DESPITE the intervention of the special committee set up by the national office of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the two-year face-offs within the Akwa Ibom State chapter of the party the dust is yet to settle. Three days after a supposed peace meeting, both Governor Godswill Obot Akpabio and his predecessor Obong Victor Bassey Attah were still holding separate meetings, according to some sources, with each insisting on earlier stand. The outcome of the meetings is not yet known.

Attah, an architect and respected immediate past two term governor of the state had made no secret of his preference for his son in-law, Dr Udoma Bob Ekarika as his successor. In a hotly contested primary in 2006, Akpabio had however overcome Ekarika and won the governorship election, evidently with little or no support from Attah. Since then, as they say, there has been no love lost between Attah and Akpabio, who incidentally, like Ekarika, was a commissioner under Attah. In 2007, the party in the state under the supervision of the national officers constituted a new executive led by Prince Uwem Ita Etuk. For two years, Attah and his supporters severally rejected Etuk as the chairman insisting that the executive committee should be dissolved or the position of chairman be allotted to him.

However Akpabio and his camp have stood their ground maintaining that the Etuk-led executive was legally put in place and there was no parallel congress when current executive was put in place. Thus, ensued a battle for the soul of the party in the state. Right now much of the fight is being linked with the 2011 governorship race. Incumbent governor Akpabio wants a second term in office. Attah and his group are hell-bent on recapturing power in the state come 2011. Perhaps, more than anything else, Akpabio is drawing his strength from his performance on ground doing several kilometer of roads across the state and a network of fly-over bridges in Uyo, completing the Airport project and Ibom Power plant which Attah started, introducing free and compulsory education in the state from primary to secondary school level, doing several school buildings and hospitals and others.

In addition he is banking on the goodwill of several pressure groups and organizations like the Akwa Ibom Peoples front (AKPF), Akwa Ibom Democratic Voice (ADV), Utunikang Ibibio, Godswill Solidarity Movement (GSM) 1 For 8 Initiative, Progressive Akwa Ibom Peoples Assembly (PAPA), Continuity Advancement Group (CAG), Friends of Godswill Akpabio in Nigeria (FGAN), Iman Ibom Support for Good Governance, Ibiono Ibom Grand Alliance, Nsit Ibom for Godswill and many others. Several ethnic groups in the state have endorsed Akpabio for 2011 and three weeks ago, the Asan Ibibio in a colourful ceremony in Uyo described as "the endorsement of endorsement" formerly gave him the nod for 2011.

Read more, http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/policy_politics/article01/indexn2_html?pdate=231009&ptitle=How%20PDP%20moved%20Akpabio,%20Attah%20into%20detente