By Deborah Hassan
365Daily – The sentencing of a Professor of Soil Physics and Conservation at the University of Calabar, Peter Ogban, to a three-year jail term for manipulating the result of Akwa-Ibom North-West senatorial election in favour of the Peoples Democratic party (PDP) is proof that the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, was right in alleging his mandate was stolen, former Deputy Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Yekini Nabena, has said.
Nabena said this in a statement issued on Friday, March 26, in Abuja.
It stated, “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.”
The Professor, who was the Collation/Returning Officer in Akwa Ibom State during the 2019 National Assembly election, was sentenced by an Akwa Ibom State High Court 2 sitting in Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area on Thursday, March 25, 2021.
He was charged with two counts of manipulating and falsifying scores of election results in Oruk Anam and Etim Ekpo Local Government Areas.
The presiding judge, Justice Augustine Odokwo, said the prosecution had proven beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty of the charges before ruling that he should be jailed for three years, in addition to a fine of N100,000 for the two counts, respectively.
In a reaction to the judgement, Nabena said the verdict should make the PDP and other parties involved to “bury their heads in shame.”
He claimed that the returning officer postponed the elections in the local government areas against the wish of the APC and its candidate, and ignored all petitions made by Akpabio.
The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, who is the immediate past governor of the state, lost his bid to return to the Senate in 2019 but was appointed Minister afterwards by President Muhammadu Buhari.