FALLOUT OF ANAMBRA GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS

 

A principal actor in the controversial Anambra governorship election of November 16 has reportedly made sterling revelations to his interrogators in Abuja.

Mr Okeke Chukwujekwu, the electoral officer in charge of Idemili North local government area of Anambra State, currently in police detention over his role in the electoral saga, was said to have told his police investigators that he was “being used and dumped”.

The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, had, in the heat of the controversies generated by the flawed poll, admitted that the “electoral officer” in Idemili North “messed up” and that he would be handed over to the police for prosecution.
Chukwujekwu was moved to Abuja on Sunday, just as INEC said it was conducting a probe into the deliberate sabotage of the governorship election.

A top official involved in the election confided in LEADERSHIP yesterday that the arrested INEC official had made useful statements even as he was apprehensive that top directors of INEC might be “implicated”.
“The way this whole thing is going, it looks as if many heads will roll in INEC because the young man has made useful statements and if what he said is anything to rely upon, it then means that some big names in that commission might fall with him.

“At first, he was trying to rationalise his action in that local government area when he was verbally quizzed before the intervention of the police; but, after some time, especially at the point of his detention, he started to cooperate but the cooperation is loaded because he has mentioned some top officials of INEC, especially directors and a PDP chieftain, as those who ‘put him in trouble’.

Although the source declined to disclose the identities of those involved, he said “preliminary confessions” point to the fact that the bungled election in most LGAs of the state was “packaged by aggrieved politicians in connivance with top INEC officials both in Abuja and Awka” adding: “It was a well-funded package.”
“All fingers point to some aggrieved politicians and it was a well-funded package that involved quite a lot of people; that is why the man is saying he has been used and dumped,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jega has said all enquiries regarding arrests made in the bungled Anambra election should be referred to the police.
Jega’s chief press secretary, Kayode Idowu, told LEADERSHIP on the telephone that INEC would not comment on the arrested official who allegedly played a key role in the flawed poll.

“One, I cannot say anything on his matter because the police has taken over a larger chunk of the matter; only the police can say something on the role of the man arrested and how far they have gone with their investigation; so you have to contact the police.
“Again, it will be out of place for me to reel out what the commission intends to do. Mind you, INEC is also carrying out its administrative interrogation on his matter,” he said.


INEC DOES NOT NEED COURT ORDER TO CANCEL TAINTED POLL -APC

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused INEC of being economical with the truth by saying only the courts can order the cancellation of last Saturday’s governorship election in Anambra in which about 1.3 million of the 1.7 million registered voters were unable to exercise their franchise.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Tuesday by its interim national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party reminded INEC that it did not wait for a court order to cancel the National Assembly elections in 2011 when it was obvious that many voters across the country could not vote due to the late arrival or non-delivery of voting materials.

‘’In announcing the cancellation of the National Assembly election in 2011, INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega said, among others, that it was to ‘maintain the integrity of the elections and retain effective overall control of the process’,’’ it said.

APC said the situation in Anambra last Saturday was even more serious because, in addition to the fact that voting materials were either late or not delivered at all, most voters were disenfranchised by an INEC official who apparently tampered with the 2011 voters’ register for the state.

‘’Therefore, there are more compelling reasons now to cancel the Anambra governorship election than what led to the cancellation and rescheduling of the National Assembly election in 2011, unless of course INEC is still acting out the script handed to it for the ill-fated election,’’ the party said.

NGIGE: HOW POLL WAS RIGGED

INEC to police: probe Anambra electoral officers

Some lurid details of the fraud in last Saturday’s Anambra State governorship election were laid bare yesterday.
One of the major actors in the election, which was widely condemned as “flawed” and “shameful”, described the election as a “disaster”.

Dr. Chris Ngige, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, said: “We have on tape a policeman thumb printing for APGA and INEC officials running away with election materials.”
Ngige was angry as he spoke at a press conference in Awka, the state capital. He said: “This INEC used students instead of members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to starve us of election materials. All the electoral officers were all compromised, like the one in Idemili North who deliberately acted on the orders of INEC and APGA.

“Students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka here were used as poll clerks just to find fault in APC and to favour their lecturer, Dr. Nkem Okeke, who ran as deputy to the APGA candidate in the election.

“Much more astonishing is that they wore NYSC uniforms because of the election and when they are taught how to perfect fraud, somebody will tell Nigerians that this country will be good. This is the disposition of the personnel that came to work in the election.”
Ngige urged INEC chairman Jega to call for the list of the Adhoc staff who worked during the election. “I do not want anybody to favour me or my party APC. Apart from the people from Calabar, every other person that worked during the election had affiliation with APGA,” Ngige alleged.

Ngige said APC members had computed that over 600,000 people were denied their voting rights, adding that the 210 units being allocated by INEC to them for the “so-called” supplementary election were not enough.
He added that the 16 local government areas being claimed by INEC as places where elections were cancelled was not true. APC, he said, knows that election did not take place in 20 local government areas.

Ngige said: “INEC on Sunday came up with what it called supplementary election. The votes allocated to APC during the so-called election on Sunday were fake because we did not participate.
“Our stand is clear. The election was fraught with intimidation, with thuggery, with disenfranchisement of our voters and total partisanship by the electoral body.”

He was disappointed in the system.

Said Ngige: “If it were a bazaar, it would have been a different thing and APC would have prepared for it, but we were told by INEC and the President of this country, Goodluck Jonathan, that it would be free, fair and credible. But it was not the case.
“Because they told us that they were ready for the election, that was why we conformed to it because we thought that those errors and mistakes had been corrected in the voter register, without knowing that it was a deceit.”

In his view, “the election was a systematic way to deal with the opposition parties in this state, especially APC, and the same thing happened in 2011 during my senatorial election.”
He blamed it all on Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) Prof. Chukwuemeka Onukaogu, who accused of adopting “the same tricks he used in 2011 by adopting his APGA system to dislodge Ngige and APC.” “To my mind, the election was flawed ab-initio,” Ngige said.

He added: “I am a statesman in this country. I have never gone to INEC to seek for favour. For Jega who everybody regards as a man of honour and integrity to sit back and allow his office to be messed up by those without honour, I’m really amased.
“Jega is an activist like myself and I do not support injustice. I’m injured and pained that this kind of atrocity is happening in his time and I also have difficulty in absolving him. What has happened in Anambra State is a disaster.

“I am sad for my country. I have lost hope in the entire process. People’s hopes are being dashed. I’m not desperate to become a governor. I have been there before now. The people of the state have lost hope in INEC,” Ngige said.