Anxiety Mounts As Election Tribunals Wind up in Anambra

With the two election petition tribunals sitting in Awka, Anambra state capital gradually winding up as the statutory 180 days of hearing election petitions approach, tension is mounting over the fate of those who had earlier been declared winners of the election as well as those challenging their victories.
Virtually all the National Assembly seats consisting of 11 in the House of Representatives and three in the Senate are being contested. For the Senate for instance, former national chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh who contested on the platform of APGA is challenging the declaration of Hon. Mrs. Uche Ekwunife who flew the flag of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as winner of the Anambra Central Senatorial seat. Likewise, former Executive Vice chairman of National Communications Commission (NCC) Chief Ernest Ndukwe (APGA) is challenging the declaration of Senator Andy Nnamdi Uba (PDP) as winner of Anambra South Senatorial seat while Chief Dubem Obaze (APGA) is challenging the declaration of Princess Stella Oduah (PDP) as winner of Anambra North Senatorial seat.
Most of the 11 House of Representatives seats are also being contested in the tribunal. But not so for the House of Assembly seats which most losers are not contesting. The reason is that most of those who lost in the House of Assembly election agreed not to contest the outcome of the election in the tribunal even though all the seats were won by APGA. The contestants who came under one umbrella led by Hon. Egwuoyibo Okoye had said that it would amount to waste of resources for it to patronize the election petition tribunals after what its members spent in running the election.
Hon. Okoye told Daily Independent: “We, the 21 candidates or flag bearers of PDP in the 11th of April election came together and decided that in Anambra State we waste a lot of money litigating, challenging those processes. But this time around we said no! Anambra state cannot be isolated at any point in time in whatever they do. If you consider what happens in other states; after elections some of the states will get one set of tribunal some will have two panels, some will have three panels. Anambra is among those having three, four panels because of the number of petitions before them and in most cases in trying to thrash out those petitions, the 180 days allowed will come and go because of the volume of work and money sunk in litigating will go to waste. We came together and agreed that we are not going to go to court. Those that have already briefed their lawyers went to them and asked that they stop where they were; they should not file. So, the 21 of us, I think it is only one us that went to court and voluntarily withdraw his case; so, 20 of us never went to court, ab-initio because of the principle underlining our reasoning. We now deemed it fit, to put to an end that rubbish in order to move the state forward.
The issue, however, is that Anambra state does not have a clean record of free and fair elections. That is why in the Governorship or National Assembly elections, contestants view one another with suspicion. The trend has been that some politicians in the state do not believe they can win elections without rigging the votes.  A typical case in point was the 2003 Governorship election in which the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Senator Chris Ngige was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ahead of the true winner of the election, Mr. Peter Obi. When the election petition tribunal headed by Mr. Justice Garba Nabaruma heard the case, it eventually upturned the INEC verdict and returned Obi as winner. That verdict was affirmed by the Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu.
Presently, the issue of rigging dominated the documents tendered in the tribunal. For instance, in the case of Anambra Central, the petitioner, Umeh, tendered over 119 forms EC8A1 (polling booth results) which he said were mutilated and prayed the tribunal to exclude them.
Another issue that came before the tribunal was that of the rightful candidate of PDP for the election. For long time now, that party has always presented multiple candidates for each seat in the election in Anambra state. In the previous election more than two candidates paste their posters and canvassed for votes but on voting day they jointly garnered votes credited to the real candidate of the party. This ugly situation reared its head last year engendering a great deal of confusion during the PDP primaries for candidates to contest various elections. First, there was issue of leadership squabble in the party. While Chief Ejike Oguebego led one faction of the party, Prince Ken Emeakayi led the other. It was such that when the primary election materials arrived, the police took custody of them. When eventually the primaries was said to have been conducted, at least three aspirants claimed they had been chosen by the party. These included Senator Annie Okonkwo, Chief Ifeanyi Okonkwo and Hon. Uche Ekwunife (Iyom).  
It is not surprising, therefore, that in all the tribunals, the issue of who really was the authentic candidates of PDP in the election was raised. In his argument in the tribunal, Umeh’s counsel, Chief Patrick Ikwueto brought two main issues for consideration, namely: whether Hon. Ekwunife was qualified to contest the election having emerged from a factional party primaries and that the tribunal should on its own calculate actual figures scored by each candidate in the election since INEC admitted that it declared Ekwunife winner of the election based on false figures. Ikwueto argued that since Ekwunife admitted under cross examination that she emerged candidate from a faction of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) other than the faction which produced delegates to the congress that elected the party’s senatorial candidate her emergence was questionable.
“The question”, he argued, is: “Since Ekwunife said that she did not emerge from Ejike Oguebego faction of PDP who conducted the ward delegate election from where the delegates that elected Ekwunife in the primaries, since there were two factions and she admitted that there was a special congress election which was different from  the one conducted by Oguebego. If there was no proper delegate election that elected her, then her primary election was invalid ab initio”, he stated.
Ekwunife’s counsel, Peter Eze, however, urged the tribunal to uphold the result of the election as delivered by INEC.
However, the high stake in the judgment of the tribunal also has to do with the individuals concerned and their ambition. It is seen as a tragedy that Umeh, generally seen then as ‘General Officer Commanding’ the affairs of APGA should fail to win the votes of one-third of Anambra state where he comes from. Umeh is also claiming that among other things, he challenged the election to “stop impunity and electoral malpractice in Anambra state.There is no person in this state who did not witness the brigandage and use of armed men to annihilate the electorate and hijack the electoral collation process to declare result which can no longer stand as one”, he lamented.
On the other hand supporters of Ekwunife, who is two-time House of Representatives Member whose eyes are already fixed on the Governorship seat of Anambra state come the next Governorship election cannot afford to see him lose election. In the other two parts of Anambra North and Anambra Central, the feeling is the same. Senator Andy Uba and Chief Ernest Ndukwe are people known country-wide, so also are Princess Oduah and Chief Obaze.


By Chukwujekwu Ilozue