For the first time since the turn of the century, the people of Anambra State will tomorrow have an opportunity to elect their local governments. Is it the beginning of a new dawn?

BY VINCENT UJUMADU

AFTER many years of  postponement, the local government election will finally be held in Anambra State tomorrow, January 11, 2014. The last local government elections were held in 1998 before the advent of the Fourth Republic.

Over the years, grass root politicians, had clamoured for the enthronement of democracy at the local government but the different administrations had for one reason or the other shied away from holding one.
Before the present authorities of the Anambra State Independent Electoral Commission, ANSIEC, finally settled for January 11, 2014, the exercise was shifted five times due to what the commission attributed to non availability of authentic voters’ register.

Officials of ANSIEC had said that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had insisted that it would not release the revised voters’ register to it until after the governorship election of November 16 last year and when it applied to have the register after the governorship election, the state electoral umpire was again told that it had to apply to the INEC headquarters in Abuja. A member of ANSIEC had to be sent to Abuja to collect the register and it was only then that an authentic date was taken.

The position of some party leaders on the local government poll is already causing some misunderstanding between them and those who paid stipulated amounts of money to secure their parties’ tickets.
These candidates, especially some from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, All Progressives Congress, APC, and Labour Party, LP, insist on contesting the election and have been campaigning seriously to win in their local government areas.

Take the case of PDP for instance, there were several primaries held for the aspirants by the various factional leaders that ran the party over the years and it took the intervention of the party’s current state chairman, Chief Kenneth Emeakayi, to harmonize the lists of the PDP candidates for tomorrow’s election.
The same goes for the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, which had to thinker its list of candidates after the resolution of the crisis that almost tore the party apart last year.

Though the final list of the party for the election caused some disquiet in some wards and local governments, there appears to have been an understanding following the intervention of the national chairman of the party, Chief Victor Umeh, who urged the local government party chairmen to ensure that the issue of candidates did not cause rancour in their areas.

A chieftain of APC, Chief Pat Orjiakor told Vanguard that anybody instigating members of the party to boycott the election was on his own, adding that majority of APC members favoured participation in the election.
Orjiakor said he was surprised that people who contested their own election were asking others who paid money to the party and won tickets of the party for the local government election which everybody had clamoured for, would now ask people not to contest their own election.

Obiano

He spoke apparently in response to assertions by Senator Chris Ngige, the APC candidate in the last gubernatorial election that the party would boycott the exercise.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the local government poll in the past two years was the suit instituted by the embattled former chairman of the ANSIEC, Prof. Titus Eze.

Eze had scheduled the election for December 4, 2012 before he was removed by the state House of Assembly over alleged financial malpractices.
He subsequently dragged the state government and the House to court over the development and the matter was yet to be fully resolved.

Following the decision of ANSIEC to go ahead with the election, some interest groups also went to court to stop the exercise. One of them, Mr. Jezie Ekejiuba, a human rights lawyer and president of Association of Registered Voters of Nigeria, instituted a suit at the Federal High Court, Awka. The court could however not grant his prayer to stop the election.

As the preparations for the election gathered momentum, the former ANSIEC chairman Eze, said that the issue of the substantive chairman of the commission was still unresolved, adding that the legal norm was that no action would be taken to change the status quo ante bellum as ruled by Justice Hope Ozoh of the Anambra State High Court on the matter sometime last year.

Before arriving at tomorrow’s date, the commissioner overseeing ANSIEC activities, Chief Sylvester Okonkwo held several meetings with the various political parties presenting candidates for the election as a way of smoothening the process. The meeting, under the auspices of Inter Party Advisory Council, IPAC, became necessary following uncertainty that engulfed the exercise and, as the ANSIEC boss put it, the commission needed to carry the political parties along so that they would be aware of the reasons for the continued delay in conducting the election.

Following the pronouncement by the acting chairman of ANSIEC to the chairmen of political parties that the earlier scheduled December 21, 2013 date of the election was no longer realizable, the state chairman of IPAC, Prince Kenneth Emeakayi, subsequently conveyed the decision of the parties that the commission should refund them all the financial expenses incurred since it announced that the election was going to be postponed again.

Emeakayi also informed members of the commission that election should not be an issue for speculation, adding that their members were eager to know what the true situation was.
After listening to Emeakayi, Okonkwo commended the party chairmen for behaving maturely, noting that other people would have taken to the streets over such a matter.

He said: “All the issues raised by the parties are genuine, but I want us to know that the voters register is still a problem. Work is still in progress at INEC for us to get an authentic voters’ register for the exercise.
The people of the state were therefore happy when ANSIEC announced that the January 11, 2014 date was sacrosanct.

He had apologized to the political parties for what he described as pushing them around all these while, adding that the ballot boxes, ballot papers, among other essential materials were ready.
He told politicians: “We therefore want you to mount rigorous campaigns and put up their posters and bill boards. We assure you that we shall give all the political parties a level playing ground.”

Chief Patrick Meniru, a spokesman of LP while reassuring party members, however, said there were still unresolved issues concerning the election. For instance, he said that three versions of voters’ registers were in circulation and wondered which is the authentic. He also said that ANSIEC was yet to release the list of candidates for all the parties participating in the election.

The chairmanship candidate of APGA for Njikoka local government and former national president of the National Institute of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Chief Emeka Onuorah regretted that some of the parties were already throwing in the towel before the election.

He said that as a candidate, he has been campaigning ceaselessly and wondered why some people who want to win should stay in their houses and be complaining, instead of selling themselves to the electorate.
With everything almost set for the election, Governor Peter Obi has assured that only the electorate would determine the winners.

The governor, who has been campaigning in the 21 local government areas of the state for candidates of his party, insisted that the election would be transparent, free, fair and credible and enjoined supporters of his party, APGA, to sustain effective and massive mobilization of the people for the polls.

National Chairman of APGA, Chief Victor Umeh said the party was confident of victory because the APGA – led administration in the state had done so well for the people, adding that the only way to reciprocate Governor Obi’s kind disposition that engendered completion of many projects in various sectors of the economy in the state since 2006 was to vote massively for the party’s candidates tomorrow.