OTONG: The Boastful Speaker with a Deep Pocket

OTONG: The Boastful Speaker with a Deep Pocket

By Usoro I. Usoro

There’s a familiar child in every compound during mango season.
He gets there first. Climbs fast. Stuffs his pockets. Knots his shirt into a sack. Then slide down the tree and declares with supreme authority: “Everybody should go home. Mango don finish.”

Not because the mangoes are gone. But because his pockets are full. A selfish and stubborn little brat with a deep pocket. That child has now grown. And you know what? He’s somehow become the Speaker of Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly. Sadly, he’s still learning to speak!

So, Udeme Otong shocked the world recently. Took one drag of expensive cabondioxide and announces—without blinking: he already has the tickets of all 26 members in his pocket. One full year before the next elections. Not party forms. Tickets! Signed. Issued. Secured. Pocketed!

And he said it the way children boast: loud, careless, and without understanding the damage words can do. You could almost hear the nursery rhythm in his voice:
“I have it. All of it. Nobody else will get unless I say so. It is finished.”

With one childish brag, he reduced democracy to a game of hide-and-seek where only one child is allowed to hide the rules. Primaries? Noise. Contest? Distraction. Choice? Adult talk. According to him, the future has already been folded, pressed, and shoved into his trousers.

It was not confidence. It was not strategy. Some call it “ogogoro talk.” But come on, Speaker Otong has the constitutional right to his stupidity. Nobody can challenge that!

And in case anyone missed the implication, he did not just rubbish democracy. He even dragged the governor into the mud with him. When a Speaker boasts that elections are already settled, he’s claiming supernatural powers. Or suggesting that the governor’s nodding like a parent who lets a child seize the remote and control the whole house.

Governor Umo Eno speaks softly about unity and inclusion. Whether in reality is another story. But his Speaker shouts loudly about ownership and control. One says governance.
The other says pocket.

You cannot boast of holding 26 tickets without announcing that the people no longer matter. You cannot speak as though elections are a personal allowance without insulting voters, party members, and institutions all at once. And you certainly cannot do it without sounding like a child who has mistaken access for authority.

This is how democracies are mocked—not always with guns. But sometimes with loose tongues and “deep pockets.” This is how power embarrasses itself. By speaking too early, too loudly, and too foolishly.

The mango tree, however, still stands. The season is not over.
And history has a way of reminding loud children that pockets tear. When they do, mangoes fall. And so ca the tickets!
#fyp #everyone #AkwaIbom @highlight