[4] However, Onor rejected the results and filed legal challenges, eventually reaching the Supreme Court which affirmed Otu's victory in January 2024.
[9][10][11][12][13] At other points during his administration, Ayade was given praise for allocating large parts of the budget to capital expenditures while receiving further criticism for covering up COVID-19 cases, abandoning in-progress projects for new potential white elephants like the Calas Vegas resort project and the new Obudu Airport, creating several new ministries and appointing dozens of aides, getting an unapproved foreign loan in secret without evidence of use for the money, and continuing efforts to build a six-lane superhighway through the ecologically vital Cross River National Park.
[32][33] However, fellow candidates Chris Agara and John Owan Enoh rejected the arrangement and continued their campaigns while Usani left the party to run under the PRP.
[6] However, controversy emerged afterwards when Owan Enoh surprisingly reversed position and filed an appeal petition against Otu in reference to the dispute over his educational qualifications.
[46] Despite the ongoing lawsuit, Otu commenced a general election campaign which was dominated by the search for a running mate in the weeks after the primary, with party members desiring regional balance in the ticket.
[48] A Federal High Court ruling dismissed Owan Enoh's lawsuit in late October 2022 with Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu finding that primary candidate qualification screening was the purview of political parties.
[49] Initially Owan Enoh appealed the ruling but he announced its withdrawal in December due to personal overtures from APC presidential nominee Bola Tinubu.
[59][60] On the primary date, the election ended with Senator Sandy Ojang Onor emerging as the PDP nominee after results showed him winning by a margin of about 10%.
On 4 July, Onor announced Emana Ambrose-Amawhe—a former Channels TV presenter—as his running mate in a speech that pointed out that Ambrose-Amawhe would become Cross River's first women deputy governor in 30 years.
While Otu's qualifications were disputed by his intraparty opponents, the catalyst for internal anti-Onor sentiment within the PDP was his disregard for the zoning principle by running.
In the wake of the presidential race, pundits focused on regional differences in the gubernatorial election in addition to the rise of minor candidates and Ayade's senatorial loss.