The General Overseer of the Calabar-based God’s Heritage Centre and Converner, Cross River state Roundtable 2021 (CRR 2021) project, Bishop Joseph Bassey, has warned that the business of politics and governance was too serious a business to be left in the hands of politicians alone.
Bishop Bassey a renowned Christian leader and voice in Cross River said this in Calabar, Tuesday, in a chat with Journalists on the Cross River Roundtable 2021 project, an initiative he said seeks to awaken the consciousness of the people towards the growth and development of the state.
He believed that with unity of purpose, Cross River could achieve far more than it was presently achieving due to untapped potentials as well as both human and natural resources available in the State.
He said: “On the Cross River Roundtable project, we need to get Cross Riverians to start talking. I actually think that the business of politics and governance is too serious a business to be left in the hands of politicians alone.
“They do need our help, and that for me is important. You know politicians are like players in a football match. If you leave football to players alone there will be crisis. So you have the club owners, the technical team, you have so many other structures behind the players.
“Now Cross River State as a people, we do have some people who are into the game of politics. They are players. But we do have owners of the state. Stakeholders of the state. And I think that we must synergize.
“We must be able to begin to talk, engage ourselves. There are people who laid down their lives, who have made enormous sacrifices, past and present, towards the existence and survival of what we call Cross River State today.
“They are people across different walks of life who have died for us to have the Cross River State we have. So, reducing Cross River State and discussions around it to politics only, I think it’s a great disservice.
“We need to expand the horizon. We need to create platforms where everyone can come to the party and then we can genuinely begin to talk about the future of Cross River State.”
