APC Chieftains Tackle Ayade Over Alleged Marginalisation Claims
By Ekanem Asuquo
Two leading figures of the All Progressives Congress in Cross River State have countered recent claims by former governor, Senator Ben Ayade, that the party sidelined and unfairly treated him despite his defection to the APC in 2020.
Reacting separately on Sunday, party stalwarts Hon. Bravo Gabriel Oluohu and former presidential aide, Chief Okoi Obono-Obla, criticised Ayade’s comments, describing them as misplaced and an attempt to shift blame for his political misfortunes.
Oluohu said Ayade’s grievance, expressed at the Margaret Ekpo International Airport in Calabar on Friday, amounted to “self-pity,” stressing that the former governor damaged his own political standing by contesting the APC presidential primaries in 2022, knowing he lacked the numbers to win.
He recalled that the APC “bent over backwards” to offer Ayade its senatorial ticket, yet the electorate rejected him at the polls. Oluohu further alleged that Ayade withheld campaign funds during the 2023 general elections, a development he claimed the Presidency considered an act of disloyalty.
Chief Obono-Obla also berated Ayade for repeatedly taking credit for “socketing” Cross River to the centre, dismissing the narrative as an attempt to rewrite political history.
According to him, the APC’s foundation in Cross River predated Ayade’s entrance into the party, noting that key political actors such as Alex Irek, Ntufam Hilliard Eta, Cletus Obun, Bassey Iso and others laid the grassroots structures that strengthened the party from 2013 onwards.
He argued that Cross River had already benefitted from federal presence by 2015, including high-level appointments and the establishment of a federal polytechnic in Ugep, well before Ayade’s defection.
Obono-Obla accused Ayade of sidelining pioneer party members after joining the APC, awarding major offices and appointments to his loyalists instead of those who built the party.
He urged the former governor to stop “distorting the truth” and acknowledge that the party’s growth in the state was a product of collective effort rather than the accomplishment of one individual.
