The All Progressives Congress says the Muhammadu Buhari government and the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, have been vindicated following the conviction and sentencing of a university lecturer, Peter Ogban.
Yekini Nabena, The Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the APC made this known in a statement issued on Friday in Abuja and titled ‘PDP’s electoral fraud: Court has vindicated APC, Akpabio’.
Gistlover reports that Ogban, a Professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar, was found guilty of two counts of falsification of election results and announcing fake results by an Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in Ikot Ekpene.
The don, who was the returning officer in the 2019 Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial district election, was ordered to pay a fine of N100,000 on count one and sentenced to three years imprisonment without an option of a fine on the second count.
But according to the statement, Nabena accused the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of using the UNICAL professor to rig out Akpabio at the senatorial election.
He asked the PDP elements who used the UNICAL professor to “bury their heads in shame” and apologize to Akpabio and the ruling APC.
Nabena said the senatorial election was fraudulently postponed by the returning officer against the wish of the APC and its candidate, while all the complaints made by Akpabio and the ruling were not given attention.
The APC’s spokesman said it is on record that during the election, the minister asked INEC to redeploy the then Resident Electoral Commissioner in Akwa Ibom State when he (Akpabio) noticed that the PDP was using some officials of the electoral umpire against him.
Nabena, however, condemned the alleged “manipulative strategy” being employed by the PDP and its agents, particularly in Akwa Ibom State, to discredit the APC and Akpabio as a result of the court’s judgment.
He called on Nigerians to disregard the alleged attempt by the PDP and its sponsored agents to “misinform the general public on the real issue, the interpretation of the court judgment and the integrity challenge bothering on the PDP.”
The statement read in part, “We celebrate the court’s pronouncement jailing one of the agents of the PDP used against our candidate (Akpabio) in the senatorial election in Akwa Ibom north-west in 2019. We always believe that ‘if a lie goes for 20 years, the truth will meet it one day.’ This judgment is significant in the sense that others like Prof Ogban in the system should henceforth know that under the present Federal Government/APC’s administration, justice will always prevail.”
