Emma Obe, in this piece, asks whether Governor Ben Ayade’s fresh journey to the All Progressives Congress will take him to greater political heights or lower his popularity?

Governor of Cross River State, Prof. Ben Ayade, caused an intriguing political interlude in the heated national discourse on security and political restructuring, last Thursday, in Calabar, when he invited seven governors from the All Progressives Congress to dinner, after which he announced that he and his supporters had defected to the APC.
Hitherto, Ayade was of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a party that brought him to power in 2015.

Expectedly, the governor gave ‘good reasons’ why he joined the APC. His speech was brief but it was good enough for the camera. And it was different from what other governors that defected to the party controlling the government at the centre usually give: that there was the need to join hands with the President to move the country forward and then to bring the people of the state to the mainstreams of national politics.

Ayade said, “We need to join hands with President Buhari in his determination to enhance the fortunes of the country. I need all governors to similarly join me and understand my decision to join the APC.
“We need to work ahead with the president for the future and unity of Nigeria. We all need to sit at the same dining table with Mr. Presidential to save Nigeria.
“It is my responsibility to bring back Cross River to the centre in order to enhance her fortunes. I therefore formally declare myself a member and leader of APC in Cross River State.”

However, some watchers of the politics of Cross River think that Ayade’s defection is a master-stroke, which will not only put the political control of the state in his hands if APC wins in the state even after he has left office, but would also provide him with a soft landing with the federal government-controlled anti-graft agencies when he leaves office.

But the reactions to his defection are still pouring in, with many of those who responded not given to swallowing the reasons he gave for leaving the party in the twilight years of his eight-year rule.
“Nigerian politicians are a funny set of people, always driven by their selfish desires,” said Buchi Mosy, who did not find Governor Ayade’s action funny.
“They are PDP in the morning, APC in the night. Ayade must be afraid of EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) coming after him and decided to take cover on time. Anyway, let’s see where all these shenanigans will lead them. No defection surprises me again in this country,” Mosy continued.

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But for Ajayi Olupono, there is really no difference between the two major parties. “The APC and the PDP have always been the same. From all indications, it is clear that Nigeria’s political leaders have become the country’s pain in the neck. Those that you regard as your leaders are your biggest problems,” Olupono lamented.

An APC member in Rivers State, Fred Ekoongei Oyor, said Ayade had long struck a chord with President Buhari. “He is the only PDP Governor APC President Buhari visited in his first tenure for a project commissioning. He (Ayade) had his interest in APC at the center all along. He only made it public now after years of secrecy.”
John Okosi, who said he had been watching the governor’s body language of recent, said it was not a surprise that Ayade was one of the two southern governors that did not attend the meeting at Asaba where a decision was proposed to ban open grazing in all southern states. “No wonder, he did not attend the Asaba Accord Meeting,” Okosi recalls. “He was plotting his defection.”

Jeremiah Ojomo, who believes that Ayade had committed political suicide by dumping the PDP, said, “What happened to the former governor of Akwa Ibom State (Godswill Akpabio, who lost election to the senate after defecting to APC) awaits you. Cross River State has always been PDP and will remain PDP regardless of defection or no defection. The governor is full of himself and promising what he cannot deliver.”
This view was shared by Ekpo Tek, who said, “Ayade has just killed his political career. Cross River State is a PDP state. The best he can get is to contest for senate in 2023, which he will lose as he has not used his present position as governor to uplift life in his senatorial district.”

But Substance Okoinem thinks defection by political office holders was becoming a distraction and was short-changing the electorate who vote along party lines. “Until defection is paid with forfeiting the office held, politicians will keep defecting and re-defecting for monetary and power benefits and this robs citizens who vote for them of leadership based on party promises or ideology.”
Sam Egbe, who believed that Ayade defected to save himself from the being probed said he would not even escape it by joining APC. “Your defection will not shield you from recompense and at the appropriate time, both yourself and the ones you are joining will have your day of accountability in the days to come in this nation.”

In spite of what the people have been saying by the political decision of the governor, he has also been receiving support from top politicians in the state.
One of them is Senator Ita-Giwa, a former Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly, who herself had three years ago defected from PDP to APC. She described Ayade’s defection as the “right move in the right direction,” and declared that “where the leader (Ayade) of the state goes, I go with him.”

However hidden away from the television show of last Thursday, is the desire of the governor like his predecessors and indeed other retiring governors to become the de facto political godfather of Cross River State and determine single-handedly who succeeds him in 2023, while he retires to probably another political office.
And the governor did not hide the direction he was going when he directed all his political appointees, cabinet members, members of the House of Assembly and all his loyalists and supporters to leave the PDP and go to their respective wards to register for the APC.

For those who understand, Ayade has put everyone on notice that, come 2023, he would call the shots in the state. And he appeared to have sealed his deal with the APC national leadership, whose interim national chairman, Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe, declared without prompting that Ayade is now the leader of the party in the state.
Ayade’s departure from PDP in the state was long in coming. He had fallen out with the current national leadership of the party in the state, especially during the events leading to the nomination of candidates for the 2019 general elections. The party refused to defer to him during the nomination of candidates for the general elections. And the governor had to cry out several times, even threatening to leave if the party leadership continued to ignore him.

Staying back in the PDP, where he was not in control of the structure of the party, would not have served him to his political taste. “It would just have ended his political empire because after leaving as governor in 2023, he would amount to very little politically, without the control of the political structure,” said one political observer in Calabar.
Ayade’s style of leadership, which some of his critics considered arrogant, had put him in trouble with many leaders of the PDP, who had probably been waiting to humiliate him in 2023. Now with the handing over of the APC structure to him by the national leadership of the party, the governor might feel very comfortable choosing virtually all the candidates that would contest the 2023 elections on the platform of the APC.

He had also been on a collision course with the political elite of the southern senatorial zone, when the Obong of Calabar declared him a persona non grata for allegedly disregarding certain traditions of the people. Though that relationship was patched later on, the cold war between him and the people has persisted.
Interestingly, going by the rotation of the governorship of the state, Cross River South is due to produce the governor of the state in 2023. And would the political elite of the South, who are very influential in the PDP let Ayade pick a Calabar candidate to succeed him in 2023? That is a question for conjecture.

But it does not appear that Ayade would give up on that. All his predecessors since 1999 had chosen their successors. For example, when Donald Duke was leaving in 2007, he backed Liyel Imoke to succeed him. And in 2015, Imoke backed Ayade. Removing the PDP structure from Ayade would have made it almost impossible for him to choose his own successor.

So with his control of the structure of the APC, which incidentally controls the federal might and that portends – the electoral commission, the military, the police and huge financial arsenal, Ayade might feel sure-footed that his political wishes for 2023 would just be granted. That might include the forgiveness of his sins as governor, as a former National Chairman of the APC once declared anyone that joins the APC would have his sins forgiven him.