Feb polls: Anambra and Electoral Act compliance by Emenike Nwagu

Chief Chris Uba’s roles in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, his romance with Independent National electoral Commission, INEC and the judiciary to achieve his political objectives is a matter of concern to all.

Chris Uba has become a political force that neither Senator Andy Uba, Anambra State, its people and the judiciary are spared from his attacks depending on which political divide one finds himself. From the 2003 National Assembly elections, when Chris Uba first experimented with his own list of candidates alongside that of the PDP in Anambra State, the state has never had one list of candidates for elections till date.

It has always been the PDP list against the list of Chris Uba. The existence of such parallel list of candidates in Anambra State PDP in 2003 produced such cases as Uba v Ukachukuru and Ukachukwu v. Uba which consumed the career of many Justices of the Court of Appeal, including Justice Okechukwu Opene JCA). The cases of Abonu v. Obi, Enemuo v. Durn as well as that of Jerry Ugokwe that took an appeal to the ECOWAS Court of Justice as a ploy to buy more time, all emanated from Chief Uba’s action. By the time the curtain was drawn on the elections of 2003 and its related cases, not less than four judges both at the High Court and the Court of Appeal had lost their jobs as a result of their conducts in the cases in which Chris Uba had interest.

In the primaries that led to the governorship election of 2013 in Anambra, Chris Uba re- enacted his act when he took his brother and governorship aspirant, Senator Andy Uba to conduct their primary election at a different location while the rest of the aspirants were at another properly designation venue participating in a lawful primary election under the supervision of Governor Shema of Katsina State duly designated the PDP National Executive Committee, NEC for that purpose.

The outcomes of the parallel primaries were subject matters of litigation that ended at the Supreme Court. Just as in Emeka v. Okadigbo, Lado v. C.P.C and others, the Supreme Court pronounced that Senator Andy Uba did not participate in the primary election conducted by the PDP and would not have won such a primary election in which he did not contest and can, therefore, not become the candidate of PDP in the said election.

Tony Nwoye was declared nominated as the candidate of the party in that election. It would have been expected that Chris Uba and his camp would have learnt a lesson from their selfish acts and the subsequent judgments of courts that kept Senator Andy Uba out of an election he would have likely won to become the Governor of Anambra State.

It seems, however, that the lessons of that great event were lost on the self-styled “war Lord”.

Again, when the whistle was blown for the primary election to nominate the candidates of the PDP for the National Assembly election, the PDP and Chris Uba went their divergent ways. At all the dates of the primaries, Chris Uba purported to have conducted his own primaries at separate venues from that conducted by the NEC of PDP, not many people took Chief Chris Uba serious, but a new twist attended the whole saga on January 14, this year, when it was confirmed that the INEC had published the ‘list’ submitted to it by Chief Uba as the list of PDP candidates for the National and State Assembly elections in Anambra as against the authentic list of candidates of PDP submitted by the National Chairman and Secretary of the party, which is a product of a lawful exercise, a result of party primaries conducted under the supervision of the party.

Not a few people have been dumbfounded at seeing this direct affront on democracy. The people of Anambra, particularly, the PDP family have since then been thrown into great wonder. The question on every lip is: “What went wrong with our legal order as to hand the people of Anambra and their rights to choose their leaders over to Chris Uba?”

The INEC has a ready defense for publishing the said Chris Uba’s list of candidates. According to INEC, it was obeying what was termed a judgment of a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, which had declared in November, last year that the tenure of one Ejike Oguebego was subsisting as the chairman of PDP in Ariambra.

To be continued