Why Donald Duke has been angry for years

 Donald Duke, a former governor of Cross River State, has been in the news lately. Notably, since May this year to just recently, Duke has granted a number of interviews to newspapers and newsmagazines.
In all of these interviews, Duke sounded very angry and frustrated at a bunch of people, including Ugba Murphy, Etubom Nya Asuquo, and particularly Senator Liyel Imoke, his successor in office. His tone suggests that this anger is pent-up, has persisted for years and still shows no signs of letting up.
This is unfortunate; and people, including this writer, have started wondering why Duke is so embittered since he left office in 2007 that he now prances around media houses insulting Cross River elders? Well, as I found in the course of my enquiries,
Duke’s tantrums stems from some of the following self-evident truths:
First: Duke left the State with a crushing debt burden, much of which he mindlessly borrowed in foreign currencies; and quite a few were even questionable. When Duke left office, it was well known to Nigerians that he left our dear Cross River as one of the most indebted States in the Federation.
And this is despite the fact that he received one of the highest allocations in the country for a whole eight years before the State lost its oil wells on Imoke’s assumption of office.
Yet, Duke, a man who believes he is a tin-god will not tolerate any criticism or even a discussion of the debt mess he created for entire future generations of Cross Riverians. On top of all these, Duke still wanted to run the affairs of the State from the background; and will resort to attacking anybody like Murphy or Etubom, who tried to call him to order.
Second: Duke fought all he could to prevent gubernatorial power shift to Cross River North. He was known to have deployed his all, including ethnic-baiting, irredentism, blackmails, and outright lies to frustrate the wishes of Cross Riverians to see that their next governor (after Liyel) came from the northern zone. He thus hated anyone who worked for this project, including Imoke himself who valiantly led the Herculean and patriotic task.
What baffled many is that Duke did not oppose power shift because of parochial love of his kith and kin but because he harbored a personal hatred of Prof Ben Ayade, and of course Liyel Imoke, who he swore to frustrate from the moment Imoke became governor.
Thus, Duke was just consumed by his usual petty jealousies, over-ambition and the arrogance that he is the only master of Cross River State.
Odey wrote from duncanodey@gmail.com