APC Guber Ticket: C’River Central District Aspirants Warm Up For Stiff Battle

Contenders for the gubernatorial ticket of the APC from the central senatorial district look ready for a fight, ahead of the party’s perceived consensus plan believed to be targeted at favouring aspirants from the southern senatorial district.

The governor, Prof Ben Ayade has repeatedly said that his successor will come from the southern senatorial district. He believes that power must return to the south, which first produced a governor in 1999.

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So far, about 14 aspirants have indicated the interest to contest the election under the banner of the APC. Of this number, three of them are from the central senatorial district. They include the 2019 candidate of the party for the election, Senator John Owan Enoh, a former senatorial aspirant in the 2019 election and close ally of the governor, Chief Chris Agara and a former minister of Niger Delta, Pastor Usani Usani.

On Monday, the party had summoned all the aspirants to a meeting to discuss the possibility of getting some of them to drop their ambition and not spend N50million to procure the party’s nomination form.

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At the meeting with the state party chairman, Mr Alphonsus Eba, aspirants from the south were said to have agreed with the proposal that only one nomination form should be bought by the party, so that whoever will emerge as the consensus candidate can pay for the form.

Before they arrived at this position, the party chairman was said to have asked each of the contenders to say their opinion on the issue. When it came to Owan Enoh, he was said to have informed the chairman that he had no issue with the proposition, as long as he was the one in whose name the form would be bought.

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Owan Enoh was to explain his position later in an interview with TNN that he would go ahead to buy his own form and contest the primaries, if the governor or the party did tried to exclude him in the consensus plot.

The amended Electoral Act provides that unless all contenders for a particular electoral office accept the consensus decision in writing, a proper primary election must take place.

Agara was not at the meeting though. But from his body language, he is set to contest the primary, regardless of any consensus plans. In fact, Agara will be making a public declaration for the office this Saturday at Ikom. Owan Enoh has already done so, publicly too.

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Usani Usani, the third aspirant from the central zone, was also not at the meeting. Even though he has not made a public declaration, Usani is one politician that has always shown that he cannot be coerced to step down for anybody, even though he may not look serious about the governorship project.