AKWA IBOM: ABOUT THE SLAIN PDP CHIEFTAIN

It is definitely not the best of time in Akwa Ibom as it relates to political kidnapping and assassination in the State. At about midday Sunday 20th June 2010 at the Ebenezer African Church, Mbierebe Akpawat in Ibesikpo Asutan, the former PDP Zonal Secretary, Chief Paul Inyang, was assassinated.

Quoting The Punch of Tuesday June 22, 2010, page 7, an official of the Church, Mr. Etuk Akpabio, explaining on behalf of the Church said that when the assassins entered the church they pointed AK-47 rifle at the pastor and asked if he was Paul Inyang to which he confirmed in negative. The late Inyang was alerted to run away but instead he ran to the back of the church and the next thing heard were gunshots. Church members had to rush Inyang to the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital but he was not lucky to stay alive.

Inyang’s wife was also quoted as saying that her husband never told him he had any disagreement with anybody and never mentioned anybody’s name but told her that some people have been trailing him. Chief Inyang was known for not playing any hard politics.

But in the This Day of June 22, 1010, page 15, Governor Akpabio who returned the next day of the incident while paying a condolence visit to the family described Inyang as his staunch supporter and ordered that the house of the suspected ring leader, one Monday Akpautong, should be pulled down immediately. How then did Governor Akpabio and the Police Commissioner know who the ring leader was? According to information volunteered by the governor, the ring leader and Inyang are from the same place; how then was it that the assassins could not identify who Inyang was when they pointed their gun to the Church Pastor?

And for the SSG of Akwa Ibom to rush in full page advertisements in the newspapers was tactless. There is more to all this that should call for independent investigators from outside Akwa Ibom in order to unravel the mastermind of this dastardly act.

Fidel E. Nyong, 298 Apapa Oshodi Expressway, Isolo, LAGOS.