Jailed professor rigged election for Akpabio but Senate president, supporters won’t stop lying about it

Ata Ikiddeh, a close friend and former aide to Godswill Akpabio, the president of the Nigerian Senate, has falsely claimed that a professor jailed for election fraud rigged the election for Mr Akpabio’s opponent.

Mr Ikiddeh, who resides in London, served as an aide to Mr Akpabio on project monitoring when the latter was governor of Akwa Ibom.

Peter Ogban, a professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar, was the returning officer in the 2019 Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District election. Mr Akpabio was the APC candidate, and Chris Ekpenyong, a former deputy governor of Akwa Ibom, was the PDP candidate.

In March 2021, a State High Court in Uyo jailed the professor for three years for election fraud after it was established during court proceedings that he rigged the election for Mr Akpabio.

“It was alleged that Professor Ogban connived with the resident electoral commissioner of Akwa Ibom State, Mike Igini, to falsify the results in favour of Chris Ekpeyong against Senator Godswill Akpabio,” Mr Ikiddeh wrote on his Facebook page on 15 February.

“Please note these were allegations. Prof. Ogban, it was said, transported collated results from Ikot Ekpene senatorial district to Uyo, where he mutilated the results. It was the falsification of these results which led to Senator Chris Ekpenyong being presumptuously announced the winner of that election,” he added.

“This is apt. God bless u for killing the wrong narrative,” Udori Archi, a known supporter of Mr Akpabio, commented on Mr Ikiddeh’s Facebook post.

Another commenter, Blessing Akpabio, apparently giving Mr Ikiddeh a thumbs-up, said, “Nothing pains me like seeing people praise Mike Igini as being transparent and upright.”

Like Mr Ikiddeh, Mr Akpabio tried to promote this claim in January 2023 when he flagged off the campaign for his senatorial election that year. PREMIUM TIMES fact-checked the senator and reported that he lied.

“You people voted overwhelmingly for me, but some people colluded to rob me of my victory. The professor who was used to rob me of that victory in 2019 is now in jail,” Mr Akpabio had said at a rally in Oruk Anam Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.

As previously reported by PREMIUM TIMES, it was not the first time Mr Akpabio has made such a false claim even when the facts – testimonies and evidence in court – clearly showed that the disgraced professor falsified some results of the 2019 election in the Akwa Ibom North-West District in Mr Akpabio’s favour.

Evidence that jailed professor rigged election for Akpabio

For evidence that Mr Ogban, the jailed professor, rigged the election for Mr Akpabio, we reproduce the below excerpt from our fact-check.

Mr Akpabio, who was seeking a second term in the Nigerian Senate, was the APC candidate for the 2019 senatorial election in the Akwa Ibom North-west District. He first contested the district election and won in 2015 as a PDP candidate before he defected to the APC in 2018.

The PDP candidate, Mr Ekpenyong, the former deputy governor of Akwa Ibom, was Mr Akpabio’s major rival in the 2019 senatorial election.

As previously reported by PREMIUM TIMES, before his conviction and sentencing, Mr Ogban, in one of the court sessions, told the court how the results of the 2019 Akwa Ibom North-west District election were falsified in Oruk Anam and Etim Ekpo local government areas to give the APC an unfair advantage over its main rival, the PDP.

For instance, 5,000 fake votes were added to the APC’s score in Oruk Anam Local Government Area in the election.

During cross-examination by the prosecution counsel, Mr Ogban admitted that the votes he entered for both the APC and the PDP in the two local government areas were not taken from results collated at the constituency.

As his defence, Mr Ogban said the votes he entered were “read out” to him by the returning officers of the local government areas.

However, two witnesses of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – John Enoidem and Itemobong Ekaidem – contradicted the professor’s claim.

The witnesses, university lecturers and collation officers in the two local government areas, told the court that what Mr Ogban entered as scores for APC and PDP were not what they presented to him.

The Guardian newspaper captured the court session where the two INEC witnesses were cross-examined.

“In their testimonies, they said the results they collated at the council level, which were presented to Ogban, differed from the results he finally declared.

“For the Oruk Anam Council result, Enoidem noted that while his result showed that the APC scored 10,534 votes and the PDP 25,123 votes, the accused declared that the APC polled 15,534, while PDP got 20,123 votes.

“He, thereby, reduced PDP’s votes by 5,000 and increased APC score by the same number of ballots. Ekaidem added that while the results for Etim Ekpo Council showed that APC scored 2,671 votes and PDP got 6,603, the result Ogban finally declared showed that APC scored 5,671 votes compared to PDP’s 3,306, amounting to a difference of 3,000 in favour of the former,” the paper reported.

During the 2019 Akwa Ibom North-West District election, Mr Akpabio’s challenger, Mr Ekpenyong of the PDP, was leading with a wide margin until the APC scrambled for “suspicious” votes which they could use to change the election course.

INEC, at some point, suspended the announcement of the election results in Essien Udim Local Government Area where Mr Akpabio hails from.

“If we accept the results from the local government area, Akpabio’s votes will overshoot that of Chris Ekpenyong,” an INEC official had told PREMIUM TIMES.

“There are issues in the results which are yet to be resolved,” the official had said.

Pockets of violence marred the elections in the area.

“I have records of presiding officers who were speaking to me in low tones because of where they were and what was going on. God gave the returning officer wisdom, and today he is alive,” the then Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr Igini, had said when he told journalists and representatives of political parties why the commission could not announce the results from Essien Udim.

INEC later conducted a rerun election in Essien Udim, as ordered by the Court of Appeal, Calabar, following a suit filed by Mr Akpabio.

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But Mr Akpabio backed out of the election, leaving the PDP to win easily, even though the election was still characterised by violence, including INEC officials being held hostage in Mr Akpabio’s ward.

Another professor in jail for election fraud

Although Professor Ogban was jailed over four years ago, the issues around him resurfaced recently because another professor, Ignatius Uduk, was jailed for three years for election fraud on 5 February by a State High Court in Uyo.

Mr Uduk, a professor of Human Kinetics at the University of Uyo, rigged the 2019 Essien Udim State Constituency election for Nse Ntuen, the APC candidate who was then a strong political ally of Mr Akpabio.

Mr Akpabio, his political allies and his friends have been trying hard to distance the Senate president from the disgraceful conduct of the two professors.