Senator Florence Ita-Giwa, the former Senate Deputy Minority Leader, said that her seven-member team worked through the night to reduce the list of 17 governorship candidates to four.
Ita-Giwa, who served as Secretary of the committee led by former Senate Majority Leader Victor Ndoma-Egba, said they had invited all APC aspirants in the state to a meeting where they were asked to talk about themselves and, if they didn’t make it, to point to someone who they thought would fit the bill.
She stated as she addressed a big audience of women’s organisations in the state who had gathered to applaud the ruling party’s choice of Senator Prince Bassey Otu as its flagbearer.
“The APC leadership in the State gave our committee 72 hours to reduce the number of aspirants in the party to four.”
“We had a meeting with all of them.” We had them speak about themselves and their achievements. We asked them to take a look at themselves and offer who they think would be the best governor if everyone couldn’t make it.
“After our committee screened the candidates, Prince Bassey Otu received the most private nominations from the majority of them. As a result, the committee targeted him. That is how Otu became the APC’s Cross River State consensus candidate,” she explained.
She praised Governor Ben Ayade for accepting the committee’s suggestion.
She also applauded Ayade for sticking to his commitment that he wanted to pass over to someone from the Cross River Southern District out of fairness and equity.
Senator John Owan-Enoh of the Central District and Chief Chris Agara, an oil and gas entrepreneur, have both expressed strong opposition to the deal.
Chris Agara is “dedicated and prepared to take his governorship quest to its natural end,” according to a statement issued by his campaign’s Director-General, Barrister Richard Ogbeche.
“Our principal was invited to the meeting on Monday, May 9th at the Transcorp Hotel in Abuja to examine the findings of the 7-man committee previously set up by the Party and not to settle on any agreement,” he explained.
“That when the issue was raised on the floor of the meeting, our principal stated his doubts about the Consensus Option and declined to participate.”
“He went on to say how the blatant ambush meeting showed tremendous disrespect to some Governorship contenders by asking them to a meeting for a specific reason and then turning around to do something different.”
Owan-Enoh, who ran for the APC in 2019, stated that he would not concede until he had spoken with his throngs of supporters.
