The Choice Before Cross River People Is A Simple One   

By Dominic Kidzu 

There is really no difficulty in making the supreme choice come 2023 for the people of Cross River State as it will be indeed for the people of Nigeria, because the issues are not complicated in the least, and the choices are etched in simple bold print. It will be the choice between crass failure, criminal negligence and pathological telling of lies to the people and a broad new canvass of opportunity to try someone new, someone vibrant and credible. It will be a choice between the impunity, the audacity and the recklessness of the current administration and the broad promise of a serious alternative that will be forthright and respect systems, conventions and propriety while working for the good of the people. It is going to be refreshing to listen to the Governor or his aides speak and to believe what one hears in a way that has been impossible for over seven years now.

As Senator Sandy Onoh cryptically hinted in Saint Charles Catholic parish, Obudu, the day after he received the cross of Saint Gregory the great; “We are not going to tell lies to our people when we get into government. We shall be honest with our people. We shall promise what we can do and shall not promise what we cannot do. The simple reason that you are in government is not sufficient for you to become a liar to your fellow citizens who put you in office “.

And now at last the chicken are coming home to roost because there is a whirlwind of political consciousness and rebirth that is demanding restitution for the years of plundering and a new start for the stricken Cross River State, despoiled and raped by the present leadership that does not seem to understand when enough is enough. As Mahatma Gandhi put it “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” If only they know when to stop and think and begin to repair. We the people must rescue ourselves by taking sides with our dear state, since brinkmanship has fallen flat on its face. As accordingto Martin Luther King Jnr, “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.” Ala General Yakubu Gowon, to kick APC out of Cross River State is a job that must be done!

The APC is in a glass jar and we can now all see what it contains. The indices at last have vindicated the PDP because facts and figures don’t lie. A vote for the APC in Cross River is a validation of failure as our new standard of measurement. A vote for APC is a vote for the continuation of the years of famine, for the rule of the artful dodgers and crafty contrivers.

   

A vote for people who believe Oscar Wilde’s joke that ” any man who lives within his means suffers from a painful lack of imagination.” There shall be no more salaries because the banks will shut their doors against them. Already business activities have grinded to a halt. There shall be weeping and knashing of teeth and this land shall be left desolate.

Unfortunately, Sweetprince, the party’s governorship candidate, is just a sacrificial lamb whose role will be to wash the putrefaction of his sponsors with hyssop and leave his followers holding the can. We all have a responsibility to save Sweetprince, (God bless his kind heart) from himself and the bagage

men pulling him by the tither. Because they will make a mess of him. They will dent his image. They will destroy his reputation. They will place the rot of eight years squarely upon his head and continue to ask for more. They will make his name a byword, even amongst his kith and kin. And he shall not be able to utter one word contrariwise in his own defence.

The descent to infamy shall be swift. And, alas, in the end Sweetprince will become Bitterprince and things will fall apart, and the centre will nolonger hold, because he can only be a puppet on the leash of the master godfathers who cannot be satisfied or surpassed. And then ofcourse, a cow will not give birth to a goat. The old Sweetprince shall depart poste haste, leaving behind a grotesque reincarnation of gorgon medusa, a scary king in the service of his earthly gods who have chained him to the floor in advance. And this fallen house, to borrow the words of Karl Maier, shall finally crumble into nothingness.