As far as the National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN) is concerned, it is mischievous to link the Senatorial election victory by the Senate President Godswill Akpabio to the conviction of Prof. Peter Ogban by the Court of Appeal.
Recall that the Court of Appeal sitting in Calabar, in its ruling last week Wednesday, affirmed the earlier judgment of the High Court in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State, which found Ogban guilty of electoral fraud and sentenced him to three-years imprisonment for allegedly manipulating and announcing
falsified results in the 2019 Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District election, which favoured Senator Akpabio.
In a statement on Wednesday by NYCN’s President, Amb. Solomon Adodo, the youth group condemned in strong terms the ongoing media trials and the desperation by Akpabio’s adversaries to tarnish his image and reputation.
The group insist that the misinformation that the Senate President benefitted from or committed electoral fraud following the conviction of Ogban, a former INEC Returning Officer, is highly misleading and just one of the many sinister plots aimed at undermining the current administration.
“If not deliberate mischief, how can any right thinking individual conclude that Ogban rigged the election in favour of Akpabio when in reality, he announced Akpabio’s opponent as the winner and it was at the tribunal that Akpabio regained his mandate?,” they querried.
“This is nothing but deliberate, sponsored and calculated falsehood and misinformation intended to harm the towering political image of the Senate President who has been seen by many lovers of democracy as an ideal candidate for President after Tinubu’s eight years.
“It is a dangerous enterprise for anybody to willfully distort very obvious facts like these just because they want to score cheap political points. To even think that very highly placed Nigerians believed this twisted falsehood and even propagated it on notable media channels is disheartening.”
The group maintained that those behind the allegation must be acting in accordance with the plot scripted from the Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan camp to implicate the Senate President in an organ harvesting scandal, similar to what happened to the former deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ikweremadu.
They thereby urged Akpabio to remain steadfast and committed in his duties, adding that they would continue to give him the needed support to carry out his duties.
