Senator Enang denies calling for Senator Akpabio’s sack

President Muhammadu Buhari’s aide on Niger Delta Affairs, Ita Enang, has denied calling for the sacking of the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, over the imprisonment of a university professor for election fraud.

Akpabio, a few days ago, disowned the disgraced professor, Peter Ogban, saying that he did not rig the 2019 senatorial election for him. But the evidence tendered in court at the trial contradicts the minister’s claim.

Ogban, a professor of Soil Sciences, University of Calabar, was the returning officer in that year’s senatorial election in Akwa Ibom State in which Akpabio, a serving senator at the time, lost to Chris Ekpenyong, a former deputy governor of the state.

Enang, a former senator, described as fake, the report that he called for the sacking of the minister over a state High Court judgement against Mr Ogban.

“I have not spoken on this matter to any person as I have no cause to,” Mr Enang said on Tuesday in a statement posted on his Facebook page. “This is fake, false, malicious and satanic.”

“Please any journalist, publisher, author or blogger who wants to say anything about any person or subject should be bold enough to credit it to himself, and not cowardly attributing it to me or any other innocent person.

“For this, I am now tempted to agree on the need to regulate the social media, for some have converted it to instruments of terrorism and institutions of State cannot helplessly watch.

“Again, I dissociate myself and the APC as a party from this cowardly falsehood,” the president’s aide said in the statement.’

Akpabio and Enang hail from Akwa Ibom State. Both are members of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Apart from Ogban, another professor, Ignatius Uduk, of the Department of Physical and Health Education, University of Uyo, is also on trial for election fraud.

Uduk was the returning officer for the Essien Udim State Constituency election in Akwa Ibom State.