Read: Feb polls: Anambra and Electoral Act compliance (1) here

By Emenike Nwagwu

It is instructive that the INEC has not treated the rest of the 35 state chapters of the PDP as it treated the Oguebego and Chris Uba led state chapter in Anambra, if the Commission had done that, it would have ended up dealing with 37 political parties in PDP alone. What if it had applied the same yard stick to every political party, the result would have been unimaginable.

As for the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, the matter is still subjudice and would have been decided if not for the industrial action embarked upon by Judiciary workers. However, interested Nigerians have found it difficult to believe that a court of law that ruled last October that one Kenneth Emeakayi was the state Chairman of PDP, Anambra and that his tenure elapsed in that month could turn in another breadth and rule that Oguebego is the Chairman of the same PDP, in the state, that his tenure is subsisting. Unless there is a provision in the relevant laws of the party under which the two purported chairmen held office concurrently or that Oguebego was elected after the tenure of Emeakayi elapsed in Octoqer,2014, then the said judgments of the same court are irreconcilable and ought to be re-examined thoroughly.

Guidelines for primaries

Assuming without conceding that the tenure of Oguebego is still subsisting, an examination of the PDP Constitution and Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended), as well as the guidelines for PDP primaries reveals that it is not the state chapter of a political party, rather it is the NEC that conducts primary election to nominate the candidates of that party.

Time is ticking away on the Anambra saga. On December 15, last year, the National Chairman of PDP, Alhaji Mu’azu wrote a letter to the chairman of INEC restating to him the obvious fact that it was the candidates on the list of candidates submitted to INEC, signed by the National Chairman and Secretary of the party as approved by the PDP NEC through its National Working Committee (NWC) that are authorised to stand for elections on the platform of the party.

What would happen if this empasse is not resolved before the next month’s elections is yet to be imagined. Head or tail, the relevant institutions, including the PDP, INEC and the Judiciary have all contributed in one way or the other to encourage Chris Uba in his democratic activities. It is these same institutions that would put him in permanent check otherwise the said activities are heating up the polity and are challenging the foundations of our democratic experiment seriously.