Anambra 2013: How Powerful Aspirants Used PDP, INEC As Pawns

AHEAD the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
scheduled congress on August 12, this year to
elect a three-man delegate in Anambra from
the state’s 326 electoral wards for the
governorship primary slated for today, a
comprehensive detail of the officials and
venues for the exercise was published in
national newspapers and widely displayed by
the party.
To instill sanity and decorum in the entire
governorship process this time, in contrast to
what happened in the February 6, 2010
contest, the Alhaji Bamanga Tukur-led national
executive charged all the stakeholders to shape
up or ship out.
The stakeholders acceded, especially the
nearly three-dozen aspirants who picked the
application forms, including Senator Andy Uba
(Anambra South).
Apparently sensing the possibility of a repeat
of the 2010 experience, when its key members
in the state allegedly collected money to
sabotage the PDP at the poll, the Wadata chiefs
called out a closed-door meeting.
After a painstaking deliberation, the meeting
unanimously agreed to work with the Ken
Emeakayi-led state executive for cohesion,
focus and to avoid the 2010 scandal.
All the aspirants were in attendance and
expressed satisfaction with the decision,
vouching their individual and collective
preparedness to work closely with Emeakayi to
succeed.
Everything proceeded well until the party put
the Expression of Interest/Nomination Forms
on sale, and allegations started flying around
that some aspirants, including Uba, mass-
purchased the forms for some ‘other
aspirants,’ in preparation for a likely consensus
candidature.
The deduction was that the scheming was
intended to get the party to organise an in-
house voting by the ‘aspirants,’ to choose
among themselves who would become the
party’s flag bearer.
Those behind the antic had reasoned that the
votes of their sponsored ‘aspirants’ would
naturally sway victory to their side with ease.
But when the escapade was exposed and the
party suddenly reviewed the initial free access
to the nomination forms for women, it hit the
schemers below the belt, without warning, as
the women were now made to pay 50 per cent
of what was paid by their men folk for the
forms.
The effect of this was quick, automatic and
unbelievable, as the ‘aspirants,’ including an
Awka-based hairdresser, instantly dropped out
from the 27 to 17 ‘aspirants’ that had picked
the form for N1 million each.
Whereas each of the men paid N10 million
for the form, the women, for the first time,
paid something- a princely N5 million each for
the form. And eventually, only about two were
able to make it.
But that is not even the news; the news is
that the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) and a segment of the PDP
leadership have since 2011 displayed a side
that frightens the citizens of Anambra.
According to a respondent, “their actions, as
they concern the PDP in the state, show them
to be nothing but willing interlopers,” as the
duo were accused of constantly willing to serve
personal and private interests “once you are
well-connected, which is very dangerous to
our fragile, but growing democracy.”
In 2011, PDP appointed and sent the Senator
Joseph Waku committee to the state to
organise primaries for the general elections.
On arrival, the team organised a
stakeholders’ meeting at the Queen’s Suites/
Hotels, Iyiagu Estate in Awka, the state capital,
to fashion out ways to smooth an acceptable
primaries.
It was agreed for all the aspirants to have
three nominees from each of the power blocs/
quasi groups, who were then loyal to the
dozen political tin-gods and godfathers that
abound in the state, to help them in the
execution of the primaries.
However, while others complied, the Uba
brothers, Chris and Andy, simply went home
and organised their own private primaries and
used their contacts in INEC to have the list of
aspirants from there submitted.
When the list from the party eventually
arrived in the state, the roulette began, and
the PDP list then suddenly became like a
copyright infringement.
The crises thus generated have remained
unresolved till date, making the state to
become the first to successfully submit two
different nomination lists- one from the party
and another from a private source.
The party lost its voice even when lambasted
by eminent jurists in court over which was the
official one between the two contrasting lists.
Instead, the party withdrew its initial
submission and chose to absorb the sharp
tongues of the angry jurists to decide the
matter, based on the age-long maxim of “the
facts before the court.”
Anambra State, therefore, entered the record
books as the first to successfully submit two
parallel nomination lists in one election.
Having succeeded with relative ease then, the
PDP appear to have decided to walk the same
road again in the run-up congress to this year’s
governorship primaries.
That is why the faction of the party, led by
Ejike Oguebego, held its own ‘congress,’ a week
before the PDP-appointed Senator Adolphus
Wabara committee supervised the Aug 12
congress, which was chaired by the Speaker of
the Abia State House of Assembly.
The Organising Secretary of the party, Alhaji
Abubakar Yusuf, a few days to the congress,
published the list of venues and supervisors
for the congress in some national newspapers.
Curiously, while the few aspirants who had
earlier gone round the state’s 326 wards to
market themselves and manifestos tidied up
preparations for the congress, others stayed
back in Abuja, working hard on ways to
torpedo the party’s plans.
Earlier, during the mega rally to unveil the
aspirants in Awka, Uba, Chief Patrick Sule
Ugboma and one other aspirant failed to show
up at the event held at the state-allowed Dr.
Alex Ekwueme Square in Awka, the first time
the APGA-led government would PDP access to
the venue.
It was reported that while the rally was going
on, the Uba faction was busy with theirs at the
Emmaus House premises.
At the PDP rally, aspirants such as Nicholas
Ukachukwu, Charles Odunukwe, Walter Ubaka
Okeke, Sylvester Okonkwo, Tony Nwoye,
Ugochukwu Okeke, Josephine Anenih, Alex
Obiogbolu and Emma Anosike had the
opportunity to speak to the mammoth crowd
on their plans for the state.
Then came the morning of Aug 12, when the
combined Ogochukwu/Wabara/Emeakayi
leadership organised the much-expected
congress, which the party’s National Vice
Chairman, Col. Akobundu (rtd), said “was not
without serious challenges.”
The congress appeared to have been turned
into a stock market, where many of the
supervisors openly hawked the results/result
sheets for between as little as N20, 000 per
ward and as high as N1 million per council
within the premises of the Marble Arch Hotels,
Awka, which served as the secretariat of the
congress committee.
It was revealled that the supervisors, acting
on the promptings of one of the aspirants,
allegedly caused the delays and the non-
appearance of the materials at some centres,
while some arrived around 7pm, after the
potential delegates had waited and gone home,
bitter.
To tidy up matters, one of the aspirants went
to Umuahia to meet with Ogochukwu, who was
literally goaded into the weekend’s make-
believe Abuja press conference that classified
the congress as “smooth and transparent.”
Again, the Ubas stayed away from the
congress, having had their own Oguebego
‘congress’ a week earlier.
But some political goons made frantic efforts
on August 12 to pass off the real supervisors
and tried to forcefully relocate the official
venues, which were met with stiff opposition.
The last gambit was manifest in Abuja the
upper Friday, when Uba reportedly realised
that he might be expelled for disobeying the
party yet again, what with the deluge of
political undercurrents that had been sweeping
in and out of the party secretariat to his
disfavour.
At that point, the party eggheads and Aso
Rock allegedly came in, but to no avail. The
Ministry of Justice was brought in, which
strangely fired a letter directing INEC as to
which, among the contending forces, to
recognise in Anambra PDP.
A former INEC’s Commissioner in the state
expressed serious concern that the commission
could dabble in such matter, saying it had no
business with state chapters of any party, but
its national headquarters, which should inform
it of its state executives.
Presently, two of the aspirants are in hot
supremacy contest for the ticket.
Unfortunately, they had displayed parts of
their jokers at the recent congress, “where
they reportedly tried to run roughshod of all
the other aspirants in a manner that had never
been seen before,” a respondent disclosed on
Thursday.
“Such things are not allowed in politics,
because each aspirant needed to be given the
benefit of the doubt in their council area,” the
source said.
It was gathered that things were so badly
managed that about 68 wards’ results of the
congress, supposedly written in the bedroom
of one of the aspirants, were cut-off hanging,
as the others aspirants stood their grounds,
thereby preventing them from submission.
The questions then are: Has politicians really
reformed and will Nigerians really trust them?
That raises the fear among political watchers
whether the rat race started at the Ministry of
Justice with the surreptitious letter was just a
one-off thing or would continue.
There are also issues with the All Progressives
Congress (APC), Labour Party (LP), Accord Party
(AP), APGA and the Mega Progressives Peoples
Party (MPPP) in the state.
It has become a pattern among parties in the
state to engage in executive sabotage and
horse-trading whenever elections come in the
horizon.
Hence political watchers are anxiously waiting
for Prof Attahiru Jega’s INEC and the Ministry
to generate explanatory letters to inform
Nigerians which are the authentic executives of
the parties in Anambra State.