Mkpat Enin AKHA: Mixed feelings over Ephraim Akpan

*  He’s an overnight philanthropist           - Group
* We have adopted him -  META

The erstwhile top political associates of  Mkpat Enin Local Government Council chairman, Mr. Ephraim Akpan, are passionately crying out over what they viewed as “total neglect and abandonment” by the council helmsman soon after he was sworn in as the council boss of the LGA in 2012.
First to speak to this paper on the issue was Mr. Ephraim Akpan’s then campaign manager in the 2012 local government electioneering in the state, Elder Ukonsek Ukonsek.

According to Ukonsek, who was popularly nicknamed “the engine room” of the campaign machinery that brought the Mkpat Enin Council chair in the saddle as chairman, due to the former’s pivotal role of garnering the support of power brokers in the area to the winning advantage of Mr. Akpan in the said election, “the chairman has since abandoned all of us who staked everything to ensure that he was returned in that election.

“I challenge anybody who cares to investigate and see if any of us who fought to see that he got there is among those who are frolicking and feasting with the chairman today.”

Elder Ukonsek who related that Mr. Ephraim Akpan “had a very serious challenge of being a completely unknown neophyte as far as Mkpat Enin politics was concerned as at the time he was vying for chairmanship seat in the area,” therefore, raised suspicion as to the rationale behind the council chairman’s present embarking on what he termed as “emergency philanthropy” to his new clique of political allies.

Also speaking on the issue of being dumped by Mr. Akpan, a senior official of one of the past administrations in the area who also played a leading role of gaining acceptance for Akpan in the wake of his chairman ambition then, on strict condition of anonymity, said “Ephraim Akpan thinks he is smart by dumping all of us who sacrificed everything, including our very lives, for his sake.

“We will see how his new-found friends he is now wining and dining with will help him out this time around, now that he is in this political mess in Mkpat Enin. He will soon discover to his greatest shock that he is floating on the surface.”

He, thus, slammed the council boss for currently embarking on wanton purchase of cars for his new clique of cronies and for paying huge sums of money into their bank accounts, instead of really pursuing people-oriented and life-touching projects that would be seen to raise the standard of living for the people of the area, in commensurate with the monthly fiscal accruals to the LGA.