DAY SEN ALBERT AKPAN MOUNTED THE WITNESS BOX AT THE GOVERNORSHIP TRIBUNAL

I was at the tribunal in Uyo when our brother Obong Bassey Albert (OBA) mounted the witness box.
Due to several calls inundating my handheld device, I have been compelled to summarize what I witnessed in court on the said day he gave testimony under cross examination.

His petition is based on two grounds:
1. The report of his statistician indicating that the elections in 29 local government areas were marred by irregularities.
2. The alleged forgery of the 1981 and 1983 WAEC certificates which makes Pastor Umo Eno ineligible to contest the elections.

Of course, it is true that Senator OBA contradicted his statistician whose report is the only basis for his challenging the election results.

1. The statistician turned logic upside down by telling the tribunal that he resides in Abuja and was not in the state during the election. His flight ticket, his services were paid handsomely by Bassey Albert to conduct the analysis. He forgot that such evidence is inconsequential since it is only natural that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

2. The statistician maintained he only got data from the Unit Agents of YPP and had no report from the INEC. And so, the report of suppression of votes were from written reports of YPP unit agents. But OBA told the court that the statistician got his analysis from Unit Agents, INEC Irev portal and officials of INEC. He forgot the statistician had told the same court that he had no other source of reports other than the YPP agents.

3. OBA in his petition held that the unit agents were chased away and not allowed to witness elections in 29 local government areas, yet he submits results brought by the same unit agents from the 31 local government areas of the state to the statistician for analysis. He forgot that granted, though not conceding here that once the said agents were chased away before the commencement of the process, it would be impossible to still witness the process and obtain result for analysis.

4. The petitioners claim that 4000 agents deployed by YPP confessed in their reports that the elections were fraught by irregularities and suppression of votes and OBA could not produce even one of the 4000 reports before the tribunal. He said the reports are at the archives of the YPP campaign office. Such excellent reports, yet, not even one before the tribunal.

5. Out of the said 4000 actual witnesses of the irregularities and suppression of votes, not one was presented to testify before the tribunal. Which means every evidence on the claimed irregularities was based on heresy.

On the second leg of the petition: forgery of 1981 and 1983 examinations, highpoint was the court asking OBA to read the judgment of the Supreme Court on the two results of Pst. Umo Eno. He read it clearly in a loud voice that the two results belong to none other than Pastor Umo Eno and it was glaring that, perhaps, if he had seen the document (that is, the judgement of the Supreme Court ) in the criminal proceedings filed by Akan Okon, before filing the case, he would not had wasted his time doing same. He was even asked if he has come across anyone else claiming to go by the name on the certificate since he insisted that it did not belong to Pastor Eno, and he said he has not.

The petitioner himself admitted he had no access to the Governor’s original documents but had used the photocopies to conclude by himself that they were fake. He also said he was not a forensic science expert, and did not need one to identify the security features that were absent in the duplicate copy of the result. He, however, got stunned when he was given the master list of the 1981 result earlier submitted by a WAEC official and he spotted the candidate name and number of the Governor, same as was in the result he claimed was forged. He, then, turned his argument to the arrangement of names by alleging that the name was not properly arranged with surname first. “My Lord, it is Bassey Eno Umo, instead of Eno Umo Bassey,” he quipped.

With Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, Counsel to the PDP - the 3rd Respondent, the witness and petitioner Bassey Albert was confronted with his claims that there must be consistency in the arrangement of names on all documents and that the WAEC result bearing the name Bassey Eno Umo of 1981, Victory High School, Lagos does not belong to Governor Umo Eno.

The following exchanges ensued between Chief Oyetibo,SAN and Senator Bassey Albert:

“Who is Albert Bassey?”
“I am the one.“
“Who is Akpan Albert Bassey?”
“It is my name.“
“Who is Akpan Bassey Albert?”
“My Lord, that is still my name.”

“What is your first name?”
“Albert is my first name.”

“If you say that Albert is your first name, do you have a brother by name Ime Albert Akpan?”

“He is not part of this case”, Senator Akpan answered.

To which Oyetibo roared, “Answer my question. I am your friend and I want to help you. Do you have an elder brother, Ime Albert Akpan?”

“I have so many brothers.”

“Please answer the question, do you have a brother by name Ime Albert Akpan?”
“Yes I have a brother Ime.”
“Mention his three names?”

“My Lord, his name is Ime Akpan.”

“You are a senator and you are under oath, I said mention his three names, I told you I am your friend and I am here to help you.”

“He is Ime Albert Akpan,” Bassey Albert confessed.

Earlier, while being cross examined by Paul Usoroh,SAN, Bassey was shown a document which the court was told was the judgement by the Appellate Court, upholding his earlier conviction by the Federal High Court in the corruption and money laundering case against him by the EFCC.

Senator Albert admitted that the name written as Albert Bassey was his own, adding that he had not, however, read the document to know the content of the judgement. Nevertheless, the court admitted the document as an exhibit after Sen Bassey Albert’s counsel Tunde Falola Esq, had made futile attempts to object its admissibility.
“But my Lord, I have appealed against the judgment at the Supreme Court”.

The court was silent for a while. Is this not the same man who said he had not read the judgment, why and how then was he appealing?

“Wait, no one is asking about that”, Paul Usoro in his usual calm voice, told the petitioner.

That was when Bassey was shown his WAEC certificate 1989, bearing Akpan Albert Bassey, his YPP membership card showing him as Akpan Bassey Albert and his case file indicating he is Albert Bassey.
“My lord I have reconciled all my names”, was all he could mutter before the court told him there was no question bothering on reconciliation, directed at him.

It was during the re-examination by his lawyer, Tunde, that Senator Bassey managed to smuggle before the tribunal, a set of documents, indicating that he has filed an appeal at the apex court in response to the conviction by the appellate court. However, they were not certified true copies of the documents as required by the country’s Evidence Act, and the defense counsel reserved their objections to their final briefs, as required by the current provisions of the electoral law, as amended.

At the resume hearing of the tribunal on Monday, defense counsel among other things will attempt to tell the world, how a petitioner’s witness, a University of Uyo Administrative Officer 1, with no evidence of an appointment letter from a university, no knowledge of his own telephone number, no knowledge of the head of his department, no idea why his supposed pay slip belonged to the Faculty of Environmental Studies while he claimed to work at the registry, or who could not spell the name of his department and further had no idea of the full meaning of CONTISS, which actually means consolidated tertiary institutions salary structure. Every staff knows the meaning of the salary scale for which they have gone on strike severally, except Mr Akpan who himself could not explain why his tendered pay slips carried the same salary since 2021 till 2023, despite his alleged promotion.

By the way, lest I forget, the University of Uyo Administrative Officer 1, was served the subpoena at home in the village and not at his acclaimed workplace just as his supposed promotion letter by the University was addressed to his village and not to any department of the institution. Such a character can erroneously tell the tribunal that the Senate of the University and the Governing Council mean one and the same thing. Such was the alleged Administrative Officer Daniel Akpan, that bore witness for Bassey Albert.

The three defendants were given only two days to wrap up their defense by the court: Monday, July 10 and Tuesday July 11. Days allotted for defense in such precarious cases are usually determined by the weight of a petition and in most cases usually runs into a month. But the court which initially suggested a day for the three defendants to argue their case later agreed to give them two days.

Essien Ndueso
©️July 2023

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