Tag: #Umuzelike Desmond-Cruz

  • Concession of Cross River State Factories: Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again BY UMEZULIKE DESMOND-CRUZ

    Concession of Cross River State Factories: Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again BY UMEZULIKE DESMOND-CRUZ

     

    In his book, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, the legendary Playwright, Olawale Gladstone Emmanuel Rotimi, best known as Ola Rotimi, satirizes the immorality, dubiousness and double-dealing predominant in the Politics of Nigeria.

    Major Rahman Taslim Lekoja-Brown, a retired army officer left his successful cocoa business to join partisan Politics. He did so, not because he loves to serve the people but because of what he has to gain: Money and Fame. He married his eldest brother’s wife and also married another woman, Liza, who was an American Catholic nurse. But when he joined partisan politics, in order to win more votes, especially from the women, Lejoka-Brown married yet another woman, Sikira, the daughter of the president of the Market women union.

    Like Lejoka-Brown, our own husband of Cross River State, sees Politics as the only means of survival after leaving his businesses in Delta State to join partisan Politics. In other to achieve his aim, he entered into a holy matrimony with the people of the Northern Senatorial District. In his 4years of marriage to the North, he pamperized, mesmerized and romanticized the people of the Northern Senatorial District, that every maiden in Cross River State, saw him as the Prince charming and Mr. Right that Cross River State desired.

    We ran after him and accepted his marriage proposal. 7years afterwards, our husband went mad. He has taken away everything that we once held sacred. He has stripped us of our beauty and denied us the joy of a blissful matrimony. He sold our heritage and took away our pride. He invaded our rainforest in Boki, Etung, Obubra, Akamkpa and Ikom and buried our economic trees.

    He promised us heaven, but delivered hell. 7years afterwards, our husband has gone mad again. This time around, our husband has surreptitiously concessed our factories to a faceless entity without our consent. In his defense, he claimed he conducted a referendum yet none of his wives (Constituents) can attest to when and where this referendum was conducted. We heard he concessioned 38 State factories, yet we saw no advertisment on any print or electronic media, nor did we participate in the concession process.

    Nevertheless, like Liza, who returned from America to discover that she was not the only woman in Lejoka-Brown’s life, and as expected from a typical western Catholic Woman, led a women liberation Movement that finally led to the booting out of Lejoka-Brown out of the National Liberation Party, we the wives of Cross River State, shall in 2023, reclaim our land and divorce our now-estranged husband. Revolution is coming!!!

    We urge our husband to forgo his ill-fated ambition of returning to his first marriage, Northern Senatorial District, and save himself the unnecessary stress of contesting for the Senate, given the reality of the electoral act and the recent judgement of the Federal High Court sitting in Ebonyi State. We urge him to save himself some dignity, lest he faces the same fate that befell his friend from Yala, Dr Steve Odey.

  • Beyond 2023: Why The Next Governor Must Be Able To Raise The Dead BY UMEZULIKE DESMOND-CRUZ

    Beyond 2023: Why The Next Governor Must Be Able To Raise The Dead BY UMEZULIKE DESMOND-CRUZ

     

    Beyond the rhetorics and Political razzmatazz, Cross River State needs a Governor who can possibly raise the dead. By this I mean, one who can do the near impossible to salvage what is left of us as a state. One who can take what is left of us as an insolvent state and transform it to something beautiful. To be more specific and particular, we need a miracle worker as our next Governor. And this is why I view it as absolutely denigrating and insulting to our collective sensibility as a people, reducing the Governorship position of our dear state to a mere parochial and fraternity sentiment, where a group of persons are hell-bent on mortgaging our state and our collective patrimony just to pursue the lifetime ambition of a man who sees the Governorship position as his birthright, under the guise of zoning— for Christ sake, we have grown pass such cabalistic approach in our politics as a state. This is time for real business.

    So, it is in consideration of this immutable fact that I have painstakingly followed the activities of all the Gubernatorial aspirants in the mainstream Political Parties in our state. And I can attest that, while the forecast for the 2023 election is still beclouded by a lot of uncertainties, especially in the APC–as to who gets what, how, when and from where– the Peoples Democratic Party appears to be more resolute in their approach to choosing a Gubernatorial flagbearer. And speaking realistically and statistically, except God decides otherwise– which is not foreseeable, as the voice and choice of the people is predominantly the voice of God– Distinguished Senator Prof Sandy Ojang Onor will emerge as the flagbearer of PDP– the indices and favourabilty factors are glaring as there are reproducible. Little wonder a few other aspirants, sensing imminent defeat, have resorted to infantile propaganda against the candidacy of Sandy Onor. There seem to be a new found phobia, in the camp of some PDP aspirants, called SANDYPHOBIA (The Fear of Sandy Onor’s candidacy). So, while we wait for the Governor to choose between his long-time friend, Chief Barr Chris Agara and his adopted Political godson, Asuquo Ekpeyong Jnr, as APC Candidate, we must condition our mind to ask the right questions and choose the best candidate between Distinguished Senator Prof Sandy Onor and any other person from the APC.

    We must begin to look beyond party affiliation, clannish inclination, tribal and Senatorial sentiment and elect a Governor who can bring back our Glory days. As a state with the 2nd lowest Allocation from Federal Government and high debt profile, coupled with a comatose economic and commercial activity, with businesses and SMEs closing up and leaving the state in droves, we need a Governor that can revive our Agricultural and Tourism potential, a governor with the Political will to fight insecurity. A Governor who understands the plight of the masses, one with enough experience of how the Local Government level functions. We don’t need another digital Governor that will give us digital Superhighway, Spaghetti Flyover, Deep Seaports and Industries only on the pages of Newspapers and Billboards conspicuously hanging in the streets of Abuja and Calabar. We need a Governor that can give us only the basic things–Security, Good Roads, Health, Education, etc–, revive our economy and take adequate care of our Civil servants and retirees. That is the Miracle—working Governor we all deserve in 2023, and I am optimistic that we can collective achieve this, if we jettison political sentiment and put Cross River State first.

    God bless Cross River State!!