It would have been honourable for Akpabio to go to jail —Senator Urhoghide

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator Matthew Urhoghide has said it would have been more honourable for Senator Godswill Akpabio to go to jail than dumping the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Senator Urhoghide, who was reacting to the defection of the former Minority Leader, insisted that those of them who supported him to become minority leader were stabbed in the back by Akpabio.

Urhoghide, who spoke to journalists in Benin City, the Edo State capital, said instead of allowing himself to be blackmailed and intimidated, Akpabio should have just called the bluff of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and choose to go to jail.

He said: “If it is true Akpabio is going away, it is a stab on some of us; he stabbed us in the back and he knows where his place in history will be in this country. It is a stab, even if it is because the EFCC is intimidating and harassing him.

“It would have been more honourable for him to go to jail because those who run away from us, like Senator Joshua Dariye and went to APC was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.

“If Akpabio was just an ordinary Senator, nobody would have bothered about him but because he was the Minority Leader, that is the leader of the PDP caucus in the Senate.

“He ought to have come back to us to say the mandate you gave to me to be your leader, I am hereby giving it back to you, I step down. We will get somebody else but for him to hold our highly revered position and then you go back to another political party, it is shameful.”