14 May 2019
All Progressives Congress
Cross River State
Office of the State Publicity Secretary.
Press Release: Re: None of the 15 persons jostling for Ministerial Appointment deserve it —Utum Eteng.
Our attention has been drawn to an interview in the Saturday May 11, 2019 edition of the Vanguard Newspaper in which Barr. Utum Eteng, said to be a member of the All Progressives Congress in Cross River State opined among other things that the State Executive Committee of the party be dissolved and a caretaker committee put in place to address the crisis within the party which according to him caused the party the just concluded elections in the state.
Chief Eteng also urged President Muhammadu Buhari not to consider any of the 15 names from the state said to be currently jostling for Ministerial appointment.
While we would not want to be seen in the light of controversy by joining issues with Chief Eteng who we know is a seasoned Lawyer and is entitled to his opinion, we wish to state for purpose of clarification that Chief Eteng's opinion is far from rational and has a semblance of make-believe.
Chief Eteng should have known as a master of logic and of the law that for a matter that has attracted litigation and is before a court of competent jurisdiction, comments on the issues in contention would amount to subjudice.
Incidentally too, Barr. Eteng failed to understand that the litigation has even moved from a lower court to a higher where judgement was made in favour of the Sir John Ochala led Executive Committee which indicates that parties in the dispute must align as there cannot be a parallel structure.
Chief Eteng cannot deny the fact of crisis being a part of human society hence the existence of institutions and bodies to mediate at this point. To therefore ignore the role of these institutions in this wise while calling for the dissolution of the Exco further exposes the shallowness of the logic or opinion. Indeed this purported mediatory role played by the Biko-Biko Chief is at best coming at a wrong time.
One is therefore not surprised to see Chief Eteng take this sudden lack lustre position in the party because he has not been visible in the course of the electioneering.
Infact, Eteng's emergence in the Presidential Campaign Council was not on grounds of merit but on grounds of fiat. If there's a contention to this, we urge Barr. Eteng to mention one contribution he made to the party during the electioneering exercise and even after including producing the result of his polling unit, ward and local government he won for the APC throughout the various segments of the polls to win the argument that only those who won at polls deserve to be appointed Ministers.
As a party leader who prides as having assumed heights with being a member of the Presidential Campaign Council, would it not bother Chief Eteng to consider that the entire state becomes his primary constituency where the party's all round victory should play over and above clannish thoughts?
This self egoistic agenda and avaricious blame game as deduced from Chief Eteng's interview we know leads to somewhere. Chief Eteng wants to reap where he did not sow. Or could it possibly be that in his failed bid to become the State Chairman of the party by fiat, Chief Eteng has this time settled for the ministerial bid which he is also taking a back door approach?
We wish to advise that the Lawyer/ Chief should begin to develop the penchant for merit and not mediocrity or the back door, an approach, we think, till date has left his purported defection to and membership of our party shrouded in controversy. Of course, it's only a matter of time the real issues about that will be unravelled and made public.
Why would Barr. Eteng who knows so much about the party as his opinion speaks, not know enough to educate the gullible public that the election was marred by outright brigandage unleashed on party members by security operatives and hirelings of the opposition People's Democratic Party? Why has he not reported that the polls were manipulated to the disadvantage of his party and that at certain points our party leaders were quarantined and or denied access to their polling units to exercise their franchise? This may sound strange to Chief Eteng and that's the reason his argument failed on the side of rationalism. Indeed, the opinion reveals the invisibility of the Yakurr born Lawyer.
As a party, we have moved forward from that dark past and are now rebuilding a party that is solid and unshakeable. Chief Eteng's sudden conjecture or fabrications have no place in the rebuilding process.
We urge all party faithful to be resilient and focused while disregarding the laughable opinion of Chief Eteng in it's entirety.
BASSEY ITA
SPS.
May 11, 2019.
