By Akanimo Sampson
Akwa Ibom State is being jolted by an unsettling disclosure by a US-based Ibibio activist, Dr. Williams Archibong.
He is alleging that Senate President Godswill Akpabio is being pressurised backstage to withdraw the support of his Annang bloc form the Ibibio people, a majority ethnic group in the state.
This is coming ahead the uncertain 2027 polls, and as the ethnic tension in the state Is worsening
Akpabio, a former governor of the state with a significant political clout, is being allegedly pressed to pull his Annang bloc into an emerging new alliance against the Ibibio possibly from the 2027 polls through 2031 when power will shift to Akpabio’s home political base, Ikot Ekoene Senatorial District.
In a table-shaking post on Coastal Ibibio Aborigines, a platform concerned with promoting the cause of the coastal Ibibio communities, Archibong alleged that leaders of the Oro ethnic nationality are driving the emerging ethnic political alliance.
With the development, the Oro leaders, according to him, are seeking to recreate the 1983 coalition that ousted the late Dr. Clement Isong, an Ibibio, as the governor of the old Cross River State before the creation of Akwa Ibom.
As the Second Republic Senate President, the late Dr. Joseph Wayas, who hailed from Northern Cross River, played a pivotal role in the ousting of Isong as governor of the state.
“Wayas, an Ejagham man, lent official weight to this minority offensive against the Ibibio nation. Between 1979 and 1983, the Ibibio endured the most vicious campaign of calumny orchestrated by their Oron neighbours”, he said.
This time around, Archibong, who hails from Itu Local Government Area, but based in Houston, USA, is claiming, “we have intelligence, credited to quarters close to Senate President Godswill Akpabio that elements from the Oron Federal Constituency are pressing him to recruit the Annang into a renewed minority alliance against the Ibibio, a replay of 1983.”
While disclosing that the lobby includes an alleged plot to fragment Ibibio territory in order to dilute its numerical preponderance, Archibong, who has a doctorate in law quickly adds, “it appears the Senate President flirted with such counsel at the outset of his tenure, but has since withdrawn.
“The Annang, among the most emotionally intelligent of peoples, have declined to enlist in an anti-Ibibio front.”
Continuing, he said some Ekid leaders were summoned and urged to renounce their Ibibio identity in a public press statement on October 19, 2023.
“This was part of the same agenda to fracture Ibibioland”, he said.
“The Ekid people”, he went on, “rejected the overture and instead, on December 1, 2023, over 300 Ekid leaders and stakeholders, led by their paramount rulers, reaffirmed their Ibibio identity at the palace of the Oku Ibom Ibibio.”
While Archibong, who disclosed that he was present at the event, adding, “I witnessed history. May God bless the Ekid people”, is also counseling Ibibio leadership to pursue the full integration of the Ekid, and to avoid the disagreements that pulled a section of Ekid away from the Ibibio fold in the 1990s.
“And where disagreements arise, as they do in every human family, I urge our Ekid kinsmen not to drift to extremes. I am also counseling the Ibibio against docility.
“Prolonged silence in the face of Oro ethnic blackmail and aggression has only emboldened the aggressors. Meet it with full, lawful, and resolute force, so that contemners may learn a lesson they will not soon forget”, says Archibong.
Meanwhile, he says when certain Oro leaders appear on national television to allegedly blackmail the Ibibio, and when they fund proxies to do the same on social media, “they are recycling the 1983 playbook.
“The objective remains unchanged: to cultivate generalised hatred against the Ibibio in preparation for another political rout.”
