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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA
The Gathering Tsunami in Anambra
The editors of Thisday yesterday called it “The Gathering Storm in Anambra”. Many other Nigerians probably think the state is heading for worse; goings-on in the run-up to the coming February’s governorship election in that hapless state suggests it is heading for a tsunami.
In what looks likely to be a two-horse race between the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), the ruling party in the state, and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), the country’s ruling party, neither seems in a position as at the time of writing this article to meet INEC’s (Independent National Electoral Commission) Friday deadline for the submission of the name of its governorship candidate.
Consistent with its practice of “garrison democracy,” the PDP hierarchy attempted to anoint a candidate, presumably Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, erstwhile Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who seemed to have the backing of PDP’s “Mr. Fix-it,” himself, the chameleonic – he’s changed political masters at will from the departed elder Yar’adua to General Sani Abacha to President Obasanjo on to President Yar’adua - Chief Tony Anenih. Several of the remaining fifty odd contestants made enough noises against the move to scuttle the move.
This forced the party hierarchy to organize ward elections to choose delegates that will in turn choose the governorship candidate at its primaries that had been scheduled for October 2. The ward election was a fiasco and one candidate pleaded with an Abuja High Court to stop the primaries. The judge obliged and, somewhat surprisingly for a party used to behaving with impunity, the PDP obeyed.
It will be a minor miracle if the party manages to come up with a credible candidate in two days time. But then the ruling party has always moved about in mysterious ways.
The rival APGA seems to be in a worse shape than the PDP in its effort to beat the INEC deadline. Here the terrible state of the party is apparent from the tackles that Mr. Peter Obi, the APGA governor of the state, has traded with Professor Maurice Iwu, the controversial chairman of probably the most subservient electoral commission in the country’s history.
Last week Governor Obi published an open but passionate letter to Nigerians in almost all the national dailies which was a thinly disguised accusation against Iwu of assuming a role scripted by the PDP to rig the election in its favour. “On Friday September 25, 2009,” Obi said, “the Independent National Electoral Commission handed over the original copies of Forms CF001 and CF002B meant for the nomination of the candidates for the 2010 Anambra governorship poll to Chekwas Okorie. INEC did this on the claim that Chief Okorie is the National Chairman of APGA. INEC did this in contravention of court decisions.”
Chief Okorie has since made it clear that he will not allow Obi, possibly APGA’s most viable candidate if only because in Nigeria only foolish incumbents lose elections, to run again. All along there has been no love lost between the two from the moment APGA became divided not too long after its registration in 2002. Obi took sides with Chief Victor Umeh who was then suspected to be a PDP fifth columnist in APGA.
Ahead of the February poll it is obvious that the easiest way to get rid of Governor Obi is to dump the chairman of his faction and replace him with his rival. You could say for Umeh it was merely the chickens that came home to roost.
With Obi probably out of the race through what is clearly a PDP sleigh of hand, the country’s ruling party is guaranteed to regain the state which it lost after the Supreme Court ruled nearly four years ago that its candidate, Mr. Andy “Never-say-die” Uba – he has since then been in and out of the courts uncountable number of times in what to me is a futile attempt to regain his dubious mandate – won the 2007 elections through subterfuge.
Iwu, predictably, has since been stoutly defending himself against Obi’s accusation. In a widely published reply to the governor’s letter signed on his behalf by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Andy Ezeani, Iwu said he has defied no court order by handing over INEC’s governorship nomination forms to Okorie. Obi, said Iwu, was merely being selective in his choice of facts and of court rulings.
Obi, said Iwu, conveniently forgot a court ruling in August 2006 which said the parties in dispute should maintain the status quo at the time. This, said Iwu, meant Okorie remained the chairman of the party.
Yet, on Iwu’s own admission at one time INEC recognized the Umeh faction. “A lot of capital”, said Iwu, “has been made by the fact that INEC at some point recognized Chief Umeh as acting Chairman of APGA. Yes, INEC did accord such recognition to Victor Umeh some time in 2005. But that is not the whole story.”
The missing part of the story, said Iwu somewhat disingenuously, was that he expected his recognition of Umeh to lead to a resolution of the APGA crisis. How, he wouldn’t, or more likely, couldn’t say because obviously his political contortion is almost impossible to disentangle. The more likely explanation was that Iwu recognized Umeh at the time he did because his political masters found Umeh a useful tool to divide and rule APGA.
In any case since the court ruling Iwu has chosen to focus on, a Federal High Court has declared Okorie’s claim as chairman of APGA as illegal. Iwu’s reply to Obi’s letter did not deny the existence of the ruling but merely dismissed it as “surreptitious” because INEC was never notified of the petition that led to the ruling. In this age of President Umaru Yar’adua’s self-declared reign of rule of law, one would have thought the proper thing for INEC to have done was to appeal against the court ruling and not simply dismiss it as dubious. INEC is, of course, entitled to its opinion but Iwu should know that such opinion does not have the force of law.
Meanwhile Okorie, as if in cahoots with PDP, has not only said he will not allow Obi to run on APGA ticket. He would not even say who are in the race three days ahead of the INEC October 9 deadline, beyond claiming three faceless members have picked up the party’s nomination forms.
The long and short of all this is that two days to INEC’s deadline both the PDP and APGA, as the leading contenders in the February governorship election in Anambra, are still playing cloak and dagger with the electorate. Chances are whoever emerges as the candidate of either party will have a huge question mark of legitimacy hanging over his head.
The big lesson here should be obvious. The problem with our elections is less the merits of the rules of the game than with politicians who have since come to see politics as a “do or die” affair. With such an attitude even the best laws on earth can never turn the country around for the better. |