The Politics of Ministerial Appointment from Akwa Ibom (Part 2)

• The second part of a three-part feature on how ministers have emerged from Akwa Ibom State since 1989

By Inemesit Ina

The Obasanjo Regime

The politics of ministerial appointment from Akwa Ibom during the civilian regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo was the most dramatic in the history of the state.

Soon after Obasanjo’s inauguration on May 29, 1999, Barrister Udoma Udo Udoma’s name again came up for ministerial appointment. Few days after Udoma’s inauguration as the Senator representing Akwa Ibom South Senatorial District in the National Assembly, he was nominated as minister by the President on the recommendation of Governor Victor Attah.

But a couple of days before the swearing-in of ministers, Udoma, an Oxford University-trained lawyer, reportedly got wind of Obasanjo’s plan to make him a junior minister. He told some close associates that he would reject the appointment at the venue of the ceremony on the D-day if the rumour turned out to be true. He did. It was the second time in 10 years he was rejecting a ministerial appointment.

An incensed and embarrassed Obasanjo, there and then, asked the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), late Obong Ufot Ekaette, to get him a name to be sent to the Senate immediately for confirmation as replacement.

Ekaette was at a loss. He was not conversant with Akwa Ibom politics at that time though he had previously served as Deputy Governor of the state under Wing Commander Idongesit Nkanga between September 1990 and January 1992. His appointment as SGF came as a surprise to the faithful of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) who had generally assumed that the State Leader of the party, Atuekong Don Etiebet, would get the job. Ekaette was not even a PDP member before his appointment. He was quietly living in retirement as a former federal permanent secretary.

Faced with the emergency assignment by the President, the SGF sought help given his “limitation” then. He requested Etiebet and Attah, who were present at the venue of the ceremony, to follow him outside to get a name.

It was then the story, as narrated separately to this writer by late Dr. Ime Okopido in 2000 and Senator Emmanuel Ibok Essien (Ritman), 21 years later, got more dramatic. Noticing the sudden absence of the trio in the hall, Ritman, then the Senator representing Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District, stepped out to find out what was amiss. He found Attah and Etiebet arguing over the replacement for Udoma while Ekaette waited patiently for them to agree on a name to give the President. Attah wanted a United States of America-based lawyer and businessman with significant interest in the Nigerian oil industry, Dr. Innocent Usoro, from Ikot Onono in Ika LGA. Etiebet was rooting for his nephew and former Chairman of Oruk Anam LGA, late Prince Monday Joseph Etiebet, from Ikot Ekpuk. There was a stalemate.

Ministerial appointment would have been a compensation of sorts for Usoro and Monday as their two backers had unsuccessfully tried to make them Deputy Governor and commissioner, respectively, at the state level. Before Usoro, Attah had also offered Ritman the running mate position but he turned it down, insisting on running for Senate. Eventually, the state PDP leadership overruled Attah’s preference for Usoro and chose a Lagos-based computer merchant, Engr. (later Dr.) Chris Ekpenyong, who had contributed a huge N5 million to the party’s gubernatorial campaign, the biggest amount by any individual.

A very shrewd politician, Ritman saw an opportunity in the stalemate. The senator asked the Governor to allow him and Etiebet to make the choice since the ministerial position had become an affair of his senatorial district because of their preferences. Attah accepted. Taking Etiebet aside, Ritman suggested Okopido, his business and political associate. Etiebet agreed. Together, they communicated their decision to Attah who acceded. Ekaette promptly relayed the name to Obasanjo.

Okopido, then living in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, with his wife who was teaching mathematics at the University of Calabar, was contacted on telephone that day. The next day, he was in Abuja to start the process of confirmation by the Senate. At the end of the process, Okopido, from Ikot Akpan Anwa in Ika LGA, was sworn in by the President to replace Udoma as Minister of State for Environment. He served till the end of Obasanjo’s first term on May 29, 2003.

Meanwhile, back in Akwa Ibom, there was resentment at Obasanjo’s perceived humiliation of Udoma and the state. Some people, quite chagrined, even recalled how the same Obasanjo, as military Head of State in 1978, bypassed Udoma’s father, late Sir Egbert Udo Udoma, to appoint a junior justice of the Supreme Court and his Yoruba kinsman, late Justice Atanda Fatayi-Williams, as the Chief Justice of Nigeria.

At the beginning of his second term in 2003, Obasanjo again allowed PDP Governors to make recommendation for ministerial appointment. For Akwa Ibom, Attah recommended his first Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Obong Rita Akpan, from Ediene Ikot Obio Imo in Uyo LGA. Rita, as she is popularly called, was appointed Minister of Women Affairs and Youth Development in July 2003. Her Minister of State was late Princess Funke Adedoyin, the daughter of the Lagos State-based billionaire industrialist from Kwara State, Prince Samuel Adedoyin. Funke, who died of cancer as a sitting Member of the House of Representatives in 2018 at 54, was reportedly the nominee of then Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

For about a year, the two women, with an age difference of 20 years, wrestled over Funke’s agitation to take control of the youth development unit which was the centre of action in the ministry. The ministry stagnated till the President stepped in to separate the fight. He made Funke substantive Minister of Youth Development. She was later redeployed to the Ministry of Health as a junior minister.

On the other hand, Rita, a former French teacher and Commissioner for Education with a Bachelor of Arts degree in languages and a Master’s degree in education both from the University of Oregon, Eugene, USA, lost favour with Obasanjo. She was dropped from the cabinet in June 2005.

Her replacement from Akwa Ibom was Mrs. (later Senator) Helen Esuene, the widow of the first Military Governor of South-Eastern (later renamed Cross River) State, Chef Udoakaha Esuene, from Afaha Eket in Eket LGA. She was a retired confidential secretary.

Obasanjo made Helen’s appointment directly. It was not surprising given his long-standing relationship with her late husband. As the former President disclosed in Eket during the commissioning ceremony of the reconstructed Eket-Etinan Road in May, this year, in the twilight of the Udom Emmanuel Administration, he and Esuene joined the Army the same day in 1958. Esuene was seconded to form the Air Force, alongside a few Army officers and some recruits for the new service, in 1964. Nonetheless, they progressed in the military simultaneously, attaining the rank of brigadier, a one-star general, in 1974. Esuene even died of heart attack at Obasanjo’s farm in Ota, Ogun State, in April 1993 during a caucus meeting of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) on the campaign of its presidential candidate, late Bashorun Moshood Abiola. With his closeness to Abiola, the former Governor was tipped to be a minister if the SDP won the June 12, 1993 presidential election and took power.

Helen, a hotelier and former Chairperson of the State Commission for Women under the second Military Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Colonel (later Major General) Godwin Abbe, was appointed Minister of State for Health in July 2005. She was elevated to be Minister of Environment in January 2006 (Housing was added a year later), serving till Obasanjo’s second term lapsed in 2007.

The Yar’Adua Regime

Late President Umaru Yar’Adua followed Obasanjo’s pattern of relying on Governors for recommendation for ministerial appointment. Then Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State recommended the Chairman of his campaign organisation, Senator John Udoedehe, who was sworn in as Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja on July 26, 2007. Udoedehe, from Afaha Offot in Uyo LGA, later admitted publicly that the recommendation was in line with their agreement.

Few months into office, in an almost exact replay of the Rita-Funke tussle, Udoedehe was embroiled in a strife with his senior minister, Dr. Aliyu Modibbo, a technocrat from Gombe State who had been in The Presidency right from the Abacha days. At the height of their fight on October 29, 2008, Yar’Adua sacked them.

Back home, Udoedehe, who holds a doctorate degree in Sociology from the University of Calabar, was also at odds with Akpabio who certainly welcomed his sack. During the 2011 gubernatorial election campaign, the Governor, whose second term bid was strongly challenged by the former junior minister, then candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), claimed that Yar’Adua sacked Udoedehe and his boss after they took their quarrel to the zenith by fighting physically over car parking space at the FCT ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.

Yar’Adua, for reasons best known to him, directly picked Ekaette as Udoedehe’s replacement from Akwa Ibom without recourse to Akpabio. He was appointed to superintend the newly-created Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs.

Ekaette’s nomination was nearly torpedoed by a flurry of petitions against his confirmation to the Senate, numbering as many as 13 and said to emanate from Akwa Ibom. Perhaps, his saving grace was that his wife, Eme, was in the Senate then. His supporters accused Akpabio of masterminding the petitions, an accusation he denied. A torrid media war ensued between both camps. In the end, the minister was confirmed and sworn in. He assumed office on December 24, 2008.

Ekaette, a University of Ibadan-educated economist from Ikot Edor in ONNA LGA, was instrumental to Obasanjo’s endorsement of Akpabio’s nomination as the PDP Gubernatorial Candidate for Akwa Ibom, thwarting Attah’s efforts to upturn it after the December 2006 primary. But the former SGF and his wife fell out with Akpabio about a year after the latter became Governor in 2007.

The Jonathan Regime

During the political impasse arising from the protracted ill-health of Yar’Adua, both Akpabio and Ekaette stood by the President, opposing moves by some ministers and National Assembly members to get his deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, to take over. The National Assembly eventually invoked the Doctrine of Necessity to make Jonathan Acting President on February 9, 2010. He became substantive President on May 6, 2010, a day after Yar’Adua finally died.

As a wily politician, Akpabio was able to navigate his way to favour and relevance with Jonathan contrary to widespread belief that retribution awaited him. Possibly employing the same skill, he found even greater favour with Jonathan’s successors, Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 and Bola Tinubu in 2023, after vigorously fighting the two erstwhile opposition leaders, on Jonathan’s behalf, in the past. How he is able to do it repeatedly remains one of the wonders of Nigerian politics.

Ekaette was not so politically astute or fortunate. He was dropped by Jonathan on March 17, 2010 and replaced by Chief Nduese Essien, who was recommended by Akpabio. Essien, a graduate of business administration from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria (Senas Ukpanah, the first minister from Akwa Ibom, was one of his lecturers there), and an indigene of Nta Isip-Ikot Ibiok in Eket LGA, was named Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development on April 6, 2010 when Jonathan inaugurated his new cabinet. He served till May 29, 2011 when Yar’Adua’s term ran out. Essien had earlier made a name between 1999 and 2007 when he, in conjunction with a few legislators, championed the struggle for the abrogation of the obnoxious offshore/onshore oil dichotomy. He was then the Member representing Eket/Esit Eket/Ibeno/ONNA Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives and Chairman of the South-South Parliamentary Caucus.

Having been elected President in his own right, Jonathan became more assertive. He pulled a fast one on Akpabio, appointing an unknown quantity to the Governor as Akwa Ibom’s representative in his cabinet. Prof. Ita Ewa, from Ebighi Edu in Okobo LGA, emerged Minister of Science and Technology in July 2011. Prior to his appointment, he was an analytical nuclear physicist at the ABU.

Akpabio acquiesced. But Ewa unwittingly played into his hand. The minister began early to nurse a governorship ambition, holding meetings with politicians in the state at his base in EEMJM Hotel in Uyo whenever he was in town. That set him on collision course with the Governor who did not fancy any potent opposition to his succession plan. Akpabio initially backed his first SSG, Mr. Umana Umana, and later the second one, Udom Emmanuel, as his successor. Ewa was sacked as minister on September 11, 2013.

The Governor wasted no time in recommending to Jonathan his former colleague in Attah’s cabinet, Mrs. Akon Eyakenyi, from Iquita in Oron LGA, to represent Akwa Ibom. She was named by the President in November 2013 but was sworn in on March 5, 2014 as Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development. Eyakenyi, a former christian religious knowledge teacher who holds a doctorate degree in curriculum education from the University of Calabar, served till May 28, 2015, the eve of the end of Jonathan’s tenure.

• Next: The Buhari and Tinubu Regimes including the unending feud and avoidable miscalculation that cost Akwa Ibom a second ministerial position this time

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