The Man Who Changed My Sister-In-Law
There is a Yoruba proverb that goes, “Omi yi iay’ a mon ee san gb’onen ee”. Meaning, The water that one is destined to drink will never flow past one. Put differently, whatever one is destined to become or achieve in life must come to pass. I believe a certain man has drank the waters of destiny. I have been an avid follower of the development of Akwa Ibom State since the days of Obong Victor Attah. Furthermore, I speak as a Yoruba man, if what I hear about Pastor Umo Eno is true, then Akwa Ibom State is on the verge of becoming the face of the dawn of a new Nigeria. The Governor-elect is a new and fresh voice emerging from Nigeria’s richest oil state. Observers say he is on the brink of rewriting Nigeria’s history from the Southerners tip of the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean. I have a sister-in-law in Akwa Ibom State. She was a staunch supporter and founding member of one of the opposition parties in the State, but she told me last November that a chance encounter with Pastor Umo Eno on one of his campaign trails completely transformed her. She described it as an epiphany that informed her new political direction in the State. Presently, my sister-in-law is one of his dedicated supporters. She keeps talking to me about the man’s humility and modesty. At one point, she even wondered if he was Governor material. “You cannot be Governor and be humble and nice to everybody”, she said to me. No iota of pride or self. So, I began to get interested in Pastor Umo Eno after Idongesit’s political conversion. Umo Eno is indeed an enigma, they say if you meet him, his meekness is infectious. Not a whiff of pretence. Everybody knows, including members of the opposition in Akwa Ibom State, that Governor Udom got this one right. I believe Pastor Umo Eno is going to change how Nigerian leaders relate with the people. They say he even addresses his male staff as ‘Sir’. The nation needs a leader who will act as the matrix that will give rise to a new leadership culture. On his vision for the State, I must confess I was at first wary of Pastor Umo Eno because Nigerian governors are known for their superlative promises with very little on delivery, not Pastor Umo Eno, I hear. This man is Akwa Ibom State’s most successful entrepreneur in the tourism and entertainment industry. And yes, he is a Pastor. He has an investment track record with proven results, followed by an impressive resume with corporations like ExxonMobil. His dream is to turn Akwa Ibom State into Nigeria’s, ‘Tourism and Entrepreneurial Haven’, competing toe-to-toe with Lagos State for clientele and business. But I am also aware Pastor Umo Eno is facing persecution from a group of political gladiators in the State. Politicians who have told all manner of lies against him. Maybe it is time people heard the whole truth. There is a saying that the witness of an outsider is more believable than the owners of the house. Therefore, permit this Yoruba man to give you his perspective about Pastor Umo-Eno and the atomistic crucible he has been put through to emerge the new incoming State Governor.
Exposing A Dangerous Falsehood
A very interesting drama is unfolding at the Governorship tribunal seating in Uyo, the YPP Governorship candidate Senator Obong Bassey Albert (OBA) has suffered a major setback as his allegation of certificate forgery and university expulsion levelled against the Governor-elect Pastor Umo Eno has been torn to shreds. OBA’s legal team tendered a 2005 list before the tribunal purportedly showing that Pastor Umo Eno had been expelled from the University of Uyo for certificate forgery. But immediately the list was tendered in evidence, a brochure of the 2004 convocation from the same university surfaced online. The brochure has gone viral and has completely obliterated the petition of the YPP legal team because it has exposed the putrefied falsehood. This brochure is about to be tendered at the tribunal. There is now incontrovertible evidence that Pastor Umo Eno was a student in the 1998-2004 set of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Uyo. And that he graduated in 2004. The brochure also revealed his younger sister Eno, Inemesit Bassey was in the same set and her name appears just above his name on the brochure. The list also revealed some interesting names who are ready to testify before the tribunal to confirm its authenticity. In the list are the names of the member-elect, Ibiono Ibom State Constituency, Mr. Moses Essien and the current Commissioner for Transport Akwa Ibom State, Mr Uno Etim Uno. Included also is one Mr. Eminue, Eyo Okon who describes himself as a corporate customer care specialist on his Facebook wall. He was at the time in 2004, the Student Union President of the University of Uyo and he has come online to say Umo Eno was a student in his department. But these are not the only names, there are hundreds of former students on this list who will testify before the tribunal that Pastor Umo Eno was their colleague at the University of Uyo. But here is where it gets even more bizarre and convoluted for the YPP legal team. And this indicates they might soon drop the case and embrace reconciliation and peace. They claim Umo Eno was expelled in 2005 but the brochure that has just surfaced indicates Umo Eno graduated in 2004. The question people are asking is, how could Pastor Umo Eno who they falsely alleged was expelled in 2005, how could he have been expelled in 2005 when he had graduated a year earlier in 2004? In Yoruba folklore, the Tortoise is the craftiest of all the creatures in the forest, but every so often we Yoruba’s depict him as being too crafty to the point of foolishness. This is what I see in Senator OBA’s case. Is someone trying to make a fool of Senator OBA? Has his legal team been duped by paying for a fake document that never existed? How did the YPP legal team come to its false conclusions of certificate forgery and university expulsion? I will tell you how.
The Doctrine Of Double Jeopardy & Res Judicata
Occasionally I think I know more about the political affairs of my adopted State than the indigenes themselves. Permit me to go through the details of this case. Senator Albert Bassey had alleged that Pastor Umo Eno had presented a fake West African Examination Council (WAEC)/Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination Certificate (SSCE) and had subsequently been caught in the act and expelled from the University of Uyo. But this fake forgery WAEC story by Senator OBA’s legal team was not new, what was new was the purported expulsion. Please note that the false allegation of forgery levelled against Pastor Umo Eno at the tribunal is the same case that Mr. Akan Okon brought before the Supreme Court in appeal number SC/CV/172/2023. It was also the same case Mr Akan Okon brought before the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal, and lost. The Supreme Court dismissed the false allegations and held that Pastor Umo Eno was duly nominated by his Party the PDP on May 25, 2022, and that he was eminently qualified for the elections. The Supreme Court adopted the judgements of the two lower courts;
(1) The Supreme Court held that all the claims of certificate forgery by Mr. Akan Okon were based on assumptions and speculations.
(2) The Court threw out all the documents Mr. Akan Okon tendered as Pastor Umo Eno’s academic records from the University of Uyo because they were not certified true copies as required by Section 84 of the evidence act.
(3) The Court rejected the witness of a forensic expert hired by Mr. Akan Okon because the process of getting the photograph processed and transmitted lacked foundational evidence.
(4) The Court found it incredulous that Mr. Akan Okon’s primary source of information about Umo Eno’s false forgery allegation was taken from
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