After several months of preparation for the November 16 governorship election in Anambra State, the Professor Attahiru Jega-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) failed the test, casting doubts on its ability to conduct the 2015 general elections.
Anambra is the 14th on the highest voter register roll by INEC records, with 1, 758,220 registered voters.
As Jega tried to explain hiccups the commission faced in Anambra, he admitted that officials of INEC were responsible for the forced rescheduled election in Idemili local government area of the state. Jega said the INEC official in the affected local government area “messed up”.
The explanation of the INEC boss for the development notwithstanding, three of the governorship candidates who participated in the election -- Chris Ngige (APC), Tony Nwoye (PDP) and Ifeanyi Ubah (LP) -- have condemned the electoral body, saying Jega has failed the big test ahead of 2015. They have consequently called for the cancellation of the election, insisting on a fresh one.
Jega, who spoke at a monitored live television programme on the Africa Independent Television (AIT) yesterday, admitted that the electoral officer in charge of Idemili LGA deliberately messed up the distribution of electoral materials to polling units in the area.
He however said the officer had been handed over to the police for sabotage, adding that his actions undermined the electoral process in that area. Jega also confirmed that materials arrived late in polling units in the area because of the action of the officers.
He said: “Our electoral officer in charge of Idemili local government, for inexplicable reasons, messed up the distribution of ballot papers and result sheets, and that is the cause of the delay in the distribution of materials in the Idemili local government.
“All materials would have been distributed by evening. But for some odd reasons, he made sure they gave wrong result sheets to different polling units. Every polling unit has a unique result sheet.
“I assured the stakeholders when we met on Wednesday in Awka that materials must get to the polling unit before commencement of election. But when we discovered, about 1pm, that there was this mix-up, we tried to reach the electoral officer and there was confusion and we knew something was fishy.
“As I speak with you, we have handed over the electoral officer to the police. That electoral officer has to be investigated.”
Jega accused politicians of “reaching our people, who themselves are fraudulent to subvert the process”. “We have strong suspicion that the officer had connived with some people to undermine the electoral process,” he said, promising that the commission was doing everything to ensure that the matter was investigated.
He assured that if there were enough evidence of irregularities, INEC might consider suspension of some of the elections, but added that the commission can’t cancel election as demanded by some of the candidates based on mere allegations.
But to the trio of Ngige, Nwoye and Ubah, nothing short of cancellation of the poll was acceptable. They alleged gross irregularities in the conduct of the election.
In a joint press conference in Awka, the Anambra State capital, the three candidates accused the INEC and security agencies of conspiring with the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to rig the election in favour of the party’s candidate, Chief Willie Obiano.
Ngige, who spoke on behalf of the aggrieved governorship candidates, alleged that in addition to late distribution of electoral materials to areas known to be their strongholds, result sheets were found missing in those areas.
He also alleged that even where result sheets were supplied in some polling units, they were found to be those meant for other polling units, thereby making them invalid for the election in those areas.
The aggrieved contestants further accused security agents especially soldiers and policemen of “intimidating” and “harassing” their supporters and polling agents during the election.
They further alleged that the APGA government in the state provided huge sums of money to state commissioners, party chieftains and contractors as well as president-generals of town unions to buy the conscience of the electorate.
They alleged that each voter was given the sum of N10, 000 to vote for the APGA candidate, Chief Willie Obiano.
They warned that, for peace to reign in the state, INEC should cancel the entire election, and fix a date for a fresh conduct of the polls.
Ngige who said his party would challenge the result of the election at the election tribunal also said he and his party boycotted yesterday’s repeat elections in 65 polling units in Obosi Ward 1, Idemili South local government area, where elections could not hold on Saturday due to the late arrival of electoral materials in his strongholds.
He mentioned the areas as Onitsha North, Ogbaru, Nnewi South and Anaocha, alleging further that his agents were even forced out of some of the polling centres and some of them manhandled.
Nwoye also vowed not to accept the result of the election, accusing INEC, the police and other security agencies of undermining the electoral process. He spoke to newsmen in Awka ahead of the release of the results of the gubernatorial election by the INEC.
“The election is a monumental fraud and embarrassment to democracy. I have never seen an election where soldiers and policemen were harassing and intimidating voters, assisting APGA agents and INEC to chase away PDP supporters both at the voting and collation centres, and also write results. Our supporters were wounded at various wards across the state.
“They perfected the rigging so much so that they removed names of many voters from voters’ register. Josephine Anenih also did not vote, because her name was missing in the voters’ register in her ward. I didn’t vote and my father also didn’t vote because our names and the names of many other voters were missing in my ward, which has more than 500 registered voters,” Nwoye stated.
Nwoye said that he and his party boycotted yesterday’s repeat election in about 65 polling unit in Obosi Ward 1.
Also in a statement issued yesterday, APC’s interim national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the call for total cancellation supersedes its earlier call for a rerun in four local government areas.
It said that INEC, which was saddled with organising the election, inexplicably used a voter register that is totally different from what it gave to political parties ahead of the election, with the result that the new register did not contain names of most of the registered voters in the state.
APC warned: “Delivery of materials to the strongholds of the APC candidate, Senator Chris Ngige, was either done very late or not at all, a development that further robbed over 300,000 of his supporters in three key local governments of Idemili North, Idemili South and Awka South of their franchise.
‘’After consultations with our agents as well as with local and foreign observers, we have discovered that what we earlier complained about was a child’s play compared to the widespread disenfranchisement that was orchestrated by the same body given the responsibility of ensuring a free, fair and creditable election on Saturday.
‘We discovered that INEC had set up a multi-layer arrangement to ensure that most voters in the state were disenfranchised, apparently acting out a script to manipulate the result of the election in favour of a certain candidate. “Where voting materials were supplied, the commission provided wrong voter register. Coming after the charade in Delta, this is a serious development that raises questions about the ability of INEC to conduct a free, fair and transparent elections anywhere in Nigeria.
“It is particularly serious because if people who registered to vote are not able to do so, and even the votes of those who managed to cast them do not count, then, anarchy is looming. This is a new low for INEC, and unless something is done urgently, the electoral commission may plunge Nigeria into a crisis from which it may not recover.”
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