“Let me use this opportunity to alert us that the major political parties are on the verge of collapse throughout the country. The gradual erosion of political cultures in the parties has led them to the situation they’ve found themselves” – Chief Nduese Essien, PDP chieftain, AKS, August, 2022.
By Destiny Akaiso
In the last fee weeks, there has been a hurricane blowing across Akwa Ibom state. Ironically, it waves fresh leaves of fertility and hope, as it moves from one local government to another!
Hurricane! Because nothing can successfully withstand its force with pleasant results, everything and anything in opposition along its way may be completely uprooted.
Hurricane is described as large, spiraling tropical storms that run at a wind speed of over 160mph (minutes per hour) and unleash more than 2.4 trillion gallons of rain water a day, rotating in anti-clockwise direction.
The happy news, however, is that there is a different kind of hurricane that has been blowing for good in Akwa Ibom State since July, 2022, that is shattering unproductive foundations and obsolete ideas of leadership in the State. It has been clearing the way for the building of new foundations and broader platforms for restoration of all that had been lost over the years.
The source of the hurricane has been traced to the Young Progressives Party (YYP). Like “ofum akpa”, it is shaking tables and tearing umbrellas into shreds, and causing panic and discomfort to whoever and whatever wants to resist it.
Joyfully, at the center, leading the headwinds and gathering forces towards a peaceful revolution in 2023, is a man who has always been at the fore of the people’s cause, Obong Bassey Albert. He holds a sacred Seal of Hope, an insignia of royalty, to lead the people to the Promised Land.
Those with foresight and active conscience, who cannot deny this reality, already have taken bold and firm stand to be part of the history.
The latest among such who can see the future before it arrives is the former Chairman of Urueoffong-Oruko Local Government Council, Chief Edet Okon Isong.
In a personal statement on Sunday, 28th August, 2022 as he joined the YPP, the former PDP stalwart said: “I have examined all the governorship candidates across the political parties. The only candidate that has made firm promises that touch on our collective yearnings is Obong Bassey Albert”.
Millions like “Windy” Isong had already taken their stand, and many more are joining daily to unitedly secure their future in the imminent Ballot Revolution.
To the contrary, in their haplessness and hopelessness, lost in ideas and fumbling for the last straw, those attempting in vain to resist the Movement are caught in permanent disarray.
In the illusion that they can withstand the storms, to stop losing their fretting members in droves across the State, they now hold serial nocturnal emergency meetings which they know are of no consequence.
Their situation easily reminds us of the lyrical lines of W. B. Yeats’s famous poem, The Second Coming:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer/
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold/Surely some revelation is at hand…”
The fault is theirs. Yes, it is theirs. In their arrogance, or miscalculation, or mischief, they denied or pretended not to have seen the handwriting on the wall in the twilights of the season.
Now, they’ve got no choice than accept the unfolding fallout of their own misgivings, join the safety boat to new shores, if they must be part of the testimonies.
Chief Nduese Essien’s worries in the superscripted quotation for this article therefore must be seen both as a voluntary personal confession and a prophecy in gradual fulfilment.
Blowing and roaring relentlessly into every corner of Akwa Ibom State, throwing wide open its doors to all those seeking liberation, with excited faithful waving twigs of green leaves of a heralding and escorting their king to the Hilltop Mansion, the ultimate destination in 2023.
But who can resist this “ofum akpa” sent from heaven to part the Red Sea for a new beginning? No one.
