Nyok|20 September 2018
Following the recent criticism of former Governor of Cross River State, Mr Donald Duke (1999-2007) against his successor, Mr Liyel Imoke (2007-2015), a plethora of replies have been made against Duke by perceived surrogates of Imoke, one of which is Pat Phil. For Phil, Duke is greatest beneficiary of Imoke's political magnanimity.
Excerpts:
RE: THE DEATH OF CROSS RIVER HAPPENED IN 2007: CALITOWN.COM, September 16, 2018
"DONALD DUKE & THE END OF HISTORY"
By Pat Phil
The future of leadership require the human quality of individuals who have the grace and selfless capacity to create an incubating environment for other leaders to emerge as well as nurture a stable moral ambience to give legitimacy to the system.
Anytime you listen to Senator Liyel Imoke, especially when he's talking about the Cross River State political order and story of the 3 wise men, you will see in a man the effortless passion for the state and efforts made to seamlessly create a holding environment for future leadership generation in the state.
The greatest and first beneficiary obviously was Donald Duke, who was nurtured into Government house by the political infrastructure of Senator Liyel Imoke.
Unfortunately for Liyel, Donald has the proclivity to always write their political history in a hurry while creating the impression after he (DONALD) left office in 2007, that Cross River State had seen the end of history.
It has become recurring that Donald always takes advantage of every transition process to cast aspersions on Liyel's glorious career.
In 2014, at a rally in support of Goddy JD Agba, he threw dirt at Liyel. In his latest interview published in calitown.com on September 16, Donald made another frantic effort to discredit Liyel's impactful 8 years administration preparatory to another transition process.
It was reliably gathered that Donald recently, had been consulting Liyel with a hatched plan to stop the re-election of Ayade next year.
But unfortunately, and characteristic of Donald Duke, he was so much in a hurry to write the end of history without the patience to wait for the emotionally stable disposition of Liyel Imoke. And of course, he was crossed with the response he got from Liyel.
I pity Governor Ayade who spent so much man energy to patronize Donald Duke whose son in law is Ayade' s commissioner for Finance. Yet Donald described Ayade as an "undertaker".
Statistics and archival information interestingly contradicts Donald's claim against Liyel.
On Liyel's role as Minister Power and the $16billion power probe issues, I will advise Donald Duke to heed Obasanjo's advice to Buhari to read his ( Obasanjo) book" Under My Watch " where the various Probe Panel Reports of Yar Adua and the National Assembly are clearly documented.
Beyond pure political mischief, the issue of power funding is res judicata and I expect Donald Duke to know this fact.
After wasting 6 ego years fighting pride and making emotional investment in political enemies, Donald Duke established the Cross River State Reserve fund a year to the end of his administration and reserved a paltry N1.2billion with a clause in the law that foreclosed usage of the funds for 16 years, the funds will then have been available by 2023, thereby ensuring that neither Liyel nor the governor after him has access to any contributions made into the fund.
Liyel, however, grew the fund in excess of N12billion and left a reserve of N5billion after developing ITM ugep from scratch to finish. He intervened in 3 colleges of nursing across the state from same fund; built infrastructures at medical college, Okuku; school of health technology and Crutech calabar, respectively.
Donald thought out Tinapa as a long term project but deployed short term commercial bank borrowing a year to the end of his administration and left a debt burden of N96billion on Tinapa alone, outside the ECOWAS bank loan of 15billion.
Typical of crafty Donald, he carefully fixed the crystalization of the federal government guaranteed loan of over N20billion for May 30th 2007, one day after Liyel was sworn in.
When Donald said in his interview that Cross River started going down in 2007, he was correct to the extent that he had fixed the end of history for Cross River State, but Liyel Imoke was able to manage the financial crisis created by Donald and was able to stabilise the state.
Awfully, Donald delivered Tinapa on a deficit budget of N96billion funded by double digit commercial bank borrowing. I wonder why he is complaining about Ayade's deficit budgeting, even when Ayade cannot borrow because Donald Duke had borrowed our future.
Donald sold off metropolitan hotel, the state liaison office in Victoria island, Lagos to companies with beneficiary interest to him, yet Liyel remained calm; built his private residence on forcefully acquired government title of land and confiscated several state government interest in bank shares, some of which would have placed the state on reputable bank boards. Yet Liyel held the environment for Donald without complaining.
Donald Duke is a very lucky man who benefited from a political environment created for him; had the recovery space to carry out failed political experiments like the pineapple projects and was shielded from the political liability of his failed experiments.
Liyel's next 8 years after Donald was basically a political fumigation and image restoration in favour of Donald.
Yet Donald is so much in a hurry to write their political history, and has nominated himself as the author of the end of history for Cross River.
I can't blame Liyel for Donald' s political misdemeanor, but I blame history for falling so cheap to Donald Duke.
