2027 Election Already Concluded, 26 Assembly Tickets In My Pocket – Akwa Ibom Speaker Otong

Tuesday December 16, 2025
www.thenewsdesk.ng

The Speaker of the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly, Udeme Otong, has sparked public outrage by publicly declaring that the outcome of the 2027 legislative elections has already been decided, claiming that he has the power to determine who, within the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, will be elected into the assembly.

In a viral video circulating widely on Facebook, Mr Otong was seen boasting that no one would become a member of the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly without his approval.

The speaker made the remarks during a courtesy visit by the Ibom Grassroots Development Initiative, a political group, to his country home in Abak Itenge, to mark his 2025 birthday.

“All the tickets are already in my pocket,” Mr Otong said in the video. He spoke in his Annang dialect.

“All the 26 House of Assembly tickets are already in my pocket. I single-handedly negotiated for them, no one else. No one else did. I will personally choose who becomes a House of Assembly member and hand the ticket to the person from my pocket,” he said.

Akwa Ibom State has 26 lawmakers in the state assembly. All were members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) until June, when 24 of them defected along with Governor Umo Eno to the APC.