By Thomas Odey Otunu
The political mantra of back to South was birthed due to a formidable attempt to circumvent a convention which has been consciously and deliberately accepted by the people of Cross River State, to drive equity, benevolence, confidence, and justice in their political lives. Back to South got magnified at the wake of PDP’s perceived political misadventure, based essentially on candidacy, which couldn’t meet the expectation and interest of a people who found more justice in power sharing than survival of the fittest.
The victory secured by the APC in 2023 Guber race was overwhelming, it recreated the confidence of the people in their power rotation convention which was established without any formal structural procedure, but through a silent understanding, facilitated consecutively by the last three incumbents who chose fidelity as a virtue.
The just past administration couldn’t live up to a lot, that isn’t the focus of this article, however, it appears like Prince Bassey Otu is taking the love showered on him for granted. Stories have been heard from the inner chamber of this administration expressing eagerness to showcase a payback for the Northernization of governance during that last regime. But it would be worthwhile for a man who was chosen partly based on his past, as an excellent representative at the lower and upper level of the nation’s bicameral parliament, to reinvent the quality of leadership as exemplified in the past by the first two governors of the South and Central zones whose primary constituency was Cross River State. Governor Duke’s activities were characterized by uncommon inventions that were notable in modern governance, his first Head of Personal Staff was from far away Northern Cross River, appointed based on character and brilliance, he ran his tenures with a more genuine intention to take Cross River into a productive economy, driven mostly by its tourism potentials. Even though his intentions could not fruition in eight years, his successor was not much unlike him in terms of job placements, they were more interested in spreading engagements across. I am not giving them encomiums for being the best of leadership that I wish to see, they didn’t run the Local Government System to the best interest of the rural people, we still experience till date, the vestiges of their high-handedness as it concerns rural governance.
The system of putting your people first was initiated by Governor Ayade, it was more beneficial to a local government than to the zone, the favor was more tribal than zonal. It isn’t a good example to emulate, governance is a modern concept, an enlightened community must strive to live up to the ideals of modern democracy, in terms with the principles of African politics, which encourages federal character principles but still dispenses privileges with little notice of leadership origin.
Governor Otu has shown too clearly on three serious occasions that whatever becomes a conflict or an error elsewhere must be returned back to South, that hasn’t defined him the way and manner he was presented that made him win more hearts across the length and breadths of Cross River, Prince Otu was shown a seemingly miraculous victory in Northern Cross River where his predecessor was rejected in a previous poll, giving him that true sense of one Cross River, built on equity and fairness. The three jobs that were taken from Etung, Abi and Yala and handed to his kinsmen in recent past have given some of his supporters from those places reasons not to take him as seriously as they did before the Guber election. Prince Otu’s major opponent during the governorship election comes from Etung, but the Etung people gave him their support against one of their finest, they did that for equity, based on an existing convention. I understand that there was a deliberate attempt to bypass his authority, but, he still had an alternative measure to take, so, the Etung people may not regret giving him their support, but he betrayed them, he would have simply nominated an Etung supporter of his for that office. Same thing has happened to Yala in the last one week.
Integrity has many definitions, one of them is fidelity and fairness to your people as a leader, aside from Otu’s delay in dispensing government duties to his team of supporters who are presently unemployed, he has shown obvious nepotistic tendencies in governance, a characteristic most Crossriverians never believed that he possesses. He has a lot of time to correct that if he is truly interested in creating an equitable Cross River.
odeyotunutom@gmail.com
