CROSS RIVER GUBER 2023: State Politics Hits up as grapevine reveales Sandy/Gershom ticket in PDP
Croos River State in Nigeria, is gradually hitting up politically as the People’s Democratic Party which is now opposition due to the decamping of the sitting Governor to the APC.
Speculations are rife in Cross River State that the national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), may have tactfully given nod to the candidature of Senators Sandy Onor and Gershom Bassey as their governorship aspirant ahead of the 2023 race.
This development, political pundits in the state say follows from what happened in Calabar last week when the leadership of the party came to Calabar to shore up the party, which recently suffered set back as a result of Governor Ben Ayade decamping from the party to pitch his tent with the All Progressives Party (APC).
The national leadership of the party led by its Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, was in Calabar to formally open the new secretariat of the party and welcome back to the party the former governor of the state, Donald Duke, who left the party in 2018 to join the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
But the event was almost overshadowed with the flooding of the streets of Calabar, days prior to the event, with the campaign post of the two candidates, giving rise to talks by people that the party leadership has endorsed the two senators as a counterforce to what APC may unlash on it in 2023.
Although there has been no rebuttal from neither the national leadership nor the state leaders or even the two candidates days after as their posters still adorn the streets of Calabar, a number of the political actors in the state are worried by this development as they say that it totally utters the rotational principle that has been on since 1999.
Sources say that both APC and PDP are expected to secede power to the Southern Senatorial District but with Senator Onor from the north and Senator Bassey from the south, that rotational calculation may be affected and if this seals through, sources say it may have far-reaching implication for PDP in 2023.
