governorship election in Anambra State, Senator Chris Ngige, Tuesday
did a post-mortem of the election, saying the level of malfeasance
committed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has
kept him depressed and sad for the country.
Ngige, who was speaking for the first time since Monday when the
election was declared inconclusive by the Chief Returning Officer,
Prof. James Epoke, said INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega and his
commission had betrayed the confidence reposed in them.
According to him, they deceived everybody that they were going to
conduct an election in which they would pay the role of a neutral
umpire only to connive with the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance
(APGA) to rig the election.
His party also called on INEC to unmask those it claimed sabotaged the
election rather than protecting their identities.
Ngige, at a press conference in Awka last night, accused the Resident
Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuemeka
Onukogu, of conniving with APGA whose running mate teaches at Nnamdi
Azikiwe University (NAU), Awka, to recruit ad hoc staff from the
institution as part of efforts to return APGA to power.
He alleged that they connived to recruit students of the institution
and gave them National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) uniforms to work as
ad hoc staff to replace those earlier trained to work as temporary
electoral officials.
He said: "The INEC leadership was found wanting in the discharge of
their functions. The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Anambra
State, Prof. Chukwuemeka Onukogu, has no business staying here to
conduct this election.
"Perhaps what Jega wants after my complaints to the commission on how
the REC distorted things during the 2011 election is for me to carry
placards and move around the state before he removes him. I am a
statesman and cannot do that.
"But is not Onukogu alone, the entire electoral officers there at the
INEC Awka office are rotten. This Chukwuemeka Okeke, the INEC officer
in Idemili North they now said had been apprehended for electoral
offences, is only being made the scapegoat because he over did it."
According to him, the APC is compiling its own report which will show
that the election was seriously flawed in 20 local government areas
instead the 16 local government areas where INEC would conduct
supplementary elections.
In its latest reaction on the election, APC urged INEC to fish out all
those involved in the fraudulent disenfranchisement of voters during
the governorship election and make them face justice.
The party also faulted INEC's assertion that only the courts could
order the cancellation of the governorship election in which about 1.3
million of the 1.7 million registered voters were unable to exercise
their franchise.
In a statement yesterday by its interim National Publicity Secretary,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, APC told INEC that it did not wait for a court
order to cancel the National Assembly election in 2011, when it was
obvious that many voters nationwide could not vote due to the late
arrival or non-delivery of voting materials.
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.
The party said INEC had the duty not only to name the culprits that
distorted the Anambra poll but also to find out who their sponsors
were.
Its call came just as Mr. Valentine Obienyem, Senior Special Assistant
on Media and Publicity to the state Governor, Mr. Peter Obi, accused
the party of hiring women to protest over the election.
Specifically, Obi's aide accused the APC of bringing women from Osun
State to Anambra State to protest the conduct of the governorship
election.
He said in a statement that the supposed protesters were brought into
Anambra State in five chartered luxury buses.
He further alleged that the party brought in some boys yesterday from
Imo State to protest as students.
According to him, during interrogation, the boys confessed that APC
paid them N1,500 each and chartered the buses that conveyed them from
Imo State to Anambra.
Insisting that the election was one of the best in Nigeria, Obienyem
wondered why Igbos and others had commended the election, only the APC
governorship candidate, Ngige and his party members remained critical
of it.
One guest told us: "The party was wild — wall-to-wall models. There
were probably 20 girls to every guy. Leo started the night with a
dinner in a private room and then joined the party around midnight.
"Danny A, who hosted, would get on the microphone and announce who
placed the champagne order and for how much… then a train of 100
bottles would come out with sparklers and girls dressed in burlesque
[outfits]."
Danny A is the guy who famously fell afoul of George Clooney by
"talking [bleep]" during a basketball game while on Leo's team.
Our spy reports, "2 Chainz performed, then Kanye surprised Leo and
performed a full show of about 10 songs with DJ Jus-Ske including
'Clique', 'Good Life', 'Power' and 'All of the Lights.' Kim Kardashian
was singing along."
The guest added, "Leo and girlfriend Toni Garrn were front-row for the
entire performance, dancing and kissing."
Also there: Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Benicio Del Toro, Ronnie
Wood, Martin Scorsese, Brandon Davis, Orlando Bloom, Tobey Maguire, Ed
Norton, Q-Tip, Lukas Haas, Tony Shafrazi and Busta Rhymes.
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