Anambra guber election: APC, PDP are bad losers – Rep Our Reporter November 24, 2013 4 Comments » Anambra guber election: APC, PDP are bad losers – Rep By Iheanacho Nwosu, Abuja Hon Victor Ogene, a chieftain of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) is the deputy spokesman of the House of Representatives. In this interview, he dismisses the call by some candidates in the Anambra State governorship election for the cancellation of the results. What’s your take on the call for the cancellation of Anambra election by some parties and individuals? What are their reasons for the call for the cancellation of the election? The argument is that the exercise was marred by irregularities. I do not know of any election in Nigeria that has been cancelled outright based on mere allegations of irregularities. If you talk about elections, even under the judiciary, the only basis for admitting an election as credible is if it complies substantially with the law. In this instance, I think the Anambra election complied substantially with the laid down laws- both the electoral law and the constitution of the Federal Republic and even the operative manual of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Some of them hinge their calls on poor voter turnout. They claim that out of 1.7 million voters, when you have just under 500,000 voters, it is not something to hold on to. They claim that over a million voters were disenfranchised. I say that they are only being clever by half. They know that in the history of elections in Nigeria, it is a tall order to get 40 percent turnout of registered voters. I cite two recent examples. In the Edo governorship election of 2012, there were 1,557,763 registered voters, the accredited voters for that election were 63,099 . That was a mere 40 percent of the total registered voters but nobody called for the cancellation of the results of that election. Remember that the defunct ACN won the Edo election. In the morning of the election, Edo State Governor, Adam Oshiomhole, who was seeking re-election had castigated the INEC for late arrival of election materials. According to him, he was speaking at about 11 am on the day of the election. He said that if accreditation had not started at that time, then INEC had failed. But soon after he was declared winner the next day, the National Publicity Secretary of ACN, Lai Mohammed, the governor and his team praised Jega as an electoral umpire Nigeria ever had. Let’s move on to Ondo that came after the Edo election. With 1,638,956 registered voters, accredited voters for the state’s 2012 election were 624,659. At the end of the day, the Labour Party which is the party in office won. But the important thing is that the people that turned out to vote in that election represented 38 percent of the entire voter strength of the Ondo people. Nobody called for the cancelation of that election results. The only people that called for such were the ACN and the PDP who lost. So, we see an emerging trend in losers of an election castigating the outcome. I ask a simple question: how would an INEC official, wherever he may be , know who is an APC supporter as against an APGA supporter?. I do not think that any party member carries a tag on his forehead. So, if there are isolated cases of late arrival of election material, that should affect the parties almost equally. I also like to add that the unprecedented flooding of last year in this country swept away many voters’ card predominantly in Anambra North where I hail from. The whole place was submerged and a lot of people lost their voter’s cards. This is a governorship election. If it is a general election, you can have people from all over the country coming in to vote. I know several people in my own community who came from Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt to register and participated in voting during the last state/National Assembly election. But in the governorship election, they do not have much enthusiasm to leave their businesses and return home to vote. Those seeking outright cancellation of the election results hinge their demand on the acceptance by INEC that some of its officers were compromised. Do you not see their claim as weighty enough? I have addressed the issue. I said there was a substantial compliance in the conduct of the election. When you talk about Idemili North and South, I recommend that you go back to the history of the man, the main proponent in Idemili. In every election he had contested, he had made Idemili North and South a critical issue. Before the election, he would shout my stronghold. But in the fiercely contested senatorial election between himself and another heavy weight, Prof Dora Akunyili , seven local government areas were involved. The total voter turnout was 138,951. He (Ngige) scored 69,725 votes, and Akunyili had 69,236 votes. These votes were from seven LGS. So, how can we be talking of 90,000 votes for just two LGS-Idemili North and South? The mathematics simply does not add up. If there are some challenges in logistics and INEC is talking about a re-conduct of election in those areas, why should they be afraid? If you have a football team that you are very sure of and you beat the opponent and the football authority says there is something wrong with that game , you will be prepared to play the match 100 times over because you are sure that you will beat that same opponent. We are talking about Idemili North and South, they should be ready. They are being given another opportunity to prove those figures. The question is: who was trying to inject 90,000 into the votes of Idemili North and South? There is no election anywhere where two local governments will turn out that figure. I stand to be corrected. Why is your party keeping mum over allegation by APC that it colluded with INEC to rig the election? How can anybody say that? If we colluded with INEC, then we should return a million plus votes. That is the way you can prove collusion. You sit down somewhere and write results. If we had done that, we would not be leading with a mere 79,000 votes. People who are calling for cancellation have not asked themselves if people who voted for APGA that gave us 174,000 votes are not Anambrarians. You want the will of the majority to be subservient to the position of the minority. We have more people whose will have been expressed. They voted for APGA and it’s candidate, Chief Willy Maduabuchi Obiano. What will happen to those people who exercised their franchise and voted for APGA in the November 16 election? That is the question nobody has answered. Do we punish those people because of incident of non completion of election in certain areas? Are you saying that the opposition does not have enough ground in their call for the cancellation of the results of the election? It is not an issue. It is not because you do a rerun or supplementary election, if you have a problem in a particular ward and the number of registered voters in that ward is more that your lead between the first and the next person . That is what INEC has simply done. The gap between Willy Obiano , the APGA candidate and the person who came second, Tony Nwoye of the PDP who scored 94,000 is about 79,000. In areas where there are problems you have a total of 113,000 votes. That is why INEC could not out rightly declare the APGA candidate winner, despite winning 16 LGS out of 21 and having spread 25 percent in 18 LGs. None of these parties can march that even if you repeat the election a million times. PDP won in two LGs and had spread in nine LGs; APC won in two LGs and had spread in four LGs. How can they meet the constitutional requirements of two third in 14 LGs in the case of Anambra? We should be the one harassing INEC to declare the results. But it is like a child who came first in an examination with the promise of a gift and then you say you are holding the gift until you explain to the other children why they failed. That does not change the fact that the child came first. Whenever you finished explaining to the others, the prize will return to the child. So, we are still waiting to collect our certificate of return when all the niceties would have been done with. Do you not see some parties pulling out of the planned supplementary election denting the exercise? How can it dent it? Already, the PDP at the national level has praised the conduct of the November 16 election. The party spoke through its National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metu. On Wednesday, the state Chairman of PDP, Mr Ken Emekayi, praised the conduct of the election. If the Supreme Court’s decision on Rotimi Anaechi vs Omehia is anything to go by, it is actually the political parties, not the candidates that should be speaking. So, if the parties are satisfied with the election, I think there is little to worry about. Culled from Sunday Sun NewsPaper
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:06:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015