Anambra House Election: The Votes Must Count this Time

 

Thousands of voters who endured the scorching sun and malfunctioning card-readers to cast their votes in last week’s Presidential and National Assembly elections in Anambra State are still reeling from the shock of the dubious results announced by INEC at the end of the exercise. In what could easily pass for a faint reminder of the Hobbesian Days of the old Anambra, the people watched, helpless as the state Resident Electoral Commissioner announced what has been widely condemned as voodoo results that have no bearing with the actual votes cast in the various polling booths and cheekily handed victory to all PDP candidates, some of who never even ran any serious campaign before the elections.



From Umuerum to Ihiala and from Ogbaru to Amansea, the sense of outrage is the same. Ndi Anambra are shell-shocked.  They are deeply gobsmacked by what they consider the greatest electoral heist in recent memory. The prevailing sense of revulsion stems from the FACT that even the most political ignoramus in Anambra State can testify that as far as the actual votes cast at the polling booths are concerned, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) won almost all the seats in contest. The sense of wonder therefore came from the final results declared by INEC. Ndi Anambra are still bewildered at what may have happened at the collation stage of the electoral exercise where they believe that the mandates they had graciously handed to their preferred APGA candidates in order to finally give gravitas to the party in the state were thwarted and dubiously allocated to PDP candidates.

Giving words to the people’s collective outrage, Chief Arthur Nwandu, a respected opinion leader in Anaocha Local Government Area described the show of force by PDP elements during the elections as bizarre and unacceptable. Narrating what he saw in his locality, Chief Nwandu said he witnessed some gangster-like PDP agents struggling to wrestle the collated results in the Council Area from the returning officers. “They were led by Hon. Uche Ekwunife and Chike Undenze,” he recalled. “After a while, Uche Ekwunife stepped out and made a phone call and in no time at all, soldiers and policemen arrived the scene and began to beat people up. They beat up the deputy chairman of the local government and bundled him into a van and carried him away with the result sheets. They were escorted by an armed personnel carrier as if we were in a war.  This thing is unacceptable in modern Nigeria. It should not be allowed to happen. We say no to this kind of politics in Anambra State. We reject it in totality!” he thundered!

Chief Nwandu is not alone in this season of fermenting discontent. The APGA Senatorial candidate for Anambra State, Chief Victor Umeh could not put a firm cork on his own rage. Battling unsuccessfully to keep bitterness away from his voice, Chief Umeh compared what happened in the March 28, 2015 elections to what happened in the 2003 gubernatorial election in Anambra State when APGA won and the PDP elements hijacked the poll results and awarded victory to themselves. “I can assure you that the PDP candidates lost woefully in this election and we are going to prove to them that Anambra State is not a guineapig that anyone can use to test the efficacy of their drugs. Those mandates given to APGA candidates will be recovered. It is a huge shame that the government of Nigeria should empower a young woman of 42 years of age with the police and the army to ravage Anambra State in the name of national politics. It is a huge shame. We are going to reverse this!” he bellowed. Chief Umeh, a veteran of many electoral legal battles is already spoiling for another bout of legal kamikaze war with some erstwhile allies who have followed political expediency to the other side of the divide. Living true to his reputation, Chief Umeh reminded his new political foes of his antecedents, saying; “I am Chief Victor Umeh, I have been leading Anambra State and Igbo people in the struggle for self-definition. I assure them that within weeks and months they will begin to count their losses. Their victory cannot be sustained.”

Earlier in his statewide broadcast on the elections, the governor of Anambra State, Chief Willie Obiano had deployed a strong language to condemn the travesty that was the March 28, 2015 elections in Anambra State. In a voice laden with emotion, Governor Obiano had declared, “I must condemn in strong terms, the brazen return of brigandage and lawlessness displayed in the last elections by PDP stalwarts in Anambra State who hijacked the electoral process at the collation stages and came up with spurious figures as the final results of the elections. Fellow citizens, I want to assure you that the dubious victory of the PDP in the National Assembly Elections of last Saturday shall not stand! We have assembled the necessary documentary and material evidence that will expose the bare-faced lies of the PDP and retrieve the mandate that you graciously gave to all APGA candidates from the law courts,” he assured, urging Ndi Anambra not to lose hope.

Now, the thing about the Anambra elections is that it has all the makings of an infuriating democratic farce. The open show of federal power by some PDP figures in the state was simply rankling. What with several reports alleging that the Chairman of Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), Chief Ifeanyi Ubah had slapped the ebullient billionaire, Ernest Azudialu Obiejesi, the Chairman of Nest Oil Group in a senseless brawl that was witnessed by Olisa Metu, the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP. What with the stories of how Hon. Uche Ekwunife had patrolled the length and breadth of Anaocha Local Government with an Armed Personnel Carrier, threatening to crush all opposition with powers from Abuja.  And  what with the reported mob-like invasion of Idemili by a serving federal minister to ensure that his sibling won the election in the area. But even so, all these are mere skirmishes when one considers the fact that the electoral tempest that struck Anambra State in the last elections actually came to a head when two people were gunned down in Ihiala.
So, if Ndi Anambra are shell-shocked, it is understandable. They are shell-shocked because it seems like dejavu all over again. All of a sudden, they are seeing the same recklessness, the same barbarism that pockmark the days of the locust…the days when PDP held sway in Anambra State and put the dreams and hopes of a most illustrious people on hold for a very long time. And after recovering from the shock, they have finally resolved that whatever it takes, they would hold INEC and the regulatory authorities responsible for anything that sets Anambra State back into the dark, airless nights from which APGA government has released them, giving everyone the chance to breathe again!

Written By James Eze (eziokwubundu@gmail.com) from Awka.