By Emmanuel Uzodinma Barr. Chijioke Edeoga was the Labour Party, LP, governorship candidate in the March 18 election in Enugu State....
By Emmanuel Uzodinma
Barr. Chijioke Edeoga was the Labour Party, LP, governorship
candidate in the March 18 election in Enugu State. In this interview, he bares
it all on what transpired during the keenly contested election. He also gives
insight on his case before the Election Tribunal. Excerpts!
People would want to know how you received the outcome of
the governorship election in Enugu state in which you participated as the
governorship candidate of the Labour Party, LP, what is your take?
Thank you so much. You know on the run up to the
governorship election, we had the National Assembly and Presidential elections.
In the presidential election the Labour Party performed very well, the LP
Presidential candidate performed very well in Enugu state, I think we recorded
more than 80 percent success.
Most of the votes cast in Enugu state were cast for LP. And
the National Assembly elections, which went on concurrently, out of the eight
House of Representatives seats LP won seven clearly and convincingly; out of
the two senatorial positions that were contested that day because one was
postponed owing to the death of Oyibo Chukwu, LP won one convincingly, in fact,
defeating the incumbent governor of Enugu state, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi with a margin
of more than 50,000 votes.
So, before the
governorship election, it has been established clearly that LP had become the
dominant party in Enugu state, torpedoing PDP and ending the 24 years rule of
PDP in Enugu state.
So on the run up to that governorship election which was
postponed for reasons which we don’t know, INEC said they have to do some
configurations; but it is becoming clear now that it is most likely that INEC
was part of the arrangement to undermine the Labour Party and dissipate its
energy. So we went into that elections with very high hopes knowing the amount
of work we had done in Enugu state since 4th August when I became the
flagbearer of the LP in Enugu state, knowing the goodwill that was following us
and following the LP, knowing that for a long time there has been significant
desire for change in Enugu state, plus the perceived wisdom of Igbo people not
to accept monotony, they see change as a veritable part of life.
So for a very long time, the decision to try another party,
try another thing has been there in Enugu state and in fact all over Nigeria.
In the South-East, the anger against PDP was also accentuated by the decision
of the PDP not to zone the presidency to the South-East, which most Nigerians
felt was normal and logical and reasonable. So there was sufficient ground for
people in Enugu state and most of the South-East to be angry with the PDP.
We went into that election of 18th March with very high
hopes that we were going to win and of course we won. And when results were
coming in, 16 LGAs had come in out of 17 and LP was winning clearly with more
than 11,000 votes, then the results came in after a very long delay, the last
to come in from Nkanu East where the PDP governorship candidate is from and it
is one of the LGAs that is closest to the secretariat where the results were
being collated and for reasons which are now obvious, it was the last to come.
The farthest LGAs like Uzo-Uwani, like Awgu and Aninri had
also come in long ago, so they kept it last and then when the result came in we
noticed that between INEC and PDP a whooping 30,000 votes was given to the PDP.
And the Returning Officer, Prof Iwe was not minded to announce that result
because it was clearly out of sync with voters that were accredited, it was out
of sync with the BVAS report. So notwithstanding the prodding from the Resident
Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Enugu state, Dr Chukwu that he should announce
it, the man refused to announce it and the matter went to Abuja.
So when the matter went to Abuja, many people, I was
informed, were rushing to Abuja to go and influence that matter one way or the
other but I refused to do that, I felt that the matter was a straightforward
matter, that the rules are clear. If there are areas of over voting, for
instance units where there are over voting, those units should be cancelled,
that’s what the law said. So I thought why am I bothering myself, the law will
automatically apply. In Abuja they have patriots, you know, that the law will
apply. Maybe my belief in the Nigerian system is still high or maybe a bit of
naivety, but I just took it for granted that the law will automatically apply
and I need not go to Abuja to beg anybody or canvass anything, that the matter
speaks for itself. There was clearly over voting in Nkanu East; 15,000 people
were captured by BVAS, by accreditation and it was not even an isolated act
because it went on simultaneously with the senatorial election, with the House
of Assembly election, and the governorship election. All these ones were
consistent with 15,000 accreditation. So I felt that there is no need to go to
Abuja; anybody who will interrogate the matter will just arrive at the correct
decision which is to cancel the points of over voting and return.
But eventually, two or
three days after, the decision from Abuja was that about 15,000 or thereabout
should be shelved from the total allocated to PDP and announced the 3,000 lead
by PDP over LP.
My reaction was not violent or anything, just a bit of
disappointment, you know, my response, my reaction, my feeling was that of
utter disappointment and utter betrayal even by persons who became part of the
committee to review the Enugu election; just a sense of utter disappointment. I
thought that at a certain level of national office one should become a patriot,
one should become a model of integrity, a model of rule of law, a model of due
process. So it’s just a definite sense of disappointment that people who ought
to be patriots, who ought to think Nigeria, who ought to be working to save
this country at each point in time betrayed the expectations, betrayed their
high offices, and participated in an act which was clearly illegal, an act
which was clearly not in accordance with common sense.
Because if you are going to decide a matter as high as the
governorship of a state, an agent of that party should be there where the
decisions were taken. Even if you don’t want to invite the governorship
candidate, the flagbearer, agents of the parties should be part of that
decision so that the basis for your decision should be known to everybody.
So up till now, there
is no explanation as to why they reached that decision?
No, up till now; what I found out that happened is that they
now called for a new result sheet and amended Nkanu East result sheet in a
manner that removes 30,000 and made 16,000 as the base. They rewrote the result
in Abuja and gave it to the Returning Officer to announce. So up till now there
is no explanation not from INEC, not from voluble spokesman, Festus Okoye, he
has not spoken about what really happened. How do they move down from 30,000 to
16,000?
It also appears that
different rules were applied contrary to what happened in Kebbi, Adamawa and
other places where they declared a rerun because the margin of lead was smaller
than the number of cancelled votes?
No in every other example they applied a different yardstick
to Enugu. Even though it is what happened in Enugu that happened in Abia, they
disregarded the areas of over-voting in Abia and declared for Abia. In Enugu
they didn’t disregard the areas of over voting, they declared for PDP, and you
know that INEC itself admitted that about 20,000 votes were cancelled where
there were incidences of violence etc, it was recorded clearly by INEC that
these are cancellations amounting to more than 20,000 votes.
Even my younger brother, Dr. Eugene, who was my agent,
immediately sent a petition reminding INEC there are 20,000 votes in your
incident forms; you admitted that there are places where elections did not
hold, this amounted to more than 20,000. And this 20,000, when you put it
alongside the 3000 lead it shows you that if they follow the laid down
procedures which they applied in other places, even in Oji River (state
constituency of Enugu state) where there was an over voting of only four votes
in the House of Assembly elections, it was repeated. And the funny thing is
that the over-vote of four votes in Oji River LGA was deliberately inserted by
an INEC staff member. He did it in order to frustrate that election, so that
INEC will call for a repeat.
In Kebbi, Zamfara and Adamawa, because of margin of victory
vis-à-vis cancelled ballots there was a rerun; but in my own there was a rush,
there was haste, an indecent haste, as you can see now, to award PDP victory
which flies against what is on the ground. What is on the ground is that LP won
clearly two senatorial seats in Enugu state against the three that are
available, LP won seven House of Reps seats out of the eight that are available,
LP won 14 House of Assembly seats out of the 24 that are available. So the
award of victory to PDP which INEC did working in collaboration with INEC
officers in Enugu and Abuja flies against what is evident on the ground as
expressed through the number of victories that LP won, it flies against the
face of manifest performance of the LP at that point in time. It flies against
the logic of the sentiment which was mobilised against the PDP in the whole of
Nigeria, especially the South-East, the refusal to zone the presidency to
South-East, the sense that people wanted change even if it was for the sake of
change, the sense that most people in Enugu state feel strongly that PDP has
underperformed and they wanted a new deal.
Now you have gone to
the Election Tribunal to challenge the outcome of that governorship election,
what are your grounds and what is your expectation?
The first item on our agenda is that PDP has no candidate,
it’s now a national issue, it’s now known nationwide, worldwide that NYSC has
disclaimed the NYSC discharge certificate that Mr. Peter Mbah the candidate of
PDP submitted and all the processes have been followed; what was submitted to
INEC is available now and all the certified document show that Mr. Peter Mbah
in his ambition to be governor, submitted a forged NYSC certificate to INEC.
And then NYSC has seen it, it was brought to the attention of INEC by two
forensic lawyers using the instrumentality of the Freedom of Information Act
and NYSC has stated categorically that that document is not their own, that
they are not the maker.
So our first point is to say that PDP has no candidate
because the Constitution is very clear as amended, that if you submit a forged
document you are disqualified. So our first ground is that PDP did not even
have any candidate. If the Tribunal accepts that and the court accepts that,
then all the votes that accrued to PDP were wasted votes. Number two is that we
should be declared the winner.
That’s our first ground. Second ground is what we chose to
call mathematical errors. We did a forensic analysis of the results, certified
documents that we got from INEC and we found out that in many parts of the
state, especially in Udenu LGA that the results that were duly entered for PDP
at the polling units, when they went up to the collation, they switched them.
So we have instances where the LP will score 80, PDP will score 14 and it is
duly registered, duly signed and documents are available at the polling units;
when they went up to the point of collation, upstairs, they changed it.
And that original
result is reflected on the IREV?
IREV has the victory of LP at the polling units but when
they went to the point of collation where all the units will come together, all
the wards will come together they now changed it. You will see that the victory
of LP has now been switched to PDP and the loss of PDP has been transferred to
LP, that thing came up to more than 2000 to 3000 votes that were so switched.
So we called it a calculation error, we don’t want to say it’s a crime, if you
say it’s a crime you have to prove beyond reasonable doubt, so we say it’s a
calculation error.
We plotted it graphically; even the blind can see it. So it
is done graphically and mathematically and evidence attached, so that is number
two.
Number three is that we also say that there are areas of
violation of the Electoral Law in such a way that you put us in a bad state. I
don’t want to elaborate on that but they are just three main points, so that’s
it.
Your expectation?
We have expectation that the judiciary, which is the last
resort of the common man, we have the expectation that God will touch their
heart, the three people or whoever is going to sit on this matter, God will
touch their heart to do justice in its real sense; because the truth is that
the people of Enugu state gave me their mandate against all odds. Against the
ballot snatching, against inducement with money, this is a party that has
weaponized poverty now they are sharing money. The plans by PDP against LP and
against my governorship aspiration were multi-faceted.
In the Enugu North senatorial zone, the idea was to depress
voter turnout, using all sorts of strategies. Thugs were deployed from Kogi,
Umuleri and Aguleri, all sorts, from Friday preceding the election, all over
Nsukka, threatening mayhem, breaking heads, causing problems. So that one idea
was to depress voters.
Then they deployed money, because you know that time the
governors were pressurising President Buhari to open up the CBN, and I think
there was a weakening of that resolve not to open the CBN, so money was
available, money was made available in large numbers to PDP, to Council
chairmen all over the state, to major political appointees, all of them had
enormous amount of money and they were buying people, then the women were
sharing wrappers. And then there was ballot snatching.
So in the face of all these harassments, vote buying, voter
suppression, alteration of figures, you know, realignment of figures, victory
became loss, loss became victory once PDP was favoured, the subtraction of
values of electoral officers, you know, young people who were brought in were taught
how to change figures. All these things were deployed against LP and Chijioke
Edeoga but the will of the people, even churches became an instrument, became
vulnerable in their desire to demarket Chijioke Edeoga but you know in all of
these things, the will of our people remained resolute and strong and
determined that LP will triumph, that Chijioke Edeoga must be rewarded for the
enormous work he has done to make sure that people of Enugu state realised that
change is possible.
In spite of all those things, we won. So, I expect the
justices, the God that touches the hearts of people to touch their hearts to
realise that the people of Enugu really worked, that LP should be governor and
that a new order should come through it.
What do you think may
have informed this massive change or what some people have termed political
tsunami in Enugu state?
This change was long in coming. If the election was not
stopped around 2011 midway PDC (People for Democratic Change) was at the verge
of winning Enugu state. So at each point when there is a free and fair
election, people will not vote overwhelmingly for one party, that’s for sure.
If people are certain that their vote will count there is no way that they are
going to vote, everyone voting one party, no, it’s not in agreement with the
innate nature of Igbo people. So that continuing PDP victory is not in consonance
with our people, it’s not in consonance with our fundamental make-up. So there
was something not right about it and people didn’t like it.
So immediately Buhari promised free and fair elections and
in view of the Electoral Act he had signed, people knew, anybody who was
sensitive and sensible and a student of South-East voting history would know
that change must come.
So that is number one. Number two is that I have told you
that Igbo nature, human nature does not accept monotony. We have received
wisdom that encourages variety; they say that you don’t stay in one place to
watch a masquerade, you move around so that you see that masquerade in all its
perspectives. They say that if ‘Ogoli’ (young lady) marries two husbands, she
will know the best. They say that if you lie down, you turn on your left; you
turn on your right.
So Igbos have received wisdom that encourages change. So
there is no way they would have tolerated this monotony of PDP being in power
for good or for bad for 24 years. So the time was ripe for change. And the
Electoral Law made it possible, and the PDP attitude to the South-East,
especially with regard to rotational presidency, which people logically thought
should come to the South-East, was an added factor. And the G-5 governors, all
those shenanigans that went on substantially demarketed the PDP.
And of course the fact of the presidency of Peter Obi, who
was a beloved son of the South-East, his presidency gave a new impetus, a fresh
impetus, a dynamism and acceptability, a momentum to LP that hitherto was not
there.
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