2015 guber race: The choice before Cross River

From their academic training, career attainments, experience and exposure in life, all the candidates seem evenly matched. Three, the trio are all not only from the same senatorial district, but, and quite interestingly in the context of Nigerian politics, are also from the same Bette ancestry. There is also the issue of party affiliation which […]

From their academic training, career attainments, experience and exposure in life, all the candidates seem evenly matched. Three, the trio are all not only from the same senatorial district, but, and quite interestingly in the context of Nigerian politics, are also from the same Bette ancestry. There is also the issue of party affiliation which I also consider a non-issue. If it was before when the PDP used to boast that Cross River was a one-party state, this analysis would not have been done because whoever emerged from the primaries of the PDP would eventually become the anointed governor.
But since the rancorous outcome of the PDP governorship primaries two months ago, it is not so any more. The PDP has imploded in the state following the bitter governorship primaries in which Governor Liyel Imoke played on the intelligence of everybody who was of political substance in the state to aspire to the office and exhaust themselves, while he had a preferred candidate he kept close to his chest.
The major issue, to my mind therefore, will be narrowed down to the person of each of the candidates. Who has the better character and who between the three, in the perception of a majority of the people has the better leadership credentials to run the state better? If the contest is narrowed to that major consideration, and I think it is in the interest of CRS that it should be done so, then Mr. Ochicha of the APC is more likely to carry the day. Although Senator Ayade is the better known of the three; is the more connected; is the man with the bigger war chest and the man who has the almighty national ruling PDP machine behind him, on the character quotient he will fall to his two lesser known rivals.
Many complain that as a senator representing the North, he is simply ‘unseeable’. He can neither be seen by his constituents in Abuja or in Obudu or in Calabar or anywhere else. What is more, he does not answer or return calls or text messages. He is simply out of touch with the constituency or stakeholders in Abuja or back home. This reputation, or rather notoriety of Ayade, is so well known and lamented about yet he has not done anything to change it even as he seeks to now be governor. Many now wonder that if as senator he cannot be seen is it when he will become more powerful as governor, ensconced in the fortified Government House, that he will be easy to see and reason with? For those who think that Ayade will not be a suitable representative of the people in faraway Government House Calabar on account of his character deficit, they are also worried that although Ugbo has experience, he lacks the necessary dynamism required to run a state like CRS which now has severe economic crisis.
The PDP in CRS desperately wished for an opposition party in the state and now it has got, not one but, two formidable opposition parties, one of which is most likely to send it packing from Government House. The opposition party the PDP should be prepared to contend with is the APC whose ranks are being swell everyday with disaffected decampees from the PDP. Someone needs to take up a lament for a party that was the predominant one in the state but whose hegemony was destroyed by none other than Governor Liyel lmoke.
With the misadventure in its primaries which took place in December last year, it will never be the same again for the party. And if what the ordinary persons are saying on the streets of major CRS towns like Calabar, Ugep, Obubra, Ikom, Ogoja and Obudu is anything to go by, the people of CRS will not be sad missing the PDP and will be most enthusiastic in seeing a brand new face in the governance of the state and not the same old traditional faces.
Utum lives in Calabar.