Cross River 2027 Must Not Drift From Issues to Gossip

By Joseph Odok, PhD, Esq.

Cross River State cannot afford to enter the 2027 political season with its public conversation reduced to rumours, insinuations and social-media gossip. Elections should be moments of democratic judgment: occasions when citizens examine records, interrogate policies and compare competing visions of government. They should not become a marketplace in which the loudest storyteller automatically becomes the most credible source of truth.

Hon. Dr. Eka William Abang, the Cross River State Commissioner for Power and Renewable Energy should be allowed to rest in peace. The family that suffered such a great lost and the Government of CRS should not be tormented by Streets story tellers. We will trust autopsy not narratives of content creators on payroll of politicians

There is a growing danger in the emergence of uncritical social-media merchants who spin stories for political or commercial reward. The problem is not social media itself. Social media can widen democratic participation and give citizens a voice. The danger begins when virality becomes a substitute for verification, and when allegation is treated as established fact simply because it has been repeated thousands of times.

This is where Hannah Arendt remains instructive. Arendt’s reflections on mass politics were deeply concerned with the collapse of distinctions between fact and fiction. She warned of political environments in which people could become willing to believe contradictory or demonstrably false claims, particularly when cynicism had made truth itself appear irrelevant. The danger was not merely that people might believe one particular lie; it was that the distinction between truth and falsehood could itself lose political significance.

That warning deserves attention in Cross River.
The 2027 contest must not become a competition in manufacturing outrage. Neither the ruling party nor the opposition should be allowed to define political success by the ability to generate gossip, trend hashtags or destroy reputations without evidence. A democratic citizen is not merely a consumer of political stories; he or she must also be a judge of claims.

There is an especially disturbing tendency to convert death into political ammunition. As a philosopher, I find this intellectually and morally cheap. Between June and July 2026, my village, Ogep Osokom, lost four close age mates: Lucy, Felix, Miller and Abang Chubby. We buried them in pain. We mourned them as human beings, not as instruments of political propaganda. In our communities, there are also instances of people going to sleep and never waking up. Such tragedies should remind us of the fragility of human life, not encourage us to manufacture political accusations.

Nigeria’s health and mortality circumstances are serious enough without politicising every unexpected death. World Bank data put Nigeria’s life expectancy at about 55 years in 2024, while cardiovascular diseases remain among the world’s leading causes of death. That does not mean every death has an obvious explanation, nor does it justify attributing an individual’s death to a political actor without evidence.

If there is evidence of wrongdoing, let it be produced. If there is evidence of negligence, let investigators establish it. If there is evidence connecting a public official to a death, let the appropriate institutions examine it. But politics should not be confused with blackmail.

The same standard should apply to Governor Bassey Otu . I want to see Cross Riverians challenge Governor Otu vigorously on issues. The Governor should be asked what his administration has achieved, what it has failed to achieve, how public resources are being spent, whether projects are reaching rural communities, whether employment is being administered transparently, whether healthcare is improving, whether agriculture is receiving meaningful support, whether infrastructure is being sustained and whether the state’s economic recovery is translating into better lives. These are legitimate questions.

Indeed, the administration itself has publicly challenged the opposition to engage its policies and performance rather than personal attacks. More significantly, the PDP governorship candidate, Arthur Jarvis Archibong, has accepted the challenge for a public debate, insisting that citizens deserve to hear directly from those seeking to govern them. That is precisely the direction political discourse should take. Let Otu defend his record. Let Archibong present his alternative.
Let other political actors explain what they would do differently. Let journalists interrogate all of them. Let citizens compare the evidence.

The opposition should not be afraid to criticise government. In fact, democracy requires serious opposition. But criticism becomes more valuable when it moves from accusation to evidence and from complaint to alternative policy. Likewise, government supporters should stop treating every criticism as an attack on the governor. A government confident in its record should welcome scrutiny and answer difficult questions with facts. Cross River needs a political culture in which a claim is not accepted merely because it is politically convenient.

We must resist the rise of what might be called the politics of the marketplace: whoever shouts loudest, creates the most scandal or produces the most sensational rumour wins the day’s attention. That is not democratic enlightenment. It is the impoverishment of public reason.

The Cross River of 2027 should therefore be a contest of ideas, records and alternatives. We need debates on jobs, healthcare, education, agriculture, roads, rural development, tourism, industrialisation, internally generated revenue, local government administration and the future of the state’s economy. We need candidates to tell us how they will finance their promises. We need them to explain what they will retain, what they will reform and what they will abandon.

Above all, we need citizens capable of asking: Where is the evidence? Cross River cannot recover by building its political future on market talks. We must recover the state through serious political conversation—conversation that distinguishes fact from fiction, criticism from blackmail, tragedy from propaganda, and opposition from hatred.
The 2027 election should not be a referendum on who tells the best gossip. It should be a judgment on who can best govern Cross River State.