Ekpo Okon as Crass Ignoramus and Purveyor of Mendacity

By Ushie Ukaani

Since his woeful loss of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senatorial primary to his better rival, Senator Gershom Bassey, Ntufam Ekpo Okon has lost not only his mind but also his memory and can no longer connect with fact, reality or objectivity.
Still smarting from a post-election induced amnesia, an affliction occasioned by severe trouncing, the immediate chairman of the state water board seems to have lost touch with facts and has brazenly set out to distort reality. 
This explains why in his desperate attempt to mislead, Okon, in his crass ignorance, chose to obfuscate the truth about the ongoing work at the Bakassi deep seaport being executed by the same government he served for over three years until inordinate ambition took a better of him.
Perhaps for want of what to indulge himself, the former chairman of the state chapter of PDP decided to take the path of mendacity by seeking to mislead the public that the Bakassi Deep Seaport project is a hoax.
Assuming without conceding that it is a hoax, why would the Federal Government get involved in a bogey scheme by setting up an implementation committee as well as transaction advisor? Why is Okon suddenly not seeing anything good about his former principal’s projects, shortly after losing out on a senatorial ticket? Any man who lays claim to integrity as Okon would want us to believe, would have spoken out long ago, even while as an appointee of the governor. But why now?
Despite Okon’s long romance with the government since 1999, it is now clear how shallow and unknowledgeable he is about how projects are conceived, approved and executed. A project such as a deep seaport is usually executed based on laid down regulatory and institutional frameworks as laid down by the federal government. And as such, the Bakassi deep seaport could not be an exception.
So far, only preliminary works have been approved by the federal government, leading to a two-kilometre reclamation work achieved on the project. One wonders what Okon wants the government to do other than wait for a full federal government approval.
Typical of one on a rambling thought, the factional APC governorship running mate also picked bones with the government’s siting of the piles and pylons industry at Akamkpa. Ekpo Okon’s grouse no doubt raises questions about his knowledge of basic elementary economics on the location of industry near the source of raw materials.
Maybe Okon needs to be educated about what constitutes the raw materials for the making of piles and pylons and the Governor's choice to locate the industry in Akamkpa Local Government instead of Akpabuyo, as Okon would have preferred. Piles and pylons as well as vibrated electric poles are made from quarry dusts and Akamkpa boasts the abundance of quarry sites in Nigeria. So where else would the industry have been sited?
It is instructive to note that equipment for the factory have long been on ground since last year and are awaiting installation as soon as civil engineering work is completed.
Sad to say, but what Ekpo Okon will not disclose to the undiscerning public is the fact that until a weak before he moved to the APC, he was one of the biggest contractors with the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), with contracts running into hundreds of millions of naira awarded to him and fully paid for. Now, one wonders if those jobs also fall within the category of fake contracts or projects.
Rather than reducing himself to a purveyor of beer palour gossip, the civilised thing for Ekpo Okon to have done was to go to Bakassi and see things for himself. But he would not do that.
This is why he must be advised that instead of dissipating energy dwelling on gossip and speculation, he could do well by addressing the rumour trending on social media that he paid N25 million to secure the governorship running mate ticket of his party, which explains why less than two days after losing the PDP senatorial ticket, he was announced as running mate to Owan Enoh instead of Hilliard Eta.

Ushie Ukaani is a social commentator and resides in Calabar

Watch out for part two of this series on Ekpo Okon’s dirty deals as Chairman of the state water board.