VIDEO: Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom admits rigging senatorial election

In a barefaced confession to electoral fraud, Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State, who is at the centre of multiple “gift” scandals involving state funds, has admitted on live television, to falsifying a senatorial election result and personally replacing the winner with his preferred candidate.

Mr. Akpabio spoke during the federal government’s contentious “Good Governance Tour” in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

While addressing the visiting delegation on his government’s achievements, Mr. Akpabio, seeking to impress his sense of evenhandedness on the audience, said he struck off the name of the winner of the Akwa Ibom north senatorial in his party’s primaries, and replaced same with Aloysius Etok.

Mr. Etok went on to win the main elections, and is currently the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Establishment and Public Service matters.

Mr. Akpabio, who in the past, claimed elections in the state were amongst Nigeria’s freest and fairest, laid bare in the speech to the federal delegation, captured on camera, how he deliberately masterminded a flawed process that produced Mr. Etok.

“The people of Ikono and Ini (Local Government Areas) from 1960 have never produced a Senator,” the governor narrated.

“I used my own hand to strike out the name of the person who has won before, and I said it is important for me to give that region a Senator in 2007, and I produced Senator Aloysius Etok for you; that’s where he comes from,” the governor said, before gesturing to Mr. Etok, who attended the session alongside his colleague in the Senate, Ita Enang, to “take a bow”.
 
The disclosure jolted the audience and the governor’s associates who exchanged awkward glances.

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