Why Ayade Defected from PDP to APC

The ripples generated by Governor Ben Ayade’s defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are still stirring the Cross River political firmament and would be so for some time. In this report, Vannesa Obioha writes that there is more to the defection than meets the ear

After several years of warming the fence with procrastination, Governor Ben Ayade finally took the plunge and decamped from his Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in order to support President Muhammadu Buhari to steer the country aright, according to him..

Those who have been following Ayade’s body language including actions would readily say that Ayade’s movement to the ruling party was just a matter of time. His decampment shocked the opposition PDP to the marrow for the reason that before now, the PDP were already apprehensive after monitoring the activities of the ruling APC Hawks encircling Ayade and urging him to move over.

The genesis of all this was Ayade’s loss of the party structure to the National Assembly members after the party’s last congress. As claims and counterclaims took center stage with both parties seeking judicial intervention, the party stepped in to settle the internal friction to create a win-win for the governor who was agonizing over his loss of the party structure and the National Assembly members who had already procured a Supreme Court judgment confirming the outcome sacrosanct.

To pacify Ayade, the PDP set up a reconciliation committee headed by former Senate President Bukola Saraki to calm frayed nerves and bring succour to the governor while at the same time not appear contemptuous to a subsisting Supreme Court ruling which had declared the result of the party’s state congress as sacrosanct. It was while these maneouvre and horse-trading were taking place that Ayade decamped to the ruling party.

There are reasons why Ayade left the PDP under which he secured a seat in the senate from 2011 to 2015 and again won the governorship in quick succession in the same party.
From the get-go, Ayade had his sight set on the APC soon as he won his election. During a chat with this reporter in his suite at Intercontinental Hotel in Lagos back then when he was still a candidate of the party, he outlined his broad plan for the state. His idea was to start a clean slate for his own administration as he did not want to be bogged down by projects by his predecessors.
This thinking was what gave birth to what is today known as Signature Projects comprising of the Super Highway, Bakassi Deep Seaport, Rice Seeds and Seedling factory, Rice Mill etc. He envisioned a new Cross River state that would be self-sufficient and weaned off federal allocation.

Ayade’s grand plan was to tap into the huge potential in the state using agriculture to develop a new (green) economy, set up processing plants and process these raw materials for both the local and international markets. He believed that under his watch, the state should no longer export or sell off its raw material without processing them because, to him, doing so amounted to the loss of value-added inputs like jobs, provision of ancillary services like transportation, and general logistics.
That was very brilliant. However, his major obstacle was finance. Where was he getting the money to execute his plans given the meagre resources coming as allocation from the Centre? To worsen matters, Ayade was taking over the state at a time Bakassi has been handed over to Cameroun and Cross River consequently had lost its 76 oil wells to neighbouring Akwa Ibom State without compensation.

Beyond that, the state fell among the Highly Indebted States in the country with over N300b debt overhang. This also meant that he needed to service the outstanding debts while at the same time grappling with paying salaries, pensions, gratuities and looking for money to drive his industrialization. Therefore, faced with this end of the road scenario, Ayade decided very early to court President Muhammadu Buhari.
The idea was to warm his way into Buhari and to a large extent his administration to pave the way for him to move over to the party. He succeeded in warming his way into Buhari and the immediate gain was that he was the first opposition governor whose project was flagged off by Buhari just a few months in office.

But going forward to decamp in his first term posed an uphill task. There was a snag? What was he bringing to the table? In his first term, Ayade had not found his foothold in the state and it would have been a great gamble for him to decamp and expect Cross Riverians to follow suit. He bided his time and ran and won his second term election under the PDP before decamping recently.
Now, Ayade wants to mainstream Cross River state into national politics. He perhaps believes the state has no reason to be in opposition. In his thinking, mainstreaming Cross River into national politics would encourage Buhari to ‘show him and the state some love’.
In showing some love, he would want the President to provide sovereign guarantees and finances for the International Cargo Airport in Obudu, Bakassi Deep Seaport, Super Highway and a host of other ongoing projects littering across the state as well as appoint qualified Cross Riverians into federal positions.

There is yet another reason why Ayade decamped from the PDP. At the moment, the fortunes of the opposition party are heading south and Ayade does not want to be caught in a sinking ship and has decided to ditch it. Moreover, even the APC itself which has come under a constant barrage of criticisms for performing so poorly has not fared better image-wise. After the loss of Edo and Bayelsa states to the PDP, returning the South-south as a rock-solid PDP state, the APC considered that a slap in the face and has been working frantically to extract a pound of flesh.
Without a doubt, the ruling party is having a hectic time in trying to quell the high level of mistrust or loss of confidence and anger arising from poor performance and insecurity raging the country. In decamping to APC at this point in time, Ayade took a big gamble.

Even former governor, Liyel Imoke alluded to the wrong timing when he described the APC as a failed party and wondered why someone would move to such a party? But Ayade went for broke and decided to seize this moment that the party’s image needed burnishing. Today, he is now the poster boy of the ruling party. It is believed that his movement with his followers would buoy up the APC sagging image and give it that confidence ahead of 2023.

Another point to note is his style of administration and desire to be his own man and break away from the status quo. On close examination, unlike his predecessor like Duke said recently that the party, under his watched reached decisions by consensus building.
Hear Duke: In Cross River State we took on the establishment and won a razor-thin victory in 1999, but through firm and adroit leadership and adherence to the democratic principles of inclusion we soon brought largely all the political class in the state under the PDP and by 2007, we were perhaps the most PDP state in Nigeria.

He went further to explain that, after his exit in 2007, “the party’s fortune started ebbing. An autocratic leadership style emerged, communication with its followers declined and emergence in the party was determined largely not by the party constitution or structures but by the whims of the State’s Chief Executive.

“This is the structure Gov Ayade inherited and has largely led us to where we are today. The very top-down political style we fought against prior to 1999, instead of consultation, accommodation and inclusion reared its head to the extent that founding members of the party in the state including former state chairmen, senators, members of the National Assembly and I, over time, opted out and this attrition has continued unabated to the extent that the Governor himself has left to seek pasture elsewhere,” Duke stressed.

Given this antecedent, Ayade schooled under the tutelage of his immediate predecessor and has grown to become a lone Ranger and the only one and perhaps with his brother, Frank, who call the shots in the state. He has watched from the sidelines how his predecessor, Imoke called the shots through simple declarations. It was apparent that Duke’s style of consensus building did not seat well with Imoke and Ayade who learned from him, extrapolated the concept to believe that the time has come to be his own man who would no longer take orders from neither Imoke nor Duke.

Thus, this latest movement is basically to create a new brand of politics with himself as the new kid on the block. This suits him perfectly well because he has already been pronounced the leader of the party by the party hierarchy in Abuja and this puts him securely in a position he had yearned for from where he would dispense favor to whom it pleases him. If he succeeds, this move will retire politicians who fail to move party with him as he aspires to make Cross River a party state.

As 2023 beckons, another twist to this movement is the permutations in Ayade’s camp that APC would zone the presidency to the South. Since the north is uncomfortable with IPOB’s unyielding agitations for Biafra, they believe it is unlikely that the north would support a South-eastern presidency. To them, Ayade stands a formidable chance to stand in the gap from the South-south if he is able to end his tenure with the help of the federal government on a high by completing all his signature projects. There is also the permutation that in the event that the north retains the presidency, Ayade would be up for the vice president slot or goes to the senate to become senate president.
So while Ayade said he was defecting to the ruling party to support the President on the one hand, he also urged his colleagues during a live interview on ARISE TV to rally round the Presieent to effect a peaceful transition in 2023 and put a lie to those who are speculating that Nigeria would break up under its curent security challenges. In other words, Ayade was surreptitiously canvassing a position where the President would be pressured to pick his successor from the line-up of governors including himself. So by moving to the APC, he has gotten closer and is putting himself up as a likely Buhari successor.

With almost two years to the end of his tenure, allegations have already started flying about accusing Ayade of misappropriating federal government refunds to the state for the construction of federal roads. This is certainly not a good omen. If not for anything else, it forebodes that a torrent of such allegations would flood the Economic and Finacial Crimes Commission (EFCC) immediately he leaves office. Therefore, his movement could be in line with the often mouthed cliche that your sins are forgiven once you join APC. Some interpret this movement to the APC to be solely for self preservation and escape from the long arm of the long when the chips are down. However, as we have seen in some cases like former Zamfara state governor, Abdul’aziz Yari, that has not been the case as the EFCC is relentlessly prosecuting him for embezzling state funds under his watch.
Who knows, perhaps Ayade’s case may be different from other governors currently being prosecuted for corruption by the EFCC as he could turn out to be the proverbial cat with nine lives.