APC: Cross River Health Commissioner Sets to Emerge National Women Leader

By Stanley Ekpenyong, Calabar

Barring last-minute political brinkmanship, Cross River State Commissioner for Health, Dr Betta Edu will emerge as the new National Women Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC at the party’s national convention scheduled for this Saturday, March 26.

The position is zoned to the South-south by the party.

Party insiders told this magazine that Dr Edu who is a member of APC’s reconciliation committee is backed by leaders of the party within and outside the South-South, including the state Governor, Professor Ben Ayade, who, as the only APC governor in the zone, is the leader of the party there.

Last week, state chairman of the APC, Barrister Alphonsus Ogar Eba unveiled Dr Edu in Calabar as Cross River APC’s consensus candidate for the position of National Women leader.

“Those of us rooting for Dr Edu see in her robust qualities required of any woman desirous of the exalted office of the National Women leader of our great party”,  a female party chieftain from Akwa Ibom state told the magazine.

According to her, “Dr Edu is young, vibrant and energetic; she is a great grassroots mobiliser, one blessed with oratory skills and sound education”

One of the young commissioners in the Ayade cabinet, Dr Edu, a former student union leader at the University of Calabar where she studied Medicine, hails from Ibalebo in Abi local government area, the central senatorial district of Cross River.

Before she was appointed Health Commissioner in 2019, Edu was the Director-General of the Cross River State Primary Health Care Development Agency (CRSPHCDA), and Special Technical Adviser, Cross River state Privatization Council to the Governor.

Apart from her medical degree from the University of Calabar, the APC National Women leader hopeful has a Post Graduate Diploma in Public Health for Developing Countries from London School Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, Master of Science Public Health in Developing Countries from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, and Doctor of Public Health from Texila American University.