 Cross River threatens to sack 7,000 appointees without APC membership cards and a fear mount over job losses as business closures and federal government plans increase taxes and tariffs. Well, this is Plus Politics. I am Mary-Anna Conner. The all-progressive Congress in Cross River State has threatened to relieve 7,000 of the Governor Ben Ayade appointees of their appointments were failing to register with the party. The chairman-elect of the party, Alfonso Eba, said the appointees had not registered as members of the APC and gave them up till December 31, 2021 to register or be relieved of their appointment on January 1, 2022. Joining us to discuss this is a member of the People's Democratic Party in Cross River State, Mr Basio Kohn. Thank you very much, Dickon, for joining us. Great. It's interesting that this is making a headline. These are 7,000 appointees by the Governor. If I remember clearly, Governor Ben Ayade had in several fora discussed the reason why he has so many appointees and said that he was using it as a form of empowerment for the young people in Cross River State, also bolstering that he has the most young people in his government. But then all of a sudden, it seems like he's strong arming them to join the APC. What are your thoughts as a member, of course, of the opposition? The idea of having an unbothered government in the last six years was, wasn't one I welcomed in any way. And having a government that large without people actually contributing anything in terms of having jobs cut out for them, responsibilities, duties, functions, for me, that has been a complete aberration. I have been against it from the work group that's from 2013, when this whole Macabre Dan started. I'm spoken against it and I will never support such a system of government. Government isn't supposed to provide employment at that level. Governments are supposed to provide an enabling environment for businesses, private businesses to thrive, put infrastructures in place, put policies to drive the private sector, so that people can get jobs. I'm sorry for butting in. This is what your governor bolsters every single time. We have a very beautiful billboard of Cross River State here in Lagos painting a beautiful picture of how well the state is doing, how empowered the young people are, how much policies and programs that he's put in place to move the state forward. If you're sitting there and telling me that this is not the case, what's then to believe? You know, people or anything, that's how my government is. That's how he's wired and we have come to accept him in that way. And the whole thing starts and ends where you sit on billboards, on the internet, here and there. That's where it starts. If you ask for the real contribution by this 27,000 or so employees involved into this political uh by well political appointments into the system, you can miss. These guys have not completed anything. They don't have offices. They don't have responsibilities. Most of them have no, have no, don't even know what's why they're there. You know, it's just a and um something for people to just feel okay with hoping you want an appointment. Okay, take you get you hear your name announced on uh on um on radio or on the internet, on WhatsApp or Facebook. That isn't how to run the government. That's not how to run the system. That that that is the focus we deliver to the victims, to the people. Most of these guys and most of these people, you know, they were actually doing real things where they came from. Some of them were farmers in the rural communities, producing food stock, doing things that were able to things that were able to put food on their table and feed their families. But I'm curious, why would it be called out to come to state capital and then look around how many years to run it? Why would anybody on that list these 7,000 appointees leave whatever source of livelihood they had if they had any or like leave the wherever they were living and come to the state capital to take an appointment that you say does not have a portfolio per se. It does not have a job description and does not have an office. Why would well thinking Cross Revariant take these appointments if you say that they're just appointments in name? You know, we have a society where there's too much importance attached to being or being seen to be a government appointee. That way, you know, there's a way that comes automatically upon an appointee. You know, that is what people are thinking. It's an edge over them, the main, whatever they were doing in the rural communities in order to be seen as, okay, and now it's system man and now it's stakeholder, as most of them call themselves, they say they are now stakeholder. Yeah, they have some what's not meant as stakeholders, stakeholders contributing what's that's the question. So now that the governor is now that the governor is insisting how many of them are really going to be seen as impacting on governance? Well, I guess that's a that's a question that the governor and his people need to answer. But now that the governor is insisting that these 7,000 or rather the APC, which is the governor's new party is insisting that these 7,000 men and women become members of the APC. And this seems like a, you know, an ultimatum of sorts. And if they do not join, they will be sacked. Is there any law that backs this? Of course, he's saying that, you know, according to the party laws, outsiders are not supposed to be holding these political appointments because the APC is the government in power. And so by the by the laws or whatever in the regulations of the APC, these people have to be members of political parties because they need structures in the local government areas that these men and women come from. If the governor does indeed decide that he's going to sack some men and women who decide that they do not want to necessarily join the APC, do they have a case anywhere against the governor if they be sacked? Okay, number one. I'm a bit confused about the ultimatum. Who it came from is a bit of an issue to me. That instruction came from the state chairman elect of the ruling party. The state chairman elect of the stateable, in what capacity is this people? Is this the same sort and order to his people appointees. The way that is also an appointee, like the people who say shame this instructions? So in what capacities do you need this? It's not the, it's not the government. it's not the governor, it's not the deputy, it's not the SSG. He is the state chairman-elect. He has to be inaugurated. He has to take over. He is even an appointee in the duty process office. So I'm probably at a loss in this kind of instruction on what basis, how an appointee is issuing an instruction to other appointees, numbering about 7,000, how? He didn't say he was speaking on behalf of the governor. There's nothing to stoop or to prove that he had the mandate of the governor to be so direct. Well, I'd like to quote from the, I'd like to cite the article where he was quoted, quoting from, he was citing article nine, subsection five of the APC's constitution, which he said bars members taking appointments with the government of other political parties. He said it was compulsory for civil servants to register and identify with the party in power. So he's not just talking about these appointees, he's also looking at his eyeing civil servants to also be part of this registration process. But I'm trying to understand which civil service law allows for this pronouncement that he has made to accommodate this ultimatum. I do not know if you're a civil servant. Is there any law under the Civil Service Act that allows for this to hold sway? Civil servants are not supposed to be members of the political parties. Civil servants are meant to drive the process of the act of an administration towards delivering the votes and objections. They are not supposed to be members of the political parties. If what you are reading is actually what a bar meant, then it's totally wrong. It's totally wrong. Even the government cannot convince civil servants to don't, but it's not. It's not possible. It's not acceptable in any client. Civil servants? It's not, it can't work. Okay, let me ask. Do civil servants work in less than a state independent electoral commission? How do civil servants work in there? The non-government is what becomes of elections that will be conducted by such a body. I'd like to quote another thing that he said. He said, here as a party, I'm quoting Eba, we want to make it known today that all heads of government at local government level and at the state must follow the provisions of our constitution with effects from January 1 of 2022. Those appointees of the government that are yet to be registered and fully participate in activities of the party shall seize to hold respective offices. He goes ahead to say, we therefore call a local government chairman who today had over 20,000 appointees of five persons per rolling unit to the 3,281 polling units and on the state government payroll. We call on the auditor general to take note that our 7,000 and 8,000 appointees of government who are yet to be registered with the APC must be relieved of the appointments, henceforth. Make it make sense, please. It makes sense to me. It's very clever to me, but it is an aberration. It is addressing the political appointees. Fine, I can understand. Most of those people they don't even, they've not been paid their salaries. So maybe it's a strategy to send them back by January 1. They don't have something paying salaries of so many of these appointees. Not so, so many of them are gambling. They've not received salaries. The local government system. The local government system. That's the political appointees in the health room. Three months running, they've not been paid. Three months now. So if you want to find a way to do away with that burden, then approach this people and ask them to resign. Don't think you date them about then registering and effecting to the APC or not effecting. There's no money to make it. That's maybe that's why this is coming up now. Like actually, local government appointees, chairman, council chairman, vice chairman and the rest of the political structures in the elgist. Three months running. No salaries. To add to the other appointees in the system, in the circuitry, so many of them are gambling without salary. So many of them, they've not, they don't even know what salary drops per time. They can ask, they can see an unmet amount of rights for human rights. It's not of me that the game played in July. What about the seats? What they take? Is that a government? Is that how things are done? But then the PDP is also there in the state. What is the PDP doing to put the government on its feet? Because I was having a conversation with a person some days ago and the person complained about the state of things in Cross River state. But then there is an opposition that once used to be the government or the party that was leading the state that seems to be half past dead. Why is the PDP not doing its job as a credible opposition to the APC if you're complaining this bitterly about how the governor is governing the state? Oh, definitely PDP has been saying all we need to say. We've said everything that needs to be said about what's going on in Cross River. Is it the DP in infrastructure? Is it the tourism sector that has nailed out? Is it water supply? Is it education? We've talked about all these things. PDP is being, it's utmost as an opposition party in this state to ensure that this government sits up. We can only do our best as opposition. It might be the governor to now decide, okay, the things that I'm doing, my attention is being done. I'm going to look at them one by one or I'm going to show some action in certain areas and show that okay, yes, I'm a listening governor. I've heard what the people are saying and these are the things that I'm putting in place. Is the governor listening governor? Does he listen? Is there any chance that the governor will hear and do what the people are asking him for, including the opposition? I mean, this is almost the last bit of his tenor. And so it's easy for you to, as someone who's in the state, to tell us from his body language if there will ever be a change of heart whatsoever. I don't see any change of heart. He doesn't listen. He's the only one. He's the one that knows it all. He doesn't listen. Complain from now, from one into your life. He doesn't listen. Six years plus. He doesn't listen. There's something that needs to be said that has not been said. Okay. So he's not distressed with taking advice, looking for extra knowledge from anywhere, state executive council meeting. It's not what we used to know, state expertise meeting of those days to be. He himself has said that he can run the government without commissioners, without council members. He has said it. You know, that he's mean them a favor. So he's, he has always had his body language. I'm all knowing like that. I'm the one that is running this system and know what to do. I know what not to do. So I don't see any change in his demeanor, going into 2022. He has about six, eight, 17 months to run. I don't see any change from based on even the budget that he presented a few weeks ago. I don't really have any hope in that budget, like the past five years. We are not seeing a man who is ready to, you know, initiate processes to correct the errors of the past. I want to quickly move away from my idea and talk about the PDP quickly before I let you go. Now we've seen that the governor has obviously moved from the PDP to the APC and took a massive chunk of members of your party to the APC, including taking your former party secretariat and turned it into an APC state secretariat. Like I asked earlier on, it looks like the PDPs have passed debt. What is the PDP doing to rejuvenate itself, to rebrand itself? Is the PDP at this moment or will it be capable to take back power or do we see the APC producing another governor that would one way or the other be at the behest of Governor Ben Ayadeh? If you say you can produce the next governor. Why not? The PDP will bounce immediately after our former state office, immediately got another place while looking into the show of our office that he has only taken away. We have a temporary place up and running. Are the other structures at the local government also up and running? Are they? Because I also hear that most of those structures that the PDP had in local governments have been taken over by the APC and most of them have moved again with the people that made up that party structure. So I'm trying to sincerely see how the PDP is up and running. Yes, we've seen the two former governors, Lee Lee Moke and Donald Duke trying to run around and rally around the party. But sincerely, how long will it take? Is 2023 really something that the PDP can hang on to or should we just, just as in that hope and look to the APC, knowing that the PDP has taken some blows? Because this is the first time such a thing is happening in the state. Yes, the party has rebounded. The structures at the local government and the work levels are all in place. Our, we have good hands consulting for the governorship position. For the last check, I can really count about six or seven governorship as parents, creditee men and women who want to take over from him in the 20th century. So the party is intact. The party is intact. What about the argument about zoning? We see a Sandy or not saying that zoning has to be jettisoned. It's an age old, a cake thing. So really, the PDP still has to deal with the issue of zoning. And some people saying you need to toss out zoning. Yes, the PDP has, yes, we have that issue of zoning to deal with. They in APC also have control over me because in APC, there are also people in the center who are interested in the government system. It's not what you are seeing, what your hearings on them can make it look like for the APC, the governorship to the south in 20th century is a complete no. So it's not. They have people in the center who are also interested like PDP has just won in the person of purpose. So Sandy or not. So our structures are up and running. The office, the state office is there with a legitimate X2 in place, very legitimate X2. APC can't do stuff like that. Of course, you see A-Bahn presenting, pending an inauguration. There are people contending, contesting, the processes have brought them up. A serious contention. In fact, this announcement, let me, don't say it, let me put it very clear. This announcement to 7,000 appointees is because the half feel us that in January, they're beginning to see people in government declared for PDP. That's one of the reasons, that's a very critical reason why you had that threat. But we are seeing that threat from the cell phone to say bye. There are people who know that the party of hope at the state and at the national level is the PDP. So how is the party that is challenged both at the national and at the state level being to take over the government also? I don't see it happening. Well, let's see, whatever happens in cross-divisit is something that remains to be seen. But I want to say thank you, Basio Kohn is a member of the People's Democratic Party in cross-divisit. Thank you very much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much. We are very much on the ground. Yeah, thank you. All right. Well, thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a short break. And when we come back, we'll look into the federal government's plan to increase taxes and levies and what repercussions it will have on businesses, especially in the private sector. Stay with us.