Cross River State now has a governor-elect, Senator Prince Otu. He will be sworn-in in 68 days as Ayade will be taking his last honor as our Governor. Like other States, what I want to point out applies to all outgoing and incoming governors. The only peculiarity with our State Cross River is the hyper-active rhythm our own Governor has employed in managing his exit-mood emotions.
Yesterday the governor, in two different press releases, fired two of his aides who didn’t support his election. Tony Adah, SA Project Monitoring, and SA Political, Peter Okaba, and replaced them with Godwin Orim and Romanus Abua, respectively. And we hear more firings are underway as the emperor continues to rue his election loss. But it’s only 68 days to go. I don’t know what project is ongoing that anyone wants to monitor.
But it will help in the management of his emotions, as the curtains begin to fall on him if the Governor can prepare his mind and expect the following:
- Activities including visitations by local and international visitors to Cross River will henceforth trend towards Prince Otu’s house than his own.
- The media, including his own numerous media aides, will now pay more attention to the activities of the Governor-elect than anything he will be doing.
- The governor-elect, including some ‘entitlers’ who are already milling around him must have contacted the State bankers by now with some caution signs, and some of the bank managers will start avoiding the Governor’s calls.
- Even some security chiefs hitherto loyal, will begin to shy away from the Governor’s calls and subtly resist some of his usual demands.
- Plenty of the governor’s aides, close friends, and contractors will now miss his calls and tell him they were in the bathroom or just forgot the phone on the table and were outside.
- Plenty of aides, including personal staff, will now begin to come to work late and the most probable reason is that they passed by the Governor-elect’s house to say hi. But they won’t have to tell the governor or chief of staff that. They will just find another excuse.
- If Governor Ayade is getting 100 phone calls a day now, they will begin to decrease to 60, 40, 20, 10, 5, and less every day as his days in office also begin to wind down. The phones may even not ring some days.
- More shocking leaks from the Government will now also flow to the media and other interested parties.
- Some close aides will miss work even for 48 hours to May 29 and the governor will only see them at the handing over venue and they will have already made excuses knowing there are no longer consequences.
- Then he should also cast his mind back and remember it was the same thing that must have happened around him and between him and his predecessor.
This realization will be the antidote for the erratic overdrive that our emperor has accelerated. It wasn’t the fault of the people that they rejected him. It was a function of his inability to perform and his consistent mendacity.
Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with