By Uche Okosi Esq

The Governor of Anambra State, Mr Peter Obi recently quoted by several national dailies as unequivocally affirming that “Anambra is the most difficult State in the whole of Nigeria….Check it out, where do you have this kind of trouble; even in parties you have three, four candidates running on one ticket in one party in one election”. Quintessential Obi!

Obi must have been pained by the fact that while places like the South west states demonstrated how election should be run, our State, Anambra, is unfortunately leading the bad and ugly pack once again. The legendary Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe must have turned in his grave several times over the electoral roguery that characterised his Anambra North Senatorial District in the 2011 election.

Instructively, I had warned in a published article on the fringes of the April elections that “while we are all convinced that Emodi is our overwhelming choice, every voter in Anambra North must also brace up to defend our votes from the anti-democratic forces and predators who are hurt by Emodi’s people-centred political orientation, for eternal vigilance is always the price of liberty”.   Unfortunately, the depraved forces of darkness in Anamabra politics eventually beat us to it (in the time being).

In Anambra, fundamental principles and codes of conduct of election were either breached or stood up-side-down by the Anambra PDP in NASS election. For instance, it is not out place to say that PDP fielded multiple candidates for the same positions. It happened in all the Senatorial Districts of the State. In Anambra North, Margery Okadigbo, John Emeka, and Alphonsus Igbeke were all campaigning simultaneously and ran simultaneously for the same senatorial seat, with each inflating figures to ensure the PDP won at all cost in their strongholds.

To be fair to Jega, however, there wasn’t much problem at the polling centres across the Senatorial District. However he failed (maybe innocently) when, in the typical Anambra magic, all the neutral civil servants who were accredited and did serve as Returning Officers in the aborted April 2nd elections were swept away on the eve of the April 9th rescheduled election and replaced with PDP House of Assembly candidates.

So, while everything went well at the polling centres, the rigging bugs, as former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell also confessed, were busy at the collation centres rubbishing all the dawn-to-dusk sacrifices of Anambrarians who endured hunger, thirst and scotching sun to elect their representatives.  Figures churned out at the polling centres were embarrassingly polls apart from those released by the “Returning Officers”!

Therefore, the ongoing brawls over the rightful owner of the PDP electoral loot in Anambra North was retribution foretold. As the saying goes, the biggest headache and undoing of bands of thieves in most cases is not just successful robbery operation. It is the sharing of the booty after an operation. This is the true story of the street fight over the Anambra North senatorial seat purportedly won by the PDP.
It is morally ridiculous for anyone, not even Mr John Obi to paint Alphonsus Igbeke as the “Bad Boy.”

Igbeke, with long years of cognate experience in winning election through judicial magic wands, only beat Margery and John Emeka to it. And come to think of it, weren’t they together in the gang-up that usurped Emodi’s seat in the last Senate? That gang up saw someone whom they knew never printed a single poster, never played a single jingle, never campaigned and who supposedly “flew” the flag of a party (ANPP) that has no single structure in Anambra become our Senator. Good enough, the street fight between Salami and Katsina Alu have also opened our eyes to how Igbeke have serially grabbed a seat at the National Assembly without going through the rigours of election.

Meanwhile, now that Igbeke has been charged for forgery and appear to have come to the end of the road, Anambrarians want speedy adjudication, not the sort of illegality committed by INEC in withdrawing Igbeke’s Certificate of Return. INEC has no right whatsoever under our extant laws to withdraw an already issued Certificate of Return.

That action amounted to usurping the powers of the Election Petition Tribunal. Igbeke’s alleged criminality cannot be cured by illegality. Instructively, going by the new Electoral Act, only a fresh election would do, once Igbeke’s alleged serial forgery is established in the court of law.

Uche Okosi Esq, Ogbaru, Anambra