Okon who spoke with www.calitown.com, also believes that the bulk of those who left the PDP, owe the party a lot of gratitude for having provided them with a platform that made them prominent. He is however unhappy that, instead of staying in the party and working for the success of other members of the party who had earlier worked for their own political success, they have personalised something that should be collective by insisting that they must be the ones to contest all elections, “this is unfortunate and is what so many people out there are not seeing”.
On talk making the rounds that the party fielded a candidate with health challenges in the Northern Senatorial district, the chairman was of the opinion that, “it is unfortunate that we always want to play God. She is not the first person to be ill and definitely won’t be the last, but she is a formidable candidate who went to House of Representatives and attracted dividends to her people; look at the schools renovated her constituency and tell me who will want this formidable candidate abandoned because she is passing through what all of us can pass through. Isn’t her case even better? People won elections in this country from prison, people like Abia’s Theodore Orji and even Iyiola Omisore; nothing happened. Why must her case be different ?”, he asked.
For the Ben Ayade/Ivara Esu ticket, Okon submits that those who say Esu is too old to be a deputy governor are yet to understand that the PDP in her wisdom decided on Esu, who can give the younger Ayade, wise counsel, borne out of his experience. He had a word too for those accusing state governor, Liyel Imoke of supporting Esu, considered his relation. Hear him, “Ivara Esu is not from Abi, we all know that he is from Base and if we want to be fair to ourselves, don’t we have relations in other communities? Do people quarrel that those people are related to us? We need to look at serious issues and leave out all these trivial issues”.
