On the heels of the recent declaration by Cross River State governor, Ben Ayade, that 3,000 new political appointments will be announced in the first week of March, 2018, www.calitown.com can reveal that political appointment application forms are presently being circulated in a bid to recruit and submit 240 names per local government area to the state governor for appointment.
While www.calitown.com was unable to say at press time if the governor was aware of these forms, Christian Ita, Ayade’s Chief Press Secretary, promised to “find out and get back to you (us)”, when confronted with information that the forms are presently in circulation. But he gave faint indication that the idea may not be the governor’s.
But one of Ayade’s commissioner (name withheld) whose signature appears on some samples of the form sighted by www.calitown.com, said it was his ” idea and initiative to help submit to the state governor, a comprehensive list of names for appointment, as the governor charged us to do”. Pressed further, he revealed that ” I shouldn’t be going around asking the same people to give me names. Since the forms are there, all my people need to do is pick up a copy of the form, fill it and return. We will then go through the forms and then draw up a comprehensive list of 240 persons that will be appointed by the governor”. He did not say if the forms are sold or given out free.
One political watcher who has elected to remain anonymous is however incensed by “…this latest gaff. I mean, this man has refused to back down on the crippling of systems and institutions. Do you seriously think that this bazaar of appointments have pushed the Cross River State project any further? Too many childish things are happening and our governor keeps taking one comical action or the other and his lieutenants propagate and expand this comedy with things like this. How can you justify the printing and distribution of political appointment application forms? Is that what should preoccupy us at this point in our state’s history? Indeed this government is a play, badly put together”, he submitted.
Another source who appears to have obtained the form, sent www.calitown.com a mail insisting that, ” there is nothing wrong with these forms. I am sure those persons who think everything must pass through them gave you people this information. It is an internal thing and if you people are uncomfortable with it, then pray harder in your respective churches. We are for Ayade and so it will be”, a submission the political watcher contacted described as an “imbecilic submission”.
For now the forms are widely circulating in the Southern Senatorial district of the state, especially in Calabar Municipality.
