By Our Correspondent
“Every thing in this state is just falling like a deck of cards, it is looking like there is nothing in this state to be proud of again”. Those were the words of a very bitter spectator at the U.J. Esuene stadium, Calabar, venue of the “Kings & Queens” contest for bands participating at this year’s Carnival Calabar. The spectator’s anger, www.calitown.com can confirm, is not unconnected with the very shameful power outtage that threw the entire arena into darkness on Christmas day.
While darkness took over the whole place, bands of boys and girls could be loudly heard raining abuses on state governor, Liyel Imoke and those charged with the responsibility of putting the show together. Perhaps too, the indecent taunts directed at the state number one man are a further expression of the open secret in Cross River state that the 2014 Christmas Festival has been nothing to write home about.
Again, the Carnival bands have been scrapping through with preparations for the carnival while politics has taken centre stage. “The people know they are leaving in a couple of months,their preoccupation now is how to work at getting what in the next government. It is this preoccupation that has turned everything upside down and showed not just the wickedness of these people but also their ineptitude”, Clement Ita, who spoke to www.calitown.com said. Fears are being expressed in some quarters that the Calabar Carnival in the last days of the Imoke administration, maybe a legacy gone down. “Unless another governor comes in and re-positions this thing, people like Donald Duke will sit back and wonder at what Imoke has done with this wonderful offering”, Ita submitted.
When www.calitown.com first broke the story on the absence of any form of preparation/decoration in all of Calabar, during this Christmas period, a big departure from what has been the case in the last couple of years, a few government officials tried to bandy words with us, an exercise that only proved us right.
