2023: Be Focus, Ignore Preferred Choice of Gov Emmanuel, Group Tells Luke

Okon Bassey in Uyo

The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Judiciary, Hon. Onofiok Luke, has been advised to ignore the preferred choice of the governorship candidate of Akwa Ibom State in 2023, rather he should continue to be focus on his gubernatorial ambition in the state.

The convener of the National Political and Economic Discourse Group in the state, Dr. Jack Ekeng, who gave the advised, said Akwa Ibom people know who they will vote for in the 2023 general election.

In a statement made available to journalists in Uyo, Ekeng said the endorsement or anointing by the state Governor, Udom Emmanuel, was programmed to make Luke lose focus since he is from the same local government area of the preferred successor of the state governor.

He noted that the focus of Luke, which is on issue-based, has continued to soar his popularity making him the most acceptable gubernatorial aspirant in the state at the moment.

According to him, “You cannot decree experience to exist. Of all the aspirants in the state so far, only Onofiok Luke can be said to be the most experienced having led the legislature at the highest level in the state and even fought to preserve democracy that was seriously threatened then.

“Moving to the national level, he has not played a second fiddle even though he belongs to the opposition PDP. It takes a person with deep socio-political mastery to be chairman of a powerful committee as the judiciary even as first timer.

“That’s is why the youths, elders and women all over the state are rooting for him as the only detribalised politician with the ability to pull the state out of the current socio- economic and political quagmire and return us to the part of progress, human capital development and socio-national integration currently lacking.”

While appealing to the youths to maintain their support for Luke, whom he described as one of their own, Ekeng said it was time to also try the youthful population at the highest level of managing the state affairs.