Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State has announced that only card-carrying members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with names in the party register will qualify for government contracts and appointments.
Eno had earlier promised bipartisan governance when he defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The governor made the declaration on 29 November while addressing select party elders at Ukana, Essien Udim — the home of Senate President Godswill Akpabio — signalling what appears to be a complete ideological surrender to the man he once politically opposed.
“We’ve taken the party register, and we are going to look at it and see whose name is not there. Like you are aware, we’ve since dissolved the boards, and it was intentional because we cannot continue to carry the boards that are not loyal to the party,”
Governor Eno said, “By the grace of God, we’d soon sit down and reconstitute the board using our party register.”
His latest remarks contradict his earlier promise in June during his move to the ruling APC, where he had promised the Akwa Ibom people that governance would not be weaponised against members of other political parties.
A former minister of petroleum resources, Don Etiebet, a former minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Umana Okon Umana, and a former senator, Ita Enang, were among the attendees at the meeting.
Mr. Eno told the gathering that it was “extremely difficult” to pick the 60 elders of the APC who were invited to the meeting.
Speaking to Akpabio, the governor said, “We are here to honour you,” he told the Senate president, calling him the man who “has taken this party to the national level and has held on to it.”
He also declared that he had now “aligned fully” with Mr Akpabio’s long-standing demand for a tightly controlled APC structure in Akwa Ibom — a direction repeatedly canvassed by Mr Akpabio’s allies.
In Nigeria, many key positions in government are distributed based on party’s loyalty or political affiliations, as witnessed in the recent ambassadorial lists forwarded by President Tinubu to the Senate.
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