A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), public commentator, analysts, and a former contestant to the party’s National Publicity Secretary position during the last APC convention, Comrade Obi Offiong Ojage, has dismissed negative story making the rounds on the screening of the party’s earlier announced consensus governorship candidate, Senator Prince Bassey Otu.

While speaking with journalists in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, Comrade Ojage maintained that the story was sponsored by those who do not wish Cross River State well, insisting that Senator Otu’s candidacy is too hot for enemies of progress in the state.

He opined that “issues surrounding Senator Bassey Otu’s screening do not call for the negative publication it seems to be getting if not for the obvious, fact that the candidacy of Senator Prince Otu has become too hot that some people find it difficult to go to bed without thinking on the sudden change that would take place should Prince Otu becomes the party’s flag bearer and eventually wins the elections and becomes Governor of the state.

“If a panel while investigating a frivolous allegation concerning our candidate sent to it during the screening exercise within the time frame allotted, asked for more information to clarify an aspect of their doubts and therefore declared the screening of our candidate none conclusive, is that what should call for alarm?

“Their fears are the cause of all the rumbling and noise-making by enemies of progress in the state and therefore should be discarded for something better”, Comrade Ojage said.

He noted that “there is no need to respond to an unverifiable report and one which is very unsubstantiated concerning our candidate, especially when such is a function of Satanism.”

According to him, Senator Bassey Otu has been a legislator at the upper house of the National Assembly for twelve rewarding years and a well-known man who has headed several missions abroad, for Nigeria.

“Therefore you do not associate the Senator with filth and call those politics.

“It’s total nonsense as far as the party in Cross River is concerned, for one to emphasize the need to verify a primary school leaving certificate over the presentation of a degree certificate.

“It’s unheard of, if not from idle minds, which is the work of enemies of progress”, he charged.

He said further that “it is not in any doubt whatsoever that Prince Otu attended the University of Calabar and graduated and did work as a banker before leaving for the United Kingdom where he lived for many years before returning to the country to join partisan politics, and contested and won election twice into the National Assembly.”

He added that he “sort and won election again into the Nigerian Senate as a Senator, where he headed the committee on Finance and Appropriation at the Nigerian Senate as its chairman.

“It’s mischievous to associate him with that filth or dirt as the enemies want us to believe”, he said.

He maintained that the senator’s declaration has attracted a huge following across the length and breadth of the state the type never seen before which is what is breading all this fear and frivolity.

“We must embrace a new done bestowed on us by the LORD of Host in the person of Senator Prince Bassey Otu as a candidate for Cross River State Governor on the platform of the APC”, Obi Ojage concluded.

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