Barring any last minute political changes, www.calitown.com can report that two Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, stalwarts in Cross River State, Bassey Ndem, an architect and owner of highbrow Axari Hotels, Calabar and Edem Ekong, lawyer and one-time famed head of the state’s Department of Public Transportation, DOPT, will decamp to the All Progressives Congress, APC, in a move that appears to deepen the political permutations of 2023.
Ndem and Ekong, both from Akpabuyo LGA, CR South, are leader and deputy leader, respectively, of the PDP in the LGA. They are croonies and political bedfellows of former governors, Donald Duke and Liyel Imoke, building and maintaining PDP structures in their LGA since 1999.
While Ndem has widely been speculated to be interested in running for governor of the state, Ekong appears to have eyes set for the National Assembly in Abuja, the nation’s capital. We gathered that, the decamping of the two men was what state governor, Ben Ayade, was referring to when he left a cryptic message days ago that, some very prominent members of the PDP will soon join him in the APC.
To buttress the strength of this information, an APC chieftain in the state confided in www.calitown.com that “the duo and their teeming supporters will be formally received into the APC, on Thursday, 16th December, 2021, at the Management Development Institute, MDI field in Calabar, by 10am.” The PDP in the state was yet to react at press time.
More details shortly!