A senator from Cross River State, Asuquo Ekpenyong, has denied remarks attributed to him in an opinion article written by Etim Etim, a communications director in the Akwa Ibom Governor, Umo Eno’s re-election campaign group.
Mr Ekpenyong said the insinuation in the article was false and demanded an immediate retraction.
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Mr Etim is the director of strategic communications for the ARISE Renewed Hope Initiative, the political platform coordinating Governor Eno’s re-election campaign.
In the opinion piece published on 14 March by TheCable, Mr Etim wrote that a senator from Cross River privately criticised his state government’s handling of the oil well dispute with Akwa Ibom.
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According to the article, the unnamed senator whom Mr Etim said issued a statement in February supporting his governor’s efforts allegedly confided in him, saying, “I can’t see the logic in what my state government is doing. This matter has long been settled by the Supreme Court, but I have to play along so that I’m not called a black sheep of the state or mocked as ‘Akwa Ibom Senator’ as they usually do.”
Checks by PREMIUM TIMES showed that Mr Ekpenyong was the only senator from Cross River who had publicly issued a statement on the matter in February.
The senator had posted a statement on Facebook on 3 February supporting the position of Governor Bassey Edet Otu of Cross River regarding the disputed oil wells.
Senator denies claim
In a statement issued on 15 March, Mr Ekpenyong said he neither knew Mr Etim nor made the comments attributed to him.
“For the avoidance of doubt, I wish to state clearly that I do not know the author and have never made any statement of that nature,” he said.
“The insinuation contained in the publication is entirely false, and appears deliberately framed to create the impression of a disagreement where none exists.”
“It is therefore both misleading and irresponsible for any publication to attribute thinly-veiled and fabricated remarks to me in an attempt to introduce unnecessary tension into matters of collective state interest,” he said.
He added that he remained fully aligned with Governor Otu and committed to working with other stakeholders to protect Cross River’s interests.
Mr Ekpenyong said his lawyers had been instructed to formally demand a retraction and correction of the publication.
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“Should the author fail to retract the defamatory insinuations, we will have no hesitation in pursuing the appropriate legal remedies,” he said.
Previous controversy
Mr Etim had recently been at the centre of public debate over some of his commentaries.
In mid-February, he published an article warning that the possible entry of the sons of President Tinubu, ministers Nyesom Wike and David Umahi, into the 2027 general elections “portends danger to society.”
On 27 February, he later published another article apologising to Governor Eno for the embarrassment and hurt the earlier commentary had caused the Akwa Ibom governor.
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