Ahead of Saturday, March 11 governorship and State Assembly elections, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has intensified campaigns ahead of the polls, deploying hundreds of mini bags of rice, wrappers and cash to woo the electorates.
The disbursement of what Chief Akpan’ Etuk, a community leader in Uyo Ward 2, along Eka Street, described as “political largesse”, followed the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections, in which the opposition parties gave the ruling PDP a good run in the contest, clinching seats in both Senatorial and House of Representatives.
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He noted that the PDP that has been ruling the state in the last 24 years since the return of democracy in 1999, faces real acid test in the forthcoming governorship and state assembly elections, after losing one senatorial and House of Representatives seats to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and another House of Representatives seat to the Young Progressives Party (YPP).
While former Governor Godswill Akpabio (APC), who was defeated by his kinsman, Senator Chris Ekpenyong, of the PDP in 2019, staged a return to the Red Chamber; Hon. Aniekan Umanah, a PDP House of Representatives member for Abak Federal Constituency, was defeated by a lesser-known APC challenger, Clement Jimbo.
In Ikono/Ini federal constituency, the incumbent House of Representatives member, Emmanuel Ukpong Udo, who migrated to the YPP, when the PDP failed to hand him a return ticket, also trounced his PDP opponent, Glory Edet, a former long-term commissioner in both Akpabio and Udom Emmanuel’s cabinets, in the contest.
More worrisome to the PDP in the state, is the failure of some PDP governors losing grip of their states including Abia, Enugu and Delta where Okezie Ikpeazu and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi failed in their Senate bid and Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, failed to deliver his Delta State to the PDP and others.
Besides, the PDP in the state, it was learnt, is also jolted by the show of the main opposition APC in the state at the presidential polls, in which the president-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, won in six out of the 31 LGs and Labour Party (LP), winning in three councils.