Senator Akpabio started his career as a Teacher and later went on to become an Associate Partner with Paul Usoro and Co., a law firm in Nigeria. He also worked with EMIS Telecoms Limited, a wireless telecommunications company in Lagos, Nigeria. <\/p>\n
In 2002, he rose to the position of the Managing Director\/Chief Executive Officer of the company. In this position, he helped in shaping the future of the burgeoning telecoms industry. <\/p>\n
During his tenure as Director at EMIS, Senator Akpaibo served as the National Publicity Secretary of the Association of Telecommunication Companies in Nigeria, (ATCOM).<\/p>\n
In 2002, Senator Akpabio was appointed Honourable Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources by the then Governor Obong Victor Attah in Akwa Ibom State. <\/p>\n
Between 2002 and 2006, he had served as a Commissioner in three key ministries: Petroleum and Natural Resources, Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, as well as Lands and Housing. <\/p>\n
In 2006, he aspired for the governorship of Akwa Ibom State in a hotly contested primary election and defeated 57 other aspirants to emerge the candidate of the People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP). His campaign (with the slogan, \u201clet God\u2019s will be done\u201d) received mass support and In 2007, he was elected Governor of Akwa Ibom State. <\/p>\n
He was re-elected for a second term in office as Governor of Akwa Ibom State in 2011. Senator Akpabio was elected Chairman of the newly formed PDP Governor\u2019s Forum in 2013. <\/p>\n
In 2015, he contested and won the Senate seat of the Akwa Ibom North West (Ikot Ekpene) Senatorial District to represent the district in the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. <\/p>\n
Running under the platform of the People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP), he polled 422,009 of the 439,449 defeating Chief Inibehe Okorie of the All Progressive Party Congress (APC). <\/p>\n
He was nominated for the position of the Senate Minority Leader by the South-South caucus of the People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP) and was announced as Senate Minority Leader by the President of the Senate on July 28, 2015. <\/p>\n
In August 2018, Senator Akpabio resigned as the Senate Minority Leader and defected to the All Progressives Congress(APC).<\/p>\n
In July 2019, he was nominated by the former President, Muhammadu Buhari, and screened by the Nigerian Senate for a ministerial appointment. On August 21, 2019, he was sworn in as Minister for Niger Delta Affairs.<\/p>\n
In June 2022, Akpabio\u2019s ambition went even higher when he 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.<\/p>\n
On June 13, 2023, he emerged as the Senate President of the 10th National Assembly, having garnered 63 votes leaving his rival, Abdulazeez Yari with 46 votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":27019,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[166],"writer":[],"class_list":["post-24420","biography","type-biography","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/biography\/24420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/biography"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/biography"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/biography\/24420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26927,"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/biography\/24420\/revisions\/26927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24420"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blerf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=24420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}