Akpabio’s supernatural powers

Senator Godswill Akpabio has been in public service for over two decades, but it’s only recently that his supernatural powers have been brought to national attention. These days, the Senate President is regularly accused of doing things that would require some kind of paranormal abilities. Nigeria should be grateful for discovering this aspect of the uncommon senator. Last week, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan announced that Akpabio, working with Gov. Ododo and former governor Yahaya Bello, was the one orchestrating her recall from the Senate.

She claimed that initially, Gov. Ododo was reluctant to be part of the plot, but he eventually caved in due to Akpabio’s surreal powers. It doesn’t matter that the Senate President is not even from Kogi, his influence and abilities cover the whole nation, according to the suspended senator, who also blamed INEC for working for her downfall. Well, it turned out that the recall had failed, but Akpabio still stands accused.

Last weekend, the same Akpoti-Uduaghan added a more bizarre allegation to the mix, claiming that the Senate President was even planning, again with Yahaya Bello, to murder her. She said the plot was hatched at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja (where else?) and that Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong from Cross River State was part of the scheme. In fact, it was Ekpenyong who drove Bello to the hotel for the meeting, according to her.

While the nation was enjoying a long weekend, Superman Akpabio was busy planning Natasha’s recall and assassination at the same time; and since Ekpenyong, the young senator from Calabar is a close friend of Akpabio’s, the plot wouldn’t sound believable unless his name was mentioned. But why would anybody try to recall a senator he is planning to murder?

I understand that the Senate President is already talking to his lawyers and has sent a petition to the Inspector General of Police to investigate the outlandish allegations. I hope that she will honour the police invitation to substantiate her claims. It was in 2018 that another Kogi Senator, Dino Melaye, was invited by the police to answer to some allegations. He went into hiding for eight days before he gave up. Melaye, who represented Kogi West, was accused of murder by the police and was declared wanted after he failed to honour their invitation.

The eight-day hide-and-seek drama that followed gripped national attention and ended early January 2019 when Melaye opened his front door and came out of hiding. We shall see how Natasha, from Kogi Central, will play her own cards.

While we were still wrapping our heads around Natasha’s allegations, we heard another story of Akpabio’s powers. Senator Elisha Aboh, who lost his seat in 2023 due to a Supreme Court’s judgment, said in an interview with Arise News that it was Akpabio who influenced the supreme court. It was an old allegation which he had made in 2023, but had soon recanted and apologized for. But this time, he added that the senate president had also orchestrated the sacking of five other senators and that the lawmakers in the upper chamber routinely run errands for the senate president and some even serve him tea in his residence. Talk of one man’s awesome powers!

The story of Akpabio’s supernatural powers is quite captivating. Right from his early days in politics, he has always been attributed with breathtaking abilities to the admiration of friends and foes. Some claim that he has an abundance of God’s grace, while others think that his source of power is in unfathomable. He was a commissioner in the administration of Gov. Victor Attah when he planned to be governor. As the plan grew, he resigned the job late 2006 and devoted his full time to pursue the ambition. Initially, Attah was rooting for him but later changed his mind and supported his son-in-law who was also a commissioner. Akapbio beat all the 56 aspirants, including the governor’s son-in-law and other heavyweights, to clinch the party’s ticket. He resisted all attempts by powerful politicians to take the ticket from him.

As governor, he faced allegations of being the sponsor of the many cases of kidnappings in the state so as to weaken his opponents. That was the first and only time a governor would be so accused. Till today, with all the abductions happening across the country, no other state governor has ever been accused of sponsoring the kidnappings of his people. But my only regret is that the senate president has not deployed his unique supernatural powers to solve Nigeria’s myriads of socioeconomic problems!