2008 after squandering well over 150 billion Naira on a project that was expected to gulp only 33 billion Naira? ?? Why is this young man so timid to ask human rights activists to help bring to world attention the fact that the PDP government stole well over 2.5 trillion Naira from Akwa Ibom State treasury in the name of "uncommon transformation" between 2007 and 2015???"
All said, I want to advise the PDP Speaker of AKHA to mind the business that providence has blessed him with. If he continues in the irresponsible manner of throwing darts and unwarranted insults on the APC national government, we shall be compelled to invite national and international interests to be interested in how the PDP has been running and looting Akwa Ibom State resources since 2007.
Ita Awak is Akwa Ibom APC Publicity Secretary
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