"IF THE PDP TAKES HER CAMPAIGN TO MY VILLAGE, I WILL GIVE THEM RED CARPET TREATMENT"- Sen. Owan

By: Eba Alobo Ishmael

The gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Cross River, Sen. John Owan Enoh has assured the ruling PDP in the state of a warm welcome in his community if they should take their campaign there.

Addressing the press in Calabar, the senator urged the ruling government in the state to give peace a chance saying "I want to appeal to the state government to give peace a chance. If the PDP wants to take their campaign to the communities, I will be glad to roll out a red carpet to welcome them in my community"

He added that his campaign is billed to commence on Monday, January 14th from the Northern senatorial district of the state. He said "Our campaign starts from the North. We start from Obanliku. The message we are taking to Cross Riverians is better days are possible again. As a government, we hope that we return Cross River to those better days. The nature of our campaign is to hold town hall meetings and interact with the critical stakeholders. At the end, we hope to have senatorial district rallies to cap it up. INEC has timeline for campaign and ours is already on and as a party, there is no clash anywhere. We have written to the Police and all other security agencies. Our hope is that the blood of Cross Riverians will not be shed in the course of the campaign. . Our hope is that they won't be any mischievous plan to stop us from delivering our message to Cross Riverians. We are going to be very civil and our message is clear that we are going to deliver the dividends if democracy to our people".

On the recent High court ruling in the case instituted by Pst. Usani Usani he said "An interesting thing about the ruling of 7th January is that it is the first case that concerns the primaries. The arguments and everything presented was on the primaries. The judgement dismissed the case for lack of merit. The first judgement was about the matter that was instituted before the primaries on the authentic excos. The good thing is that Etim John even if he was to be accepted as the authentic chairman, it is not the state but NWC that is to submit the names of candidates. The idea is to get us distracted and in spite of the distractions, you can see us going ahead with our campaign".

He added that "Efforts are still on going to resolve our differences. First is the discussion with the minister and then with his supporters".

On the safety of his campaign team, Sen. Owan noted that " The only intelligence that we have is that appointees have been asked to go home. I pray that they should allow us run our campaign in peace".

According to the governorship hopeful, his style of governance over time has been an all inclusive one saying "I have a style that will continue to last and that style is that everybody is important. We won't run government as if it is a family affairs". He added that "I don't play the kind of politics that my people will not support me".