FRAUD: APC Akwa-Ibom Deputy Guber Candidate Invalidates Umana’s Ticket

The running mate on the gubernatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Akwa bom State, Benedict Effiong Ukpong may have committed a fatal blunder that invalidates the ticket on which he ran for office as deputy governor. Ukpong was running mate to Umana Umana in the 2015 governorship elections in Akwa Ibom State.

Facts available to The Trent indicate that Ukpong did not fully resign his appointment with the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), a federal government agency and continued to draw monthly salaries from the agency from September 2014 till June 2015. According to the rules of INEC and the requirements of the constitution, a candidate running for elective office ought to have resigned his appointment with the government in September 2014 to be legible to run for office.

The development highlights a number of legal, ethnical and moral issues. Legal experts say that this revelation invalidates the ticket of the APC candidate Umana Umana and his running mate, Benedict Ukpong. There remains also the question of why Ukpong would have continued to receive his monthly renumeration long after he should have resigned from the service of the government.

Documents first published by online investigative newspaper, Breaking Times show that Mr. Ukpong has been collecting his monthly salary and allowances from September 2014 to June 2015 as a staff of the federal agency and drawing same from his First Bank account as shown by the attached attached pay slips.

According to the source that made these documents available to Breaking Times, Thursday, August 20, 2015, information available was that the APC candidate had been in frantic effort to forge documents to support his claims to having resigned.

When contacted by newsmen, early Thursday, Ukpong claimed that he had made a refund of the salaries to the FCDA, however, he failed to provide evidence of such refund. An APC minion, Inibehe Effiong, has written an opinion editorial on the subject matter seeking to exonerate Ukpong from these allegations. He presented what appeared to be resignation letters, but failed to provide evidence of the said refund of the salaries.

Source; The Trent.