The Rivers State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Abuja on October 24 annulled the declaration of Chief Nyesom Wike of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner of the April 11, 2015 governorship election in that state. Reviewing the development in this interview with Agaju Madugba, the Rivers State Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, describes the judgment as fundamental and recipe for peaceful conduct of subsequent elections in the country.

Why the Tribunal annulled election of Wike

Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya,Rivers State Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC)

What you hear concerning the judgment of the tribunal are reactions from the PDP who were not favoured by the ruling. The tribunal judgment was sound. The tribunal held that the respondents could not produce even one credible witness. The tribunal did not believe any of their witnesses because they were not credible. The tribunal was also convinced that the election in Rivers State was marred by violence.

Even INEC staff in Rivers state wrote a report that the election was marred by violence, and, using his word, he said it was terrorism. There were three separate reports that said the same thing including the monitoring team from INEC office in Abuja.   We also tendered a certified true copy of that report which said that the Rivers election was marred by massive violence.

Reports of all the international observers also affirmed that there was no place in Rivers State where the election held peacefully. There were also discrepancies in some areas where for example you have 70 people on the voters’ register but with 800 votes returned. The irregularity was massive. Then, there was the issue of the card reader which was supposed to aid accreditation.

In some places, the card reader accredited 200,000 registered voters but at the end you have well over a million people who voted. So, how did you get that?   It is clear that the election in Rivers State was rigged massively by the PDP in connivance with the INEC in Rivers State.

But I believe that God has blessed Nigeria given that there are still judicial officers who stand up to be counted. Nyesom Wike had boasted that every Nigerian has a price. But today, we have seen that not every Nigerian has a price. There are Nigerians who have integrity and who will always stand for the truth. The tribunal stood for the truth. They thought they could go about bribing their way through but they discovered that there are still judges who will not compromise their integrity.

So, I thank God for the tribunal that delivered that judgment. That judgment is solid and if they want to test it at the Court of Appeal, they should do so but I am sure that the Court of Appeal will uphold the judgment of the tribunal. Let me also tell you, you know that when the tribunal ruled earlier on the issue of jurisdiction, the matter went to the Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeal upheld it, that the sitting should be in Abuja because of the prevailing violent situation in Rivers State.

They were not satisfied, so, they went to the Supreme Court which also upheld that ruling, that from the tribunal level, those judges were right. The PDP does not know that the days of impunity are over. They do not know that the days are also gone when you used violence, snatched ballot boxes and allow somebody to occupy a position against the will of the people.

By this judgment people now know that it would be meaningless to harass people during elections at gun point. If you do that, the tribunals will upturn the results of that election. So, there will be no need again to shoot guns during elections, there will be no need again to snatch ballot papers and ballot boxes during elections and write results because if you do that, the tribunals will tell you that you have gone against the law and people will learn to surrender themselves to the democratic process and I assure you that the judgment of the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal is going to assist Nigeria.

One of my fears before the judgment was that if the tribunal had given a judgment the other away, it would mean that during future elections, anybody can just go and shoot people and snatch ballot boxes and go free. If the judgment had been the other way round, elections in this country would become a question of hooliganism.

The Rivers State House of Assembly Petitions Tribunal gave a similar judgment and it means that they justified the decision of the governorship tribunal because they nullified about 19 out of the 32 seats. It would have been more than that but the tribunal decided that some of our candidates did not meet the mandatory 21 days. But we are not worried about that because we will go to the Court of Appeal. We are law-abiding and we follow the due process of the law.

On reports that Rivers State is not a catchment area for the APC

The APC cannot be said to be a northern dominated party. The only thing that makes the APC look as if it does not have much following in the South-South is the psychology that former President Goodluck Jonathan is from the South-South and people were cajoled into believing that since he is from that area, the people should support him and the PDP. A few persons bought the idea and supported him.

If there was a free and fair election, Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta states would have voted for Buhari because people were fed up with the PDP and the way the former President was conducting the affairs of the nation. It is wrong to suggest that the APC is not popular in Rivers State. Rotimi Amaechi, the former Governor, is a member of the APC. The same thing with me, a former local government Chairman, former Commissioner, and a prominent politician in the state, I am also in the APC.

So, I do not see why anybody would say that there is no APC in the South-South. If you go to Akwa Ibom State, if Akpabio had allowed a free and fair election, the APC would have won the governorship election there. Wike is saying that if you conduct elections 10,000 times, that the PDP will still win. Then why is he rushing to appeal the judgment?

He should allow INEC to conduct the elections without appealing the judgment of the tribunal. It will even save more money for him if he agrees to go for fresh elections now. I challenge them not to go to appeal and let us go for fresh elections.

The APC preparedness and the possibility of fresh violence

We started preparing for this election a very long time ago. Everybody is asking for change. Now, look at Nyesom Wike as governor. Since he came into office, for three months now he has not paid civil servants. He has borrowed N55 billion and he has not done anything. Students who have been on scholarship during the Amaechi governorship period are now being deported because Wike has refused to continue paying their fees.

Again, during Amaechi, you paid the same amount as fees in the state university whether you are an indigene or not but Wike came and increased the fees with non-indigenes paying higher. The academic staff union of that school has gone on strike for that reason.

No, there will not be violence this time. We have a President who does not tolerate that kind of thing. Even the militants who were used to perpetrate violence the last time were not paid, so, I do not think any of them would want to be used again. And, I think that, Mr. President will keep to his promise of investigating and prosecuting all those who were involved in the last electoral violence. If that is done, sanity will return to the state.

Moreover, you know that the election is not going to hold in other parts of the country, so, there will be adequate number of security men on ground to check any form of violence.   The re-run election will be more peaceful and INEC would have also learnt from the mistakes of the past. So, it is going to be a different scenario and another lesson is that people already know that it does not pay anybody to snatch ballot boxes because at the end of the day, the results will be annulled.

In previous elections, people who carried out violence did it and got away with it but with the tribunal judgment, there must be compliance with the electoral laws during elections. It will no longer be business as usual. Now, people will vote and their votes will count and the number of voters in the register should tally with the number of votes cast and the number of accredited persons. You can no longer accredit 70 voters and declare 700 or 1000 votes.

The controversy over Amaechi’s ministerial nomination, screening

There was no controversy at all. It was a normal reaction. This is somebody who championed a common sense revolution that ousted a government in power, for the first time in Nigeria’s history. It was not just an ordinary government in power but with a sitting President who comes from the same zone as Amaechi. The PDP people feel that Amaechi was instrumental in the ousting of the PDP government.

They are correct because Amaechi left the PDP, joined the APC and worked for the success of the APC, more so as the Director-General of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Organization. So, the PDP senators saw ministerial screening as a fertile ground to fight Amaechi.

Nyesom Wike knows that if Amaechi is minister, it is going to be a problem for him if he continues as governor. If you recall, Wike used his ministerial position to fight Amaechi when he was governor. Wike knows how a ministerial position can influence the people back home and that is why he did not want Amaechi to become minister.