PDP loses six House seats and two Senate seats in Cross River
In the recently completed National Assembly (NASS) elections, the Cross River branch of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was unsuccessful in its attempt to keep two Senate seats and six House of Representative seats.
Nonetheless, the opposition party in the state defeated the incumbent governor, Prof. Ben Ayade, to win the Northern Senate seat. The opposition party in the state lost the Cross River Central and Cross River South to the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC).
Sen. Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe, the incumbent and PDP candidate for the Northern Senatorial District, defeated Ayade with 76,145 votes to Ayade’s 56,595 votes.
Parallel to this, Williams Jonah of the APC defeated Ewa Bassey of the PDP, who received 53,463 votes, to win the Central seat with 57,354 votes.
Asuquo Ekpenyong received 57,870 votes in total to defeat Daniel Asuquo of the Labour Party, who received 50,760 votes, for the Central senatorial seat. Ekpo Ekon of the PDP came in third place with 41,117 votes.
Only two seats in the House of Representatives were won by the opposition party out of the eight that were up for grabs.
While the PDP’s nominee and incumbent for the Calabar Municipality/Odukpani lost to the Labour Party candidate, Ekpenyong Ayi-Essien was unsuccessful in winning the election for the Calabar South/Akpabuyo Federal Constituency.
According to NAN, Ayi-Essien, a 20-year member of the Green Chamber, finished in a distant third place with 14,485 votes.
Edem Aqua and Joseph Bassey, the LP and APC candidates, receive 16,448 and 23,885 votes, respectively, to place second and first.
Similar to this, PDP Mbora finished third in the Calabar Municipality/Odukpani race but lost to APC candidate Idim Inok, who received 21,066 votes, and Labour Party candidate Akiba Ekpenyong, who received 23,759 votes.
Moreover, the PDP lost the Boki/Ikom seat, which Chris Agibe had held for 12 years, to APC Abang Bissong.
By 23,158 votes to 22,745, the APC candidate narrowly defeated Attah Achinke, who ran to succeed Agibe.
The Akamkpa/Biase, Obubra/Etung, and Yakurr/Abi House of Representative seats were also won by the APC.
To win the two seats, the PDP candidates for Ogoja/Yala and Obanliku/Obudu/Bekwarra defeated the incumbents and candidates of the APC.
Jude Ngaji, the incumbent, lost the Ogoja/Yala seat to Godwin Offiono of the PDP by 32,964 votes to 36,642 votes; Idagbo Legor lost the Obanliku/Obudu/Bekwarra seat to Peter Akpanke of the PDP by 26,819 votes to 36,576 votes.
With Michael Irom’s victory in the Obubra/Etung federal constituency seat, the ruling party in Cross River completed the sweep. Irom received 13,990 votes to defeat PDP Gabriel Okpechi’s 12,620 votes.
