The All Progressives Congress in Cross River State has set up a seven-man ad-hoc committee to prune down the number of the party’s governorship aspirants.
The committee has Senator Ndoma Egba as its Chairman, while Florence Ita-Giwa is the Secretary.
There are at least nine governorship aspirants contesting for the APC ticket. They include Senator John Owan-Enoh, Pastor Usani Usani, Senator Bassey Otu, Asuquo Ekpenyong, Ben Akak, Nsa Ekpenyong, Chris Agara, Edem Effiom and Ogban Ebock.
The state Publicity Secretary of the party, Erasmus Ekpang, in a statement on Tuesday, announced the setting up of the committee.
“As a follow up to the commitment of our great party towards achieving an all-inclusive, transparent, fair, and democratic process that will lead to the emergence of an acceptable governorship candidate of our party and strengthened by the resolution of all the governorship aspirants in its meeting of 26th April 2022 wherein they mandated the party to purchase only one nomination form and drive a transparent process at arriving at victory for the party, the State Chairman (Alphonsus Eba) has approved the constitution of a special Ad-hoc Committee to interface with all aspirants for the office of Governor and prune down the number in each Senatorial district to two persons.”
He said the committee will be inaugurated on Wednesday and will commence its meeting immediately after the inauguration with all aspirants who are expected to present themselves with relevant credentials and evidence of up-to-date financial membership of the party in tandem with Article 9. 3 of the party’s 2022 constitution. The committee is expected to submit its report on Friday.
Ekpang also said there shall also be a State Caucus meeting on Saturday to be attended by only State Caucus members as stipulated in Article 12. 10 of the March 2022 amended Constitution of the party.
“In the meantime, all aspirants are enjoined to continue consultations with the State Executive Committee of the party and various Statutory Local Government Areas caucuses that have been in existence including the recently co-opted members.
“The party wishes to once again assure all aspirants of a level playing field and they are kindly requested to play by the rule.”
The issue of zoning and consensus has dominated how an aspirant should emerge as the party’s standard-bearer in the 2023 governorship election.
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