Waiting can be a virtue and it can also be a frustrating venture. It is a virtue when one waits patiently for something he knows will definitely come; and it is frustrating when one is not sure when and how the thing being waited for will come. It is worse when one is deprived of what he felt was his for the asking. That is why Mary Gordon speaks of waiting as “the great vocation of the dispossessed”.
Cross River South Senatorial District produced her last elected governor in 1999 who, after eight years, handed over to the Central before it became the turn of the North whose eight-year tenure is fast thinning out. The South had, therefore, rightly thought that come 2023, its turn to produce another Governor of Cross River State was rife. The back-to-South advocacy became very loud and even deafening! But that is where it all began and ended. We, in the South, lacked the will, the tenacity and the sincerity to drive it to a logical and successful conclusion.
Firstly, in my party, the People’s Democratic Party, while the Central Senatorial District came up with only one aspirant, a swarm of nine aspirants and some pretenders surfaced in the South. Where some of them got the N21.5 million to purchase the expression-of-interest and nomination form is still a mystery; but they came out still to play the spoiler’s game.
Secondly, our brother and former Governor of Cross River State, Mr Donald Duke, played a fast one on our people but they were too filled with anger and bitterness for one of the Southern aspirants to see the plot. Duke gathered some community elders in his mansion and asked them to bring a consensus candidate from amongst the Southern contestants. Election was carried out by attendees and the results were later announced: the assumed most favoured received 12 votes, the second-placed – 8, the third-placed – four votes while a few others, including the despised one got one vote each. And I asked, who has ever subjected consensus-building to voting by people outside the concerned people? Those of us who keenly watched saw the trickery in that event. Even though the exercise was termed a non-binding “straw vote”, the aim actually was to smear and dent the Southern frontliner in the race and thus present him to the rest of Cross River State as a black sheep of the family. Yet, our elders at that gathering didn’t see where the game was going! We forgot that Duke had earlier kicked against power rotation at a public function organized by some Southern leaders and also, had endorsed the only aspirant from the Central for the juicy plum.
So, when the PDP’s Governorship Primaries came on May 27, 2023, we saw how wise our former governor and community elders actually were. The most preferred among those they threw up scored six votes, the second got four votes, the third received 147 votes while the despised “black sheep” garnered 175 votes to place second. If our leaders had been fair and visionary, they would have seen and avoided the huge crack they helped to create in our fold. Now, the South have lost out in the power game of Cross River State. We in the PDP have, indeed, been dispossessed; therefore, we must be ready to take up the waiting vocation.
How long shall we wait to produce the next governor of Cross River State? I cannot say, but it may be a very long wait. My dear friend, Professor Sandy Ojang Onor, from the Central, has convincingly emerged as the PDP candidate for the next governorship election in the State. I am happy for him. I congratulate and wish him well. But I weep for my people of Cross River South and, most especially the Efiks. Why? If, by God’s benevolence and support of Cross Riverians, Prof Onor becomes the next governor, he will occupy the office for eight years. And after that, considering the energy and passion employed by our friends from the North in the just concluded governorship primaries, one of them may aspire for the position of the governor. If that happens, we will support and that person will serve for another eight years. And if they rest of Cross Rover State decides, after another 16 years of waiting, to bring the governorship to the South, it will be quite natural for Akamkpa/Biase Federal Constituency to have a shot at it; and that governor will stay in office for eight years. If that happens, the cycle will start again, and for at least 40 years, our people of the Efik, Qua, Efut and Okoyong stocks, will never smell the governorship of Cross River State.
As at now, His Excellency, Mr Donald Duke, has been the only elected governor from Cross River South. As it looks, with the high betrayal meted out by his own people to the South’s front runner in the exited 2022 PDP primaries, it is very obvious we do not need another person to wear that garb.
If what I am foreseeing comes to play, our children will not forgive us; because, for greed and malice, we threw away our own baby with the bath water. Unfortunately, by that time, many of us may not be around to take the swipes because we would have gone to be with our Maker. But the story will be told for many generations to come.
Meanwhile, my brothers and sisters in Cross River South Senatorial District, let the waiting game begin! Ciao!
Patrick Ene Okon, a politician, Mass Communications teacher and former member, Federal House of Representatives, wrote this piece shortly after the PDP primaries in CRS.
