A familiar voice has just echoed across microphones in Uyo . Elder Aniekan Akpan, dignified in white and displaying calm when the storm is raging, declared: “I remain the substantive chairman of the PDP in Akwa Ibom State.”
It was not so much a press conference as it was a valedictory serenade, yet Akpan refused to admit that the song was over.
The PDP’s National Working Committee had already slammed the gavel. The Akwa Ibom State Executive Committee, once led by the retired school principal turned political tactician, had been dissolved. In its place, a caretaker committee now stands, headed by much younger Barrister Igwat Umoren. In Abuja, the message was clear: the Akpan era had expired. But in Uyo, the elder begged to differ.
Somewhere between truth and nostalgia lies the answer to why Aniekan Akpan is fighting back.
To understand him, one must not look at him merely as a man out of office. He is not a political neophyte nursing ambition; he is a patriarch defending memory.
Aniekan Akpan’s resume is not a pamphlet, it is a book with many chapters. He was a school principal, council secretary, council chairman, House of Assembly member, Commissioner for Education, board member and party chairman. He has been a student of the grassroots and a teacher of political survival. He has weathered storms from the classrooms to the corridors of power.
He may not be a lion, but he knows the forest.
So, what then drives the elder to grip a chair that is no longer his? Why clutch a crumbling house of termites when the termites themselves are migrating? Perhaps it is legacy. Perhaps it is the ache of watching a house you built brick by brick, caucus by caucus be handed to another with the cold finality of party politics.
But therein lies the paradox of power: it is never permanent, only borrowed.
Under Akpan’s stewardship, the PDP in Akwa Ibom did not falter. It flourished. He delivered Umo Eno to Hilltop Mansion. He secured victories to many National Assembly members. He midwifed the rise of loyalists into local government chairmanships and council chambers. He was not just a party chairman; he was a godfather with chalk dust still on his fingers and strategy in his spine. But game is over without provision for extra time.
Akpan’s press statement, wrapped in firm defiance, was less a protest and more a plea to history. He was simply saying, “Do not forget me yet.” But history is not made by clinging to yesterday. It is made by choosing how to walk away from it.
What the Aniekan Akpan forgets is this: there is dignity in the bow.
He does not need another title to validate a journey already walked. He has paid his dues. He has earned the right to sit under a quiet tree, to become the oak others lean on. He could be the voice in the shadows that guides the next generation, not the face on a flier desperate for space.
There is something profoundly noble about the quiet statesman. He could become the one who speaks rarely but is heard deeply. But to become that, he must let go. The elasticity of ambition, when stretched too far, snaps not only the man but the myth behind the man.
There is an African proverb that says: “When the drumbeat changes, the dancer must adjust.” This is not a call to surrender. It is a call to evolve. Akpan can still be a compass, even if he is no longer the captain. He must reinvent himself.
He must now decide: Will he be the elder who fought the sun to keep shining at night? Or the one who lit lanterns for those who came after?
Aniekan Akpan must not allow ego to erase memory. He must preserve the story, not rewrite the ending. His record is already inked in the ballots, in the ballots cast for Umo Eno, in the victories of his protégés, in the meetings where he once sat as kingmaker.
Now is the hour to choose wisdom over warfare.
He can retire, not in silence, but in grace. He can still counsel, still whisper strategy behind closed doors. He can still walk into rooms and command bows, not because of office, but because of aura.
The elder’s journey need not end in bitterness or banishment. He can still exit with the applause of his legacy intact. PDP as we know is a crumbling house of vicious termites. Akpan should be happy the burden had been rolled away from him and given to another.
But the moment is fleeting.
And in politics, as in life, the final bow must come before the curtain falls.
