The official Facebook page of the Akwa Ibom State Government on Tuesday described Senate President Godswill Akpabio as the “Acting President of Nigeria” during a livestream of an aircraft reception ceremony, before the reference was later removed.
The description appeared in a post covering the arrival of a new Airbus A220-300 for the state-owned airline Ibom Air at Victor Attah International Airport in Uyo. The original wording read: “Arrival of the Acting President of Nigeria, Sen. Dr. Godswill Akpabio, GCON, President of the Senate, Chairman of the National Assembly, at the Official Reception and Water Cannon Ceremony for the brand-new Airbus A220-300, as part of the activities commemorating the 39th Anniversary Celebration of Akwa Ibom State.”
The post was subsequently edited to delete the “Acting President” title. Akpabio, a former governor of Akwa Ibom, attended the event marking the state’s anniversary celebrations.
President Bola Tinubu is currently on a three-week vacation in Europe, having left Abuja on August 30 with London as his first stop. Vice President Kashim Shettima had travelled to Luanda, Angola, on August 29 to represent Tinubu at an African Union summit and returned to Abuja on August 31.
Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution (as amended) sets out clear rules for temporary presidential absence. Section 145 requires the president to transmit a written declaration to the Senate president and the Speaker of the House of Representatives when proceeding on vacation or otherwise unable to discharge the functions of the office. The vice president then performs those functions. The presidency has not publicly confirmed that such a declaration was issued before Tinubu’s departure.
Section 146 allows the Senate president to assume the presidency only in the event of a vacancy in both the offices of president and vice president, not for temporary absences abroad.
When contacted, Akwa Ibom State Commissioner for Information Aniekan Umanah initially denied that the post had existed. Confronted with a screenshot taken before the edit, he attributed it to an error by social media staff. “I don’t know. Maybe somebody made a mistake. There’s nothing like that (acting president) in the country,” Umanah said. He later added: “Nobody authorised that (reference) here. Maybe the people typing may have made a mistake, but that cannot be the position of the state government.”
Some social media users in Akwa Ibom had already begun referring to Akpabio as acting president in the days before the government post. One Facebook user, Ima Utip, wrote on Monday: “Thank God our Senator Godswill Akpabio is the acting president…let’s build Ibom Deep Seaport.”
The aircraft, registered 5N-CDC, is part of a fleet of 10 ordered under the previous state administration and was formally handed over in Mirabel, Canada, before its arrival in Uyo. The state plans to commission 39 projects during its anniversary month, with Tinubu scheduled to visit and commission some of them.
As of Tuesday evening, the presidency had issued no public statement clarifying whether a formal letter under Section 145 had been transmitted to the National Assembly.
