Silence is the best answer to a fool, and the unpredictable tides of fortune has made fools out of many prognosticators, and it will make fools out of many more. Witness the curious case of Senator Godswill Akpabio, former governor of Akwa-Ibom State and former minority leader in the upper chambers of the National of Assembly.
For a while, his political somersault seemed to have landed him in the wilderness instead of the Promised Land he envisioned when he dumped the Peoples Democratic Party for the ruling All Progressives Congress. The grass appeared to be grayer on the other side as the former governor became a former senator as well. He was trounced in a humiliating fashion by the relatively unheralded Christopher Ekpenyong.
Akpabio, the boastful lion couldn’t win more than two of the ten local governments in the Akwa-Ibom North West Senatorial election.
With his tails tucked firmly behind his legs, Akpabio exited the stage and barely made a noise. It was at that point that a lot of people — who must be considered fools in retrospect — came out with the drums of victory, singing songs of mockery about the fall of a man who once loomed over the Uyo political scene like a colossus.
Meanwhile, Akpabio remained silent as the grave, an action some interpreted as a white flag of surrender. Instead, sources disclosed that the ex-governor was actually busy securing his ticket back into relevance. He didn’t have to wait too long to get his wishes as he was named as one of the ministers in President Buhari’s reconstituted cabinet. Since then, Akpabio has once again become the beautiful bride as politicians and hangers-on flock around him as if he was a new kid on the block and not the veteran campaigner some of them mocked at his lowest ebb. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Akpabio has been reveling in his newfound fame. He has regained his voice in Akwa-Ibom politics.
