Nseobong Okon-Ekong
Former Governor of Cross River State and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Liyel Imoke has expressed confidence in the ability of his party to regain control of the state in 2023 from the All Progressives Congress (APC), which became the ruling party following the recent defection of the state Governor, Ben Ayade, to the APC.
The PDP had an unbroken reign of 21 years in Cross River State between 1999 and May 2021 when Ayade joined the APC.
Ayade, who previously served as a senator between 2011 and 2015, was a member of the PDP until he defected to the APC last month.
Fielding questions from THISDAY, Imoke maintained that Cross River “has a history of being a PDP state.”
Making a veiled reference to Akwa Ibom and Rivers States, where their former assumedly influential governors, Senator Godswill Akpabio and Mr. Rotimi Amaechi respectively, could not convince the majority of the electorate in their states to move with them from the PDP to the APC, Imoke said: “In the past, you would see that states that have that type of strength irrespective of a defection tend to remain strong at all times.
“There’s a reason for that. What you perceive as power will determine how you lead. If you perceive power to be a political party, then you will be moving from one political party to another, but if you understand that power ultimately is the people and that it belongs to the people, you will appreciate that it is not about the party.”
“Cross River State has always been about the people, and I think it will still remain about the people; so the party has endeared itself to the people, and as such, a movement by the governor does not on its own translate to the people moving into another political party, because they have already identified strongly with the party –the PDP.
“It is sort of what you have in the United States and other countries where there are strongholds; a state like California is defined as a democratic stronghold. Cross River State is a PDP stronghold.”
Dislodging the PDP completely from Cross River State in the estimation of Imoke is near impossible. “The truth is that they have an uphill task to remove the PDP in the state,” he added.
