Insider sources in Cross River State have informed www.calitown.com that attempts by several local council chairmen in the state to seek a second term of three years in office, have gone up in smoke after stakeholders within the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state decided that the swearing-in of CRS governor-elect, Bassey Edet Otu, on May 29th, 2023, presents the party with a fresh opportunity to create systems that will work for the state and not for certain individuals alone.
It was carefully revealed that while most of these chairmen have orchestrated schemes designed to push their second term ambitions forward, including extracting political promises from outgoing governor, Ben Ayade, clearly, the governor’s senatorial election lose to a sitting senator, Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe, tacitly made their plans more difficult to achieve.
Again, Ayade is believed to be unhappy with the performances of the council bosses, after a recent local government tour by state deputy governor, Ivara Ejemot Esu, showed clearly that local government projects for which huge sums of money were released, came up as badly conceived and poorly executed. “Look at the poorly executed Biase Local Government Council market project in Akpet Central for instance, the council boss hurriedly and poorly put up that project, painted it in unintelligent colours and presented it for commissioning as a project. After commissioning, have the traders agreed to put that lame project to use? No”, we were reliably informed by a source who does not want his name in print.
“In Yakurr LGA, where your publisher comes from, haven’t you seen how laughable it is that the council boss has gone to build a small, poorly conceived events centre, something he still hasn’t completed, when he clearly has been unable to maintain a bigger and better conceived one, standing on the same grounds with his own? Or you want me to point you to nearby Abi LGA, where that council boss has spent close to three years with nothing plausible to show?”
Information volunteered also pointed to the fact that, the bulk of these council bosses, products of the parallel administration of the governor’s brother, Frank Ayade, ebulliently referred to as CR’s “co-governor”, by Ben Ayade himself, did not demonstrate to the governor, the level of political loyalty that the governor expected from them. They were said to be more ‘comfortable’ obeying instructions from Frank Ayade, who constantly demonstrated political mannerisms that showed Ayade as incapable of saying no to his political demands. “The council bosses in the North of Cross River, were largely blamed for their inability to influence the outcome of the senatorial election that Ayade lost. These people were clearly not on ground and were pummelled into submission by a more potent political movement that Jarigbe unleashed in the North. The internal arrangement now is that, since they didn’t support the governor to win, they can’t dream of another three years in office”, a top APC stalwart in Cross River, told www.calitown.com.
Otu, the governor-elect, we hear is not open to working with a set of persons not appropriately primed for the task at hand, like most of these council bosses and will further need to be adequately briefed.
The tenure of these council bosses ends on June 1, 2023, clearly meaning that Ayade’s successor would appoint caretaker committee members for the 18 councils.