Godswill Akpabio: From commissioner, governor, minister to Senate President
Godswill Akpabio has been elected as the Senate President of the 10th Assembly.
Akpabio was sworn in as the Senate President after garnering 63 votes, to defeat his closest rival, Yari Abdulaziz, who got 46 votes.
Akpabio was the preferred candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress and has been governance for a while.
He obtained his law degree from the University of Calabar, Cross River State, and had a short stint as a teacher before he moved on to work as an associate with Paul Usoro and Co., a law firm in Nigeria.
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From there, he served in the telecommunications industry with EMIS Telecoms Limited, a wireless telecommunications company in Lagos, Nigeria, and in 2002, he rose to the position of Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the company.
Akpabio also served at the national level as the National Publicity Secretary of the Association of Telecommunication Companies in Nigeria.
While serving as the MD of EMIS Telecoms, Akpabio, in 2002, he was appointed as the Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources by the then Governor Obong Victor Attah in Akwa Ibom State.
Between 2002 and 2006, he served as a commissioner in three key ministries: Petroleum and Natural Resources, Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, as well as Lands and Housing.
Following his term as commissioner, Akpabio battled with 57 others to clinch the ticket of his then party, the Peoples Democratic Party.
Launched with the slogan, “Thy will be done,” Akpabio won the governorship election in 2006 and was re-elected for the second time in 2011.
In 2013, Akpabio was elected chairman of the newly formed PDP Governors Forum.
In 2015, he contested and won the Senate seat of the Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District to represent the district in the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
In 2015, Akpabio was made a principal officer as the Senate Minority Leader.
In August 2018, he resigned as the Senate Minority Leader after announcing his defection to the All Progressives Congress.
In July 2019, he was nominated by the former President, Muhammadu Buhari, and screened by the Nigerian Senate for a ministerial appointment. He was sworn in as Minister for Niger Delta Affairs on August 21, 2019,
In June 2022, the former governor resigned his appointment as the minister for Niger Delta Affairs to contest in the presidential primaries of the ruling All Progressives Congress but stepped down on the night of the primaries for the president, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
He began his journey to the Senate Presidency and eventually got anointed as the party’s choice and eventually emerged as the Senate president of the 10th Assembly on 13th June 2023.