The All Progressives Grand
Alliance, APGA yesterday claimed victory in last Saturday’s Anambra
gubernatorial election just as the major opposition political parties in the
contest kicked, alleging wide scale irregularities.
The Chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, however, alleged
sabotage on the part of some staff of the commission who he claimed derailed
the commission’s plans for smooth delivery of election materials to some
sections of Anambra Central Senatorial district.
Meanwhile, the national
leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and its candidate in the
election, Comrade Tony Nwoye were divided yesterday over the conduct of the
poll. While the PDP praised the poll for being well conducted, Nwoye at a press
conference in Awka denounced the poll as rigged.
The muttering of the opposition
parties nonetheless, the National Chairman of APGA, Chief Victor Umeh claimed
that the victory of the party in the gubernatorial election was well deserved.
He dismissed allegations by the
candidates of PDP, APC and LP that the election was rigged as a non-issue
saying APGA won convincingly because the people have absolute confidence in the
party and its candidate.
Umeh addressed a news conference
in Awka in reaction to the complaints by the three major contestants that the
election was rigged by Governor Peter Obi with the support of some corrupt INEC
officials who deleted names of their supporters from the voters register among
other allegations.
Umeh told newsmen that he was
surprised by the three parties’ claims that they were cheated in the election,
saying their claims were untrue.
He said that unlike the previous
elections in the state, there was no incidence of ballot box snatching,
violence or other irregularities to warrant anybody faulting the exercise.
“As far as I am concerned the
election is free and fair, those people crying blue murder have inordinate
ambition. By tomorrow when the result will be out I will face them. I challenge
anybody who cares to analyze the results carefully and they will realize that
APGA won in those councils where it had won other elections in past polls.
There is no need whatsoever for any of the candidates to fault the exercise,”
Umeh said.
He said that APGA “is not scared
of their threats to go to court because APGA had been in court since its
inception and cannot be afraid of litigation.
“What Ngige is doing now is his
stock in trade since he has become a serial gubernatorial contestant and as I
speak to you now he is still in court over the 2010 election.
“For Tony Nwoye, he was not even
in the race. This is a man whom the Supreme Court revalidated his candidacy in
less than a week to the election. He only campaigned for four days in the whole
of Anambra state and can not claim to have been rigged out of an election he
was not actively involved,” the APGA Chairman who is the party’s State
Collatting Officer, said.
Before his address, the three
major candidates, Tony Nwoye, PDP; Ifeanyi Ubah, Labour and Chris Ngige, APC;
had at separate press conferences denounced the conduct of the poll and called
for its cancellation.
Opposition candidates in
joint conference
The trio subsequently last night
addressed a joint press conference where they made a joint call for the
cancellation of the polls. They alleged that they would not accept any result
from the election as conducted last weekend.
Ubah faulted the outcome of the
election, saying that having won convincingly at his Nnewi North local
government, which is the stronghold of APGA (the home of Ojukwus), he was confident
that he would have won in the entire state had APGA not rigged the poll.
He alleged that APGA bought
votes at N10,000 each within Nnewi and the money was distributed to willing
voters by a principal officer of the State House of Assembly.
Rejecting the outcome of the
election yesterday, Nwoye told a news conference in Awka that the “the election
is far below average and cannot be said to be free and fair” adding that “it
was heavily manipulated by INEC in collusion with security agents in favour of
Governor Peter Obi’s preferred candidate, Willie Obiano.”
I’ve never seen this kind of
rigging — Nwoye
Nwoye said: “I have been
involved in many elections in this country since my secondary schools days and
particularly in 1993 presidential election where Moshood Abiola emerged, I have
never seen this type of rigging. I have never seen an election where the
military men and police were harassing and intimidating voters, assisting the
INEC and APGA agents to chase away the PDP members at the collation centres to
write results.”
Nwoye was, however, countered by
his party’s national secretariat which praised the conduct of the election.
A statement released by the
National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh while commending INEC for the
good conduct of the election said: “The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hereby
commends President Goodluck Jonathan for providing adequate security and the
enabling environment for the conduct of credible, free and fair governorship
election in Anambra state last Saturday in spite of any perceived hitch(es).
“In the same vein we commend the
entire people of Anambra state and all stakeholders who played key roles in
ensuring peaceful and orderly conduct of the process.
“While we now await the official
result, we wish to express our satisfaction that the election was conducted
without disturbances, despite the massive importation of political thugs by the
All Progressives Congress (APC) as well as their heinous plots to introduce
violence to disrupt and rig the poll having discovered that they have been
rejected by the people.
“We also commend the candidate
of our great party, Comrade Tony Nwoye for his resilience, grassroots appeal
and credible outing which brought him to the forefront in the race despite
having only two weeks to campaign. This is evident in the results so far
released in which he roundly defeated the candidate of the APC who has been
campaigning for four months before our candidate. The PDP is indeed happy with
Comrade Tony Nwoye’s performance so far.
“While we charge all our members
to continue to remain calm and focused, we wish to state that our final
position on the election will be made known when the overall result is
declared by INEC.”
The APC meanwhile, in a reaction
to the development called for total cancellation of the election result saying
that delivery of materials to strongholds of the APC was sabotaged.
In its reaction articulated by
the party’s Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the
party said:
“After consultations with our
agents as well as with local and foreign observers, we have discovered that
what we earlier complained about was a child’s play, compared to the widespread
disenfranchisement that was orchestrated by the same body given the
responsibility of ensuring a free, fair and creditable election on Saturday.”
Jega meanwhile yesterday alleged
sabotage on the part of its officers during the election.
Speaking on AIT yesterday, the
electoral chief said that a particular officer who masterminded the derailment
of the distribution of election materials to Idemili North Local Government
Area of the state has been identified and would be prosecuted.
He said:
“We made all the preparations
and decentralised the process of distribution of materials in order to ensure
that they get to the polling units in time for the commencement of the
election. That was before Saturday.
“Unfortunately and regrettably –
we are humans. We can do all the preparations, but if people are determined to
subvert the process, one way or the other they will subvert it.
“So, they used our staff. I
think we should be very careful when we have a staff of about 12,000 in INEC,
when one person has committed an offence and then you use it to generalise or
condemn everybody in INEC.
“Our Electoral Officer in charge
of Idemili North Local Government, for inexplicable reasons, messed up the
distribution of ballot box papers and result sheets. That was the cause of the
delay in the distribution of materials in Idemili.
“All materials were to have been
distributed by Friday evening, but for some odd reasons, they made sure that
they held onto some of the result sheets, and they also gave wrong result
sheets to different polling units.
“For Anambra election, as we did
in Edo and Ondo, every polling unit has a unique result sheet. So, you cannot
take one result sheet to a different place, because it will not work.
“I assured the stakeholders when
we met in Awka that materials must get to the polling units before commencement
of election.
“So, when we discovered at about
1am that there was this mix-up, and we tried to reach the Electoral Officer and
the supervisor and there was confusion, and we knew something was fishy, we
said there would be no deployment until we sorted out the problem.
“As I speak, we have handed over
the Electoral Officer to the police because clearly what he did is a sabotage
of the electoral process, including the Local Government supervisor.
“It took us until about 1pm to
be able to sort out what they had jumbled up. We communicated with the
community as at 1pm that we were ready to distribute to all the other wards,
and materials were distributed.”
The three opposition candidates
of PDP, APC and LP, at a joint press conference vowed to reject whatever result
that would be announced by INEC from the elections in AnambraState.
The three candidates had earlier
in the day expressed their dissatisfaction with the outcome of the election
which is yet to be announced by INEC as at press time last night.
Ngige who was flanked by the
other two and spoke on behalf of the trio said: ”Our stand is that
Saturday election was characterized by fraud, malpractices and
massive irregularities and we call on INEC to put in place another process to
conduct a fresh election to enable the people of Anambra elect their governor
that will take over from the present governor on March 17 next year.
“The irregularities clearly
noticed included the omission of the names of many voters in the
registers presented for the election in the over 4,000 polling units.
We were assured that the process
will be free and fair during the stake holder’s meeting with the INEC
Chairman,
Prof Attahiru Jega, but little did we know that they had planned to
disenfranchise many of our supporters by deleting their names from the register
everywhere in the local government areas. It was so massive and we hereby
reject the voters registers used for this election.
“We were assured by the INEC
chairman that the electoral process would be transparent but we experienced was
to the contrary.
“Thirdly we discovered that
result sheets were translocated other than the purpose for which they were
meant. For instance some result sheets meant for some polling booths in Idemili
were taken to another area even when they were coded.
“There were massive. harassment
and intimidation of voters and our party agents. The party agents’
accreditation cards were described as fake and they were hounded out hence we
had no agents at most poling booths.
“There was massive deployment of
money by APGA through its serving commissioners, party chieftains, contractors
and some other individuals who were deployed to pay each voter as much as
N10,000 to vote for APGA.
“Having noticed the various
flaws …we have come to inevitable conclusion that this commission is determined
to go back to its old ways and that the much gains made in 2011 election
is being reversed.
“We, therefore, urge the INEC to
cancel the charade called election conducted in Anambra and deploy transparent
officials including a new Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC to conduct a
fresh election in the state.
“No election result should be
announced as the elections have not been concluded. What they are doing now is
an exercise in futility.
“We are peace-loving people in
Anambra state and they should not provoke the people to violence. A word is
enough for the wise.”
Both Ubah and Nwoye said they
all agreed to take a common position on the issue, insisting that the election
should be cancelled.
TMG faults calls for
cancellation
The Transition Monitoring Group
(TMG) said yesterday that it would not subscribe to total cancellation of the
Anambra Governorship Election.
The TMG is one of the observer
groups that monitored the election held on Saturday across the state.
The TMG Chairman, Malam
Zikirulahi Ibrahim, who was reacting to the problem in Idemili North where the
election did not hold on Saturday and was rescheduled for Sunday.
In a telephone Interview,
Ibrahim said that in spite of the problem, INEC performed well in some other
areas where elections held.
“From our observation, we know
the commission tried, but we also know areas where elections need to be
repeated.”
“We, however, believe that INEC
could have done better by holding the re-scheduled election on a working day
instead of a Sunday, considering the religious belief of the people of the
area.
“Our concern is that anything
worth doing is worth doing well.”
Ibrahim advised INEC to let the
entire World see that the issues arising from the Anambra poll were
appropriately addressed.
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