Cross River in Chains: The Senate cabal, puppet senator, and politics of betrayal”
By Williams Cobham
In an ever riveting theatre of the absurd, where both farce and comedy were deployed as catharsis, our dear Calabar, last week found itself trapped in a grotesque performance where truth was mangled, integrity was mocked, conspiracy and treachery took centre stage adorned in the garb of statesmanship.
The scenes were Nyanghasang, Calabar Municipal, where bare-faced treachery walked naked; and Idang Street, Calabar South Council Area, where the street was clandestinely and mischievously rechristened: “Etinyin Ekpeyong Oniong”. Here, tragedy was not accidental but scripted, choreographed by actors whose only talent lies in duplicity, and whose lines were riddled with deception. In this parody of legislative stewardship, those entrusted with power do not lead, they prance, they posture, they perform; while the audience, the people—are left clapping through their tears, bewildered by the unending rerun of betrayal dressed in legislative regalia. At Idang Street, a 900-metre street rehabilitation project was being commissioned via a live television coverage by agents purported to be NDDC agents and their facilitators.
In the gilded corridors of the Nigerian Senate, where the echoes of statesmanship ought to ring with equity, justice, and developmental balance, a most perfidious plot festers—an audacious and calculated conspiracy to subjugate, stifle, and silence Cross River State. And at the helm of this sinister orchestration is none other than the Senate President, Mr. Godswill Obot Akpabio, who, with the cold precision of a Machiavellian overlord, has weaponised his office not to unify or uplift the Niger Delta, but to ensure that his neighbouring state of Cross River remains marooned at the base rung of the development ladder, grasping for crumbs where it ought to dine as an equal.
What is even more tragic—and tragically Shakespearean—is that Akpabio has found willing hands from Cross River to execute this scheme of engineered exclusion. Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong Jr., a scion of the state and the very man entrusted with oversight of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), has become, regrettably, the soft-gloved tool of Cross River’s quiet decimation. Like a pawn dazzled by proximity to power, he has not only abdicated his legislative responsibility but has mortgaged the interests of his people for a seat at Akpabio’s gilded banquet of favour. What treachery can be more complete than betrayal by kin?
This is no longer mere politics—it is a slow suffocation wrapped in velvet. While Akwa Ibom—Akpabio’s homeland—is bloated with a constellation of NDDC projects, Cross River groans in neglect, receiving scraps and shadows. Whereas roads, schools, and water systems bloom elsewhere, Cross River must contend with phantom projects, hijacked contracts, and federal legislators masquerading as contractors. Projects meant for the people are not only stolen, but renamed and rebranded, stripped of state identity, and paraded as gifts from the very hands that denied them. It is not just injustice; it is an insult.
Akpabio, a man who once benefited from the largesse of federal intervention to transform Uyo into a miniature capital of splendour, now appears determined to keep Cross River in a state of arrested development. By leveraging his Senate presidency to divert developmental focus away from Cross River—and worse, by manipulating Cross River’s own representatives into complicity—he has exposed a deep disdain for balanced regional uplift. The man who should be a bridge of progress for the entire South-South now stands as a dam of obstruction.
And yet, the more egregious betrayal lies with Senator Ekpenyong Jr.—the chosen son who became the saboteur. Rather than channel the enormous legislative power he wields as Chairman of the Senate Committee on NDDC to attract landmark projects to his state, he has become a puppet and an enabler in Akpabio’s empire of exclusion. He carries the burden of office, but not its honour; he wears the robe of representation, but not its responsibility. In his hands, the hopes of Cross Riverians are bartered, not championed.
How does one explain the farce of the Nyanghasang Road, where the state government’s infrastructural efforts were hijacked by federal interlopers, hurriedly tarred and falsely branded as NDDC’s legacy? How does one justify the presence of a contractor slapping images of a senator on streetlights paid for by public funds? How do we accept the deliberate renaming of community roads after filial uncles without the courtesy of community consent? These are not acts of representation; they are relics of impunity. They are the fingerprints of a deeper plot to erase Cross River from the map of federal reckoning.
Yet, amid the fog of this betrayal, voices of integrity ring clear. Rt. Hon. Orok Duke, the lone voice in the wilderness of conspiracy, has courageously pulled the curtain back on this farce. His bold denunciation of the hijack, his fierce loyalty to truth, and his unflinching assertion that the Nyanghasang Road is wholly a state project have pierced through the veil of lies spun by federal pretenders. Commissioner Ankpo Pius Edet, too, has stood with unvarnished clarity, reaffirming the state’s ownership and calling out the stealthy manoeuvres of federal impostors.
Governor Bassey Edet Otu stands vindicated in this storm. His administration’s infrastructural strides—measured, meticulous, and people-centered—have not only transformed communities but have become so enviable that desperate hands now attempt to appropriate them. That such projects have become political trophies for those who had no hand in their conception is a testament to the governor’s focus and the state’s renewed rise. Otu’s alignment with President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda remains solid; the fracture lies only with those masquerading in the Red Chamber as allies while sharpening the daggers of marginalisation.
Let it be said, in the full glare of history and conscience, that Cross River shall not die by the hands of others, nor by the hands of her own sons gone astray. We must now reject the soft tyranny of silence and speak in one accord: that we will no longer permit a Senate President to play god over our future; that we will no longer allow a senator to be the courier of our state’s doom. Cross River may be quiet, but she is not blind. And when the drums of reckoning begin to beat, let those who danced on her grave remember the rhythm they helped compose.
Cobham writes from Odukpani, Cross River State
