April 04, (THEWILL) – A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Cross River State and former Secretary of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Bobby Ekpenyong, has identified past leaders of Cross River State, who failed it.
These leaders he said include the two previous governors of the state, who are Mr Donald Duke and Liyel Imoke.
Hon Ekpenyong contended that the previous democratic administrations in Cross River incurred huge public debts amounting to over 400 billion naira, despite selling state owned assets.
Some of the assets include Metropolitan Hotel, Calcemco and numerous plantations.
He stressed that Cross River had not made any meaningful progress before the administration of Professor Ben Ayade.
He, however, commended Professor Ayade for changing the landscape of the state with his intellectuality, moving the state forward and building industries, despite the huge debt burden.
“If you look at Cross River State post military era and also what we have achieved during this democratic dispensation, we have not had any meaningful achievement in the state before Ayade came.
“During the south Eastern state, where Cross River state was part of, we had critical assets that this state was generating revenue from and also taking a chunk of our youths to work in them.
“We had the oil palm estates in Akamkpa, Biase and Boki, we had the rubber estates in Akamkpa, Yakurr, Biase, we had the Calcemco, which is now Lafarge, we had the cocoa plantations spread across three LGAs, these were things that took a lot of our population out of the labour market, these estates and plantations gave us huge revenue.
“Before the Ayade administration, the past administrations sold off every critical asset that we had in the state.
“If you have an industry and you want to change a business model, do you sell an industry that is not producing money and use the money to go and build a stadium, where football matches will be played. How much will you make from it? That is what we have had in Cross River state.
“We lost our industries because we could not run them, but if you are selling, why don’t you retain a stake so that you can still be generating revenue.
“Ayade came in as governor of the state, but before he came in, past governments sold all these critical assets and then depended on federation accounts as the main source of income for the state.
“Because you have sold these critical assets, your revenue will surely fall and our internally generated revenue fell drastically because we are no longer in control of the things that used to give us revenue.
“What did Donald Duke and Liyel Imoke’s administration use the money for, rather the past administration collected huge loans for infrastructure development that none are working today. Over N400 billion was collected where are the things they used the money to do.
“Ayade came in and with the pains of paying loans taken by the previous governments, still had the intellectuality to generate money and run the state and then build industries in all the local government areas of the state”, he said.
Hon. Ekpenyong, who is also the leading candidate for the Calabar Municipality/Odukpani Federal Constituency seat under the APC, said the Ayade government has done much for the state in the area of industrialisation, but the benefits of these industries will not be seen during the lifetime of the administration, but after his administration we are going to appreciate it.
He explained that “the government cannot run the industries, the civil servants cannot run it.
“It is for the government to privatise or commercialise it for private investors to come in.
“We are going to generate taxes from their PAYEE tax, Income tax, indigenes are going to get employment and earn a living from all these factories. So professor Ayade, the governor, has changed the political and economic landscape of this state”, he said.
THEWILL Correspondent, Aniekan Bassey has over six years experience that spans across several fields in print journalism including development communication, sexual reproductive and health rights issues, crime, climate change, social justice, business and human interest stories.
