“Paradise lost!!!”, screamed the cab driver who had endured a bumpy 3-hour ride with Pulse from Obubra to Calabar, the Cross River State capital, on Thursday, August 22, 2019.
He was paraphrasing the caption on a billboard strategically mounted on airport road, on which the words, ‘Calabar, the People’s Paradise’ was indelibly inscribed.
“This is not the Cross River I grew up in”, the driver muttered in an Efik accent so thick, you could have sliced it with a knife and hung it over the fireplace.
His car bumper had come off as we evaded potholes this way and that from Obubra to Biase to Ugep to Akamkpa and to Odukpani.
And as we plunged into valleys that pass for roads these days around 8 mile, his tyre had exploded and brought the car to a screeching halt.
Accidents are pretty common in Cross River State these days, residents tell Pulse, as motorists and commuters alike make do with some of the most deplorable road surfaces you can find anywhere.
Cross River State was once heralded as Nigeria’s number one tourism destination. Not anymore, it appears. The greenery is fast disappearing, the streets are pitch black at night time and filthy during the day, potholes have subsumed once smooth and picturesque road surfaces, filth emanates from Watt market and spills into the Calabar highway, the roads in Uwanse, Mbukpa, Eta Agbor, Parliamentary extension and Lemna are fast collapsing and when it rains in Calabar, it pours--flash floods sack entire settlements in the city center when the rains come pouring down.
“This is a dead place now. A ghost of a former thriving town. I can’t wait to close shop and leave this state”, says Essien (not real name) who runs a food kiosk and bar on MCC Road and who tells Pulse that the city's famed night life is now a distant memory. “Governor Ben Ayade has destroyed the state we loved so much. There is no money in this town any longer because the governor isn’t making the place attractive for investors.”
Around Cross River, Ayade is scoffed at as one governor who rarely matches buzzwords and highfalutin rhetoric with work on the ground.
Residents tell Pulse that the governor’s "Kinetic Crystallization” and “Quabalistic Densification” budgets never translated to visible infrastructure on the streets straddling the state.
A huge mistake
“We made a huge mistake when we foisted Ayade on the people of Cross River State in 2015”, one top ranking PDP chieftain and key player in former Cross River Governor Liyel Imoke’s administration confesses to Pulse on condition of anonymity. “Ayade has practically destroyed all the plans we laid for Cross River”, he adds remorsefully while fiddling with his phone.
Asked why a governor widely adjudged to have performed dismally in his first term was able to get a second, this top politician tells Pulse that the solid People’s Democratic Party (PDP) structure in Cross River means anyone can win an election in the state from the party's platform.
“We thought Ayade was going to defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC) before the governorship election. We would have held a thanksgiving service in church the next Sunday to celebrate his departure from the PDP. He's now a liability to our party”, adds our highly placed insider source.
The Cross River government house around Diamond Hill is crying for a fresh daub of paint these days, with the walls covered with everything from algae to spirogyra to mud—a metaphor for what the state has become.
“The desk microphones used for executive council meetings don’t work anymore. So, cabinet meetings are now conducted with a handheld microphone whose sound is so bad, commissioners take turns hitting it back into life mid-speech.
"Besides, the door that opens to one of the restrooms in government house collapsed a while ago during a cabinet meeting and has remained that way. Do you know that during the last election, Ayade stashed millions of Naira notes in jute bags in government house and in his residence for election rigging purposes? Things have degenerated around here so badly and a new government would have it all to do”, our top ranking source adds.
Collapse of tourism
Residents of Calabar tell Pulse that the annual Christmas carnival and all of the tourism structures which made Cross River a top holiday draw all year round, have been allowed to deteriorate on Ayade’s watch.
“It’s difficult driving around Cross River or Calabar because the roads are damaging cars faster”, says Nsikak, a student of the University of Calabar who resides on Marian Road. “Because Ayade also doesn’t understand what the whole tourism concept entails, he doesn’t know that the drive into Calabar from Odukpani, is bad for the state’s tourism brand.
“Let’s assume for reasons of argument that the road from 8 mile to highway is a federal road…what stops the governor from commencing palliative measures on the failed portions and asking for a refund from the federal government thereafter like other states do?
“How come inner state roads from Ogoja through Ikom, Obubra and Biase are so bad? Are those federal roads too? My brother, Ayade has to be the worst governor Cross River has ever produced. He’s in a league of his own on poor governance. Cross River State has fallen", Nsikak laments.
A former commissioner in Ayade’s first term cabinet tells Pulse that he had no idea how funds from his ministry were disbursed even though he oversaw the ministry.
“The governor practically runs a one man show. As a commissioner, I had no idea how projects executed from my ministry’s budget were funded”, he says.
About Ayade
Pulse has been trying to reach Governor Ayade’s team for a response to this story without success.
The governor’s spokesperson, Christian Ita, is yet to respond to a request for comments and his phone has been switched off for days. An email sent his way detailing why a reaction to this story is necessary, had also not been replied before this story was published.
Pulse will publish the governor’s response once he sends one our way.
Professor Benedict Bengioushuye Ayade, 50, was a university lecturer before his foray into politics. He has been heavily criticized for destroying acres of farmland as he floats the idea of a 275km superhighway that analysts say would leave a cash strapped state in further debt.
In 2016, the governor’s younger brother, Francis Ayade, a Managing Director of Leophina Nigeria Limited and Hally Brown International Limited, was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in connection to an alleged N2.4billion contract scam.
The amount, the EFCC alleged, was diverted into the younger Ayade’s personal bank accounts from the Cross River State treasury.
“Specifically, four different allocations from the federation account were alleged to have been diverted into Hally Brown International Limited account owned by the junior Ayade,” a source at the EFCC disclosed to Premium Times at the time.