HOw sweet the sound of victory is! It is even sweeter when the victory is won “home and away” like the Brazilian team of USA ’94 would do to any team that crosses their path. Such was the mood from Uyo to Calabar, Port Harcourt to Lagos and Abuja to other parts Nigeria when, on Friday, September 15, the Court of Appeal sitting in Calabar upheld the election of Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State. And the victory sound was blared from all corners of the world, blowing the good news across the lands and waters of Africa.

It was the best month for lovers of democracy and progress in Nigeria, and a September to remember in Akwa Ibom! As a grand victory for humanity, it deserved- and received- all the trappings of celebrations, including exhilarating congratulations for the transformation oracle, and uncorking the best of cognac and Champaign, yet the winner man himself would not spend much time to revel in victory but remain ever focused in captaining the ship of statehood. Akwa Ibom people painted the streets for him.

The appeal court in a unanimous decision by three justices, read by Justice M.A Oredola dismissed the appeal filed by the Akwa Ibom State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN governorship candidate and his running mate, Senator John Akpanudoedehe and Ime Umanah, for failure to comply with relevant sections of the Electoral Act 2010.

The Calabar victory affirmation was preceded by an earlier dismissal of the petitioners’ application on technical grounds by the Akwa Ibom State elections tribunal that sat in Uyo, which was headed by Justice Adam Onum. These triumphal affirmations go ahead to vindicate Akwa Ibom people who went en masse on April 26 to put all their eggs in Akpabio’s basket. It is their moment of glory, especially as they reminisce on the Governor’s accelerated development of the state. When he came inside to take charge of the cockpit of Flight Akwa Ibom in 2007, it was a sweet scent of fresh air for the people as he geared them for greater heights through his policies, projects and programmes. Immediately and even permanently, Akpabio removed his development tipex and commenced rebuilding Akwa Ibom.

First, he declared free and compulsory education for children up to senior secondary school. He went ahead to complete an international airport with maintenance, repair and overhaul, MRO, services, and has built over 211 new roads, including federal roads and three concentric flyovers. There is also, to his credit, a brand new Governor’s Lodge, West Africa’s first digital library, 3.7 kilometre underground drainage, five new general hospitals and a specialist hospital and a world-class Tropicana entertainment centre with six complexes already functioning.

A pillar of light, Akpabio has completed 191 megawatts Ibom Power Plant project and achieved a record-breaking 85% electricity coverage via linking over 1400 communities to the national grid, even as his healthy healthcare policies give pregnant women, the aged and children under five free medical services.

Since all these came in his first term, the people redialled God’s will for their state in 2011. It rang so clearly that even when they burnt to rule, it crumbled like a cake made of cocoa. Akwa Ibom people chose to go forward, firm in their faith in which they had built a great cathedral for, steadfast in their purpose, cautious of the old-fashioned gimmicks of the enemies of the state with insatiable appetite for sipping the nectar of power.

Armed with diminishing profile, they resort to untoward strategies in protest of their being out of circulation and living in the valley. But in all these, Governor Akpabio, working with his rare assembly of excellent mind cabinet members, refused to be distracted but committed every ounce of energy in ensuring that the state’s peacock beauty of development continues to dazzle.

Akwa Ibom’s beautiful bride, Akpabio’s work spanners are tireless, tightening transformation screws that have either frozen political roulettes in time’s fridge or kept at the flip side. And when it happens like this, they reshuffle their cards, perpetrating evil to unsuccessfully blackmail the state government. But Akwa Ibom people had since refused to be deceived. Governor Akpabio’s scientific (as in repeated with the same result) victory in courts is a reward for hard work for a man on a cleansing mission.

His administration has restored the pride of Akwa Ibom man, who no more man gates and queue for house-help jobs. Akpabio has also resuscitated an economy that had gone bell-up. With his industrial and tourism policies, and even the international airport, everything the people find their hand doing is money courtesy of tourists and investors.

A man in high demand, the oracle of transformation evidently represents God’s hands stretched salvage His people. Akpabio has given transformation life, and made it to walk on four legs across the 31 local government areas of Akwa Ibom. His victory for sure, is marked and sealed: Made in Heaven, chiselled on a plate of gold. Can man take this away?

Of course, before he even declared for a second term, about a year today, he sought the face of God, and went on his winning knees. Akpabio campaigned vigorously. He showed no complacency because public opinion favoured him. From Uyo to Eket, Oron to Ikono and Ikot Abasi to Itu, Akwa Ibom had decided to follow Akpabio, no looking back.

“Your Excellency, you don’t need to campaign here, we know our Governor”, was a recurring refrain. This manifested in their 957,585 votes for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; the closest party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN panting behind with a distant 163,449 votes. Imagine the margin!

The tyres of this mandate are too solid to pick nails. As soon as the INEC returning officer in the state, and Vice Chancellor of University of Uyo, Professor Comfort Ekpo announced the result on April 27, celebrations took over simultaneously across the state, as were repeated when the tribunal and Appeal Court affirmed the victory. They believe Akpabio, their flagpole of hope, is a confluence of God’s will and man’s choice. And he is not failing.

According to Obong Nkreruwem Effiong, 62: “We don’t need ACN in this state. Akpabio’s victory after victory has come to confirm that ACN was neck-deep renting crowds across Uyo instead of presenting policy blueprint that people can look at twice. They thrived in attacking personalities instead of issues.”

A prince of hope, Akpabio also knew that bread is thicker than sermons. That influenced his administration’s policies on employment generation and youth empowerment through agricultural loans and industrial revolution.

The majesty of the moment, the governor epitomizes a fresh faith in the old dream of the creation of Akwa who is celebrating her three days from today.

He matches the magnitude task of developing a hitherto backward state with hard work and dedication, implementing an outsize vision to the later. A polyvalent transformer, his governance is in the name of the people. Whatever is not for the interest of the people is not for the Akwa Ibom he superintends. Akpabio has promoted Akwa Ibom upstairs in a grand scale calibrated in a leadership of service to the people. By his vision, the state’s flag of rare transformation unfurls across the Atlantic Ocean.

This, he does with passion, and a propeller-annoyance driven by nobility of ideas. The development enthusiast knew which plan upon which a solid edifice could be built for the state, scraping all shaky foundations of the past. Akwa Ibom then became one big construction site for infrastructure and other key development sectors. Then industrialization took off with the speed of light.

The state had joined the champions league of development. Achieving all these is not easy. Like they say, much water has passed under the bridge: His sleepless nights, their blackmails and names calling among other banal tactics. But the joy is that the people know the difference between corrosive and corrective fingers, and a jingle and a song: time and precedents. But Akapbio, the change colossus bears God’s seal.

That is why he has been able to tackle frontally, the challenges of the state by all standards, valiantly fording the tempestuous seas of hunger, poverty, disease, illiteracy and insecurity. The real McCoy, as he was once described by Ray Ekpu, the award winning veteran journalist of Akwa Ibom extraction, the growth of Akwa Ibom has no reverse. It soars higher and higher to the purified height of industrial revolution which now forms the thrust of the administration’s second term.

As the governor would always say, even if he were to be contest elections ten times in the state, he would win ten times. Yes, because elections are not won on the pages newspapers or from ‘foreign’ lands. People vote for what they see especially as it positively affects their lives. This is the story of the uncommon transformation praxis in the state. Even ACN knows that this is not the Akwa Ibom of yesterday development wise. Honestly they do. And they say it.

Except that they are ‘ignorant’ that to parade half-truth is to stand honesty on its head. Now that for the umpteenth time, the judicial hammer hit a head, it seems someone is realising that you do not enter the parlour of power through the window, irrespective of your desperation or incurable optimism, especially when the archives of infamous records were not set ablaze during the ‘burn to rule’ outing. The court, they say, is a temple for justice.

The chief priests of this temple have spoken repeatedly, that there is no going back on Governor Godswill Obot Akpabio’s landslide victory in the April governorship election in Akwa Ibom State. Or do we rewrite the law? No! This means Akpabio bears the victory seal willingly given to him by God through contra myopic men. It is even expected of all to support the governor in his transformation renaissance, just as we partake in celebrating the sealed victory, and in dancing to the sweet sound of infectious melodies that reign the air. Court!