Dressing Doesn’t Qualify Akwa Ibom Electoral Commissioner Umoren As Our Member – APC

The Akwa Ibom State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has disputed claims that Etekamba Umoren, the state’s resident electoral commissioner, REC, is a registered member of the party just by donning the party’s regalia.

Speaking on Sunday in Abuja at a press conference, Eseme Eyiboh, a chieftain of the party in the state, said that Umoren wore the APC’s regalia does not in any way qualify him as a member of the party.

Umoren who was wanted in 2015 for corruption in association with then Governor of the State now Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, served as Secretary to the State Government and is a close confidant of Akpabio.

There are insinuations Akpabio specifically nominated his associate in order to seize the political machinery in the state that has partly eluded him since he defected to the APC.

Umoren’s nomination by President Bola Tinubu and subsequent screening by the Akpabio-led Senate has stirred controversy about the place of transparency and political association in the conduct of elections especially as he would be the conductor of all electoral affairs in Akwa Ibom State, controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

But the state chapter of the party said Umoren, who was among the 10 nominees screened by the Senate in the past week “is a bureaucrat. He served in Akwa Ibom state as a permanent secretary.

“He is a career civil servant. He was chief of staff and then SSG – not to serve a political party but a government,” who would discharge his duty with transparency.

He added, “I have also seen that he wore the uniform of APC. The law is very strict and there are a plethora of supreme court cases on who is a member of a political party.”

Eyiboh argued, “The member of a political party must be not just a card-carrying member, he must be in financial standing with that political party. He must be among the registered members and prescription has nothing to do with uniform or mode of dressing.

“For you to take ordinary mode of dressing – the member of an organisation is not determined by their clothing but by membership of that organisation. Every organisation has its criteria for its membership.

“It is not true, it is speculation that Etekamba Umoren is a member of the APC. That is not correct.”