BY: VITALIS UGOH, Càlabar
The Cross River State Chairman of Association of local government of Nigeria (ALGON) and Chairman of Akpabuyo local government, Hon. Emmanuel Offiong Bassey, has debunked recent reports on social media platforms that they were denied audience with the National Chairman of the People’s Democratic party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus when the group paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
Reacting on the social media reports while fielding question from journalists in Càlabar, described it as false and malicious.
Rather, Bassey explained that while in Wadada House Abuja, “we were to meet with the party hierarchy in which that was successfully achieved as the deputy national secretary received us with apologies from the National Chairman whose engagement coincided with our visit.
According to him, the National Chairman Prince Secoundus had a pressing engagement with the Southwest Congress of the party and was unavoidably absent.
Bassey noted that the report was “malicious and false” and capable of causing disaffection among party members in the state as well as smear their relationship with the party’s National Exco.
Therefore, he appealed to journalists to always get their information right before publishing so as not to cause problems especially in this era of social media trending.
Earlier, before their movement to Abuja, Council Chairmen in Cross River had organized a solidarity rally for the governor Ben Àyade, “giving him a clean bill of health on his style of governance especially in the areas of human development and industrialization”.
“The governor, he explained, had taken more than thirteen thousand (13,000) people out of the labour market through various appointments across the 18 local government areas in the state, and another Six Thousand (6,000) at the state level”.
“This is a feat that had never been achieved by any administration in the state. This gave us the reason for the massive support for the governor during the solidarity rally, he stated”.
