By Dennis Agbo

Dr. Chris Ngige of the Action Congress, AC, who is now contesting the February 6th governorship election in Anambra State, relates how he stood up to political godfathers in the State during his tenure as governor.

Do you see yourself winning a re-run election should the tribunal nullify the February 6 election?
Well, you see, this question keeps on coming up but let me take you down the memory lane.
You know that before I became governor in Anambra State, governors had passed  through this road and  when you come they will tell you oh this is what other people have been doing do your own and go, just take your own money, take your own wealth; there are resources and pay whatever is to be paid to the godfathers.

Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give unto Jesus Christ what belongs to Him.  But when I came I said no, that the money here is not for godfathers, that people here were counted during a census and that formed the basis for revenue allocation we are getting in this state and that means that the money belongs to everybody here and so we must use it for their common good. That was how we started quarrel.

I couldn’t pay the N3 billion because I didn’t know where I would get it because I looked at the state I inherited, the state was owing pensioners, civil servants, financial institutions, contractors, some with phony bills in quote and we were even owing traditional rulers.

So I knew I was in for a good fiscal re-engineering which is the way of the people, the path of the state or I will be on the path of the other governors.  I also realized that going for the fiscal re-engineering which is the way of the people would mean a lot of fight because people resist change, the fight to maintain the status quo, I mean the parasitic elite which is the bane of Nigeria today and I decided to do the fight on the side of the people and today no governor can come to Anambra state and say he cannot pay salary or pay traditional rulers or pensioners and even do infrastructural development like the roads.

Every governor will come here and say oh! I am doing more roads than Ngige, fine! We need it, Obi is claiming that, fine! If I didn’t come this way he won’t do roads, he would fritter the resources. So this path I have taken again is for voters register to be given to Anambra people and other Nigerians. You cannot conduct an election without a voters register.

I doubt if any state in Nigeria now has a voter register that could be said to be flawless. The Maurice Iwu INEC just took away the money for direct capture machines, satellite wiring of results and everything and left the place more confused than they met   it because if they had allowed Nigerians to continue with  their manual register, that manual register was even about 60% perfect because we would then know there is no computerization, no biometrics and people would do manual registration and wait in their respective booths for foreigners because  everybody knew who is who there.

But in this case you are giving an impression  that you are producing a computerized thing, no body would be able to move to another community and inflate anything. Therefore, to that extent the electoral reform starts with this my case because it will nullify an election for the first time because of voters’ registers, that’s what we are praying the tribunal to do. If they accept our request, whoever is coming to chair INEC will sit up and know that the first thing he will do is to do the foundation of an election which is voters’ register.

But some people insist that you should give Peter Obi a chance to do his even thing and go away.
That is the preaching I have been giving you. I have no personal quarrel with Peter Obi.  If a good voter register was used for this election and he won free and fair, fine. I would even go and congratulate him. When the Supreme Court pronounced him governor that must finish his four years tenure, I went to Government House and congratulated him and told him that I would cooperate with him for the four years, I did stay away.

When I finished I stayed abroad to do some other work. I did some writings, I only came back in 2009 for the elections. So if he had won in a free and fair manner, no problem but this one there was no voters register and the politicians colluded and the politicians that colluded are politicians of APGA stock because even the state could not say a word when we were shouting about  the voters register.

As this is going on, Governor Obi is planning for local government election. Is you party the AC going to participate in that local government election?
With what is he going to conduct the local government election? With which voters’ register? State Independent Electoral Commission don’t produce voters’ registers.  They rely on INEC for voters register in any election they want to conduct and it is crystal clear to all and sundry that Anambra state does not have a valid voters register.

It is clear to even Governor Obi because on the election you saw him complaining about the voters’ register, everybody saw him on television, we have the tape and every television station has it. He said that it is “worrisome”  to use his word , that it is worrisome that those who came out to register are not on the voters register so with what voters register is he going to conduct the local government election unless we wants to deceive people?  INEC cannot give any voters register because they don’t have any. So the voters register is the bed rock of any election. So if the Anambra State Independent Electoral Commission proceeds now to announce that they are conducting an election they would be doing an exercise in futility.

How about the 2011 election for states and federal lawmakers in the state
The new man in INEC now said he would first and foremost go for the voters’ register because even the electoral monitoring board of INEC led by Kariwe as chairman that came here in their interim report which is also with the tribunal, they said there is no voters’ register here and they warned INEC two months before the  election that something should be done about it and to their chagrin they came and saw what they called an unacceptable large number of people, of voting population disenfranchised.

They were right because it was only 17.3% that voted out of 1.85 million and out of this 17.3% which is 301,000, 97,000 voted for somebody to be governor whereas 213,000 said the person should not be governor. How do you reconcile that? It is an incongruous situation.