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Race for 2007 widens cracks
in Cross Rivers PDP
By Bassey Inyang
Correspondent, Calabar
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP)
in Cross River State, once considered to be a compact family has been torn
apart by contending forces, and ambitions within the party.
Governor Donald Duke admitted this much
when he declared last weekend during the PDP family get-together in Ikom that
problems within the party should be resolved before they get out of hand.
But with every passing day the cracks
occasioned by infighting in the party is going public to the extent of over
heating the polity in the state.
Daily Independent investigations revealed
that the infighting is spearhead by leading party men who are angling to occupy
the governorship seat in the state in 2007.
The development has polarised the party
in the state into two main factions, the Abuja Front and the Home Front.
At the Ikom meeting, some party bigwigs
from the state were absent because they were denied official invitation,
perhaps, on suspicion that they are opposed to the stance of Duke as it affects
his would be successor in 2007.
The spate of mutual suspicion between
Abuja Front and the Home Front, has led to the fuelling of rumour mongering
among party members, with sycophants taking advantage of the situation to run
down their colleagues.
The development, it was gathered, almost
cost some commissioners in the state and aides to the governor their jobs
because they were alleged to be hob knobbing with perceived opponents of the
governor.
Also political appointees in the state
are now living in fear of being linked with any dissenting opinion against what
is perceived to be that of Duke.
Although the governor has not declared
who his successor would be but he has on some
occasions given indication as to the character his would-be successor should
possess.
At the Ikom PDP family get-together, Duke
indicated that the state would require the continuity of a leadership that is
composed of builders, so as to sustain the future economy of the state that his
administration would have established by 2007.
While speaking to journalists recently,
Duke said his successor should be a manager rather than an entrepreneur.
Presently, it is an open secret that some
loyalists to the governor have started positioning themselves for the position
by seeking the blessing of the governor for the top job in Cross River State.
In the state, it is being speculated that
the Minister of Power and Steel, Liyel Imoke, Senator Victor Ndoma Egba, the
state PDP chairman Mr. Sony Abang and the National Publicity Secretary of the
PDP, Venatius Ikem are interested in becoming governor in 2007.
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