In the past few days, I’ve received calls and messages from a lot of Cross Riverians over my advocacy for equity to be done to the people of Ikom regarding the Speaker of the 10th Cross River assembly.
There’s one thing I want to state unequivocally. Most opinions I express are not for personal benefits. Throughout my advocacy for the South to produce the next Governor, the only person from South that offered me financial reward for my efforts was Engr. Ben Akak. But I turned down the offer and rather advised him to invest it in his commendable philanthropic gesture.
As I stated in my previous article, were I to follow my emotions, I would have followed the bandwagon to drum support for Rt. Hon. Hilary Bisong because him I know, Hon. Elvert Ayambem, I don’t know.
But equity knows no emotion nor does it have name. It’s not about me. Throughout our campaigns for Sen. Prince Bassey Otu, we preached equity, fairness and justice. Equity does not start and end with the governorship.
For equity, Ikom should be supported to produce the next Speaker. Some people have said because PDP won Ikom with a very insignificant margin, APC should not produce Speaker from Ikom.
But let me remind them that in the Presidential election, APC did not win South South or South East but the next Senate President is likely to come from any of these regions just to balance things.
It’s quite unfortunate that Hon. Bisong is aspiring to be Speaker now that the tide is against him. Maybe, God has something better for him. He should put the interest of the party and equity ahead by dropping his ambition.
Bisong wouldn’t have been in the race if Chris Mbu-Njar was selfish to break the agreement in Etung to seek second term. Leadership is sacrifice. Let Hilary sacrifice in the interest of peace because a government that rode on the back of equity to power should not turn around to be unjust to Ikom.
Inyali Peter writes from Abuja
