Mr. Chijioke Edeoga is the governorship candidate of the Labour Party in March 18 governorship election in Enugu State. In this interview he discusses his experiences at the just concluded polls.
How has it been since after the election in which Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was declared the winner?
The background is that Labour Party won 14 out 24 members of the house of assembly leaving 10 for PDP which has been in power since 1999. Out of eight members of the house of reps, LP won seven, leaving only one to PDP. The total percentage of votes recorded by LP is around 87 per cent, so, clearly, Enugu State is LP state. Even on the day that the governorship election was held, some house of assembly and senatorial elections were held simultaneously and LP won about five out of seven House of Assembly seats in Enugu East senatorial constituency where the PDP candidate came from.
On the same day also, the senatorial seat was up for election and the LP won. So, three elections were done at the same time, LP won five or six House of Assembly seats, won a senatorial seat in the same zone where the governorship candidate of the PDP came from and in the rest of the state, LP won. So, how come INEC even got the votes that were allocated to the PDP candidate?
Immediately that result was announced, Enugu State knew that something terrible had happened and since election was announced from Abuja, the state has not been the same again. Enugu State has been in a state of shock, disbelieve and anger because the mandate for change which we have clearly conveyed across Enugu State has been arrested. PDP weaponised 17 council chairmen with all their key officers, relevant commissioners in all ministries and appointees were weaponised and money were given to them to buy votes where they could, to depress votes and snatch ballot boxes.
But we didn’t allow the outcome as disappointing as it is, as surprising as it is, we didn’t allow what INEC announced to destabilise us or remove us from the focus. Immediately, we saw the needful that will be done, not to take laws into our hands and return evil for evil but to remain prayerful and hopeful. That was the steadfast step, to calm everything down. We calmed the state down and made important statements across the state to calm points of possible unrest and turmoil. Then we went one more step by involving the legal process to make sure that we challenge this outcome.
Your party alleged that the election was rigged by the ruling PDP. Can you substantiate that?
I don’t know what you meant by my party. I have not read that statement that you are alleging but I just told you that the PDP made substantial amount of money available to its members; council chairmen, a lot of beneficiaries of the PDP, a lot of money was made available to them, so, multiple strategies were adopted by PDP in order to affect the outcome of the election. In places where they could, money was given in order to vote for a particular candidate. In some places like Enugu East Local Government, announcement was made very early in the morning that ‘if you are not coming to vote for PDP, better stay in your house.’
In some other places again, like Enugu North senatorial zone, for instance, Lejja in Nsukka local government, where some people were dressed in police uniforms; most likely, these uniforms were sewed for them. They moved around, snatching ballot boxes. In Igbo-Eze South, a former member of the House of Reps snatched ballot boxes. In several wards in Orba, which is the community of the incumbent governor, ballot boxes were snatched at the point when voting were going on, so, there were multiple strategies to reduce or scare people. In Enugu North senatorial zone for instance, which was considered my strong area, the strategy was to scare people away from coming out.
So, on Thursday, before the election, armed thugs where everywhere, some of them were lodged in hotels. In hotel Carolina for instance and some were apprehended before the election. So, PDP adopted several strategies and one of them was voter intimidation in Enugu North for instance, to make sure that the turnout was reduced. The second was vote buying. Inducement and where they could, money was used. The other one was snatching of ballot boxes. Yet another one was bypass of BVAS, the mechanism of voting which the Independent National Electoral Commission introduced in order to have free and fair elections. All those things are going to unfold with time as we engaged in judicial process where we expect that these matters will become public knowledge.
Some people are saying that you lost because you were not the people’s choice. How will you react to this?
I was the people’s choice. I was in the primary with PDP. I was a clear choice and immediately the allegations of buying of governorship seat and all those manoeuvres were evident, I left PDP and joined LP. Our national leader, Peter Obi, told me that I performed excellently well. Under one year, we took LP from somewhere down to the apex of power where we have won two senatorial seats, won 14 out of 24 house assembly seats. It’s almost an impossible feat and we have done it and the governorship that we won clearly, everyone knows that we won it.
16 LGAs had come in and LP was winning with 11,000 votes before the connivance of INEC workers with PDP in the state. In connivance, they kept Nkanu East LGA, it came last and why should it come last, is it by alphabetical order or by distance? It’s even the closest to INEC office, so, why should it come last? It came in last because they were waiting for other results to come in to know what to manipulate and it was about the fourth electoral result sheet that was destroyed that day in order to compute their anomaly and yet they got it wrong. 14,000 voters were captured by BVAS and they returned 30,000.
This difference of 16, 000, where was it gotten from? When co-conspirators in Abuja and Enugu realised their folly, they halted the result collation for three days and shelved off some thousands and brought a new result sheet which they referred to as amended result sheet and gave PDP a lead of 3,000 over LP. Shelving should be at the polling booth where it was recorded, it didn’t happen like that. They shelved it at the highest level. Out of the 30,000 they cut down to 16,000, so, that was what happened. We won everywhere.
So, what criteria did they use in announcing that result?
After three days of suspending the announcement of the result in Enugu and the matter went to Abuja, and a result sheet was enveloped and given to Iwe, he said that he announced it as a man under authority. So, the matter had been taken out of his hands. Hence, the criteria was ‘order from above.’ The criteria was something that didn’t emanate from the will of Enugu people. It’s something we have to further interrogate if it came from money inducement or a seeming Nigerian determination that some part of Igbo land should not have a hand in electing their own governors or leaders, so, we have to still interrogate the source of that interruption, that pause.
So, there are issues which I don’t really know, the first one is the trigger for that pause which is one of the most mysterious so far in the history of electoral process in Nigeria. That pause should be interrogated. Who asked Iwe to stop collating in Enugu? Why did he stop? Is it money induced? Is it fear induced? Is it anti-Enugu induced? Those mysterious ways, shadowy ways in which the state works and the fate of the people are determined outside the people.
You said that in Nkanu East, 14,000 votes were captured by the BVAS. How did they come about the 16,000 that was recorded for PDP?
What I know is that at the point when there were protests, collation was suspended, all the relevant officers of REC were summoned and in three days, they returned and gave an envelope to the returning officer which he said he announced as someone under authority. I think in Abuja, they did their magic and cut the figure from 30,000 to 16,000. No agent from the Labour Party was in that meeting where Festus Okoye and others met. I understand that there was a meeting and readjustment of figures and it was done between Festus Okoye and Ken, who is the INEC officer for the Southeast, amongst others. They brought it from 30,000 to 16,000 and then gave PDP a lead of 3,000 ahead of the LP. How it was made, I can’t say and I have not been informed till now.
You were advised to go to court if you are not satisfied with the result. Do you trust our judicial system?
We have gone to court just the way they asked us to do. Go to court has become the new mantra and new cynicism in Nigeria. When those who have failed in what they ought to do, who bracingly failed to do what they had to rightly do, those who perverted the system, they say ‘go to court.’ That’s the new mantra of cynicism in Nigeria and contempt for processes in Nigeria. Yes, I have accepted that challenge and gone to court in good faith. I understand what they mean by ‘go to court.’ It means ‘go there and waste your time; go there and spend your money. We will be sworn in and use the resources of the state against you: that is what ‘go to court’ means. It means that we have gotten this one anyhow and we will get that one too anyhow. We understand the nuances of ‘go to court.’ It’s the new sarcasm in Nigeria but we will survive all of that. I have taken their admonition and have gone to court and I have faith in the judicial system in Nigeria, I have faith in God and I have faith in Nigeria and I’m hopeful for a better outcome.
The Igbo people have several adages that subscribe the need for change. The Igbo people say that you don’t stay at a place to watch a masquerade, you have to move around. They also say that when you lie on a bed, you have to turn and move around. They also say that it is only when a woman marries two husbands that she will know the better one or when a man marries two wives that he will know the better one. So, Igbo subscribe to change. So the fact that PDP has been in power since 1999 is enough and offensive to the ideology of the Igbo people. They believe in dynamism, in change, so, as far as I’m concerned, PDP has outlived its usefulness and its activities in the runoff to the election has offended a lot of people, especially, to the fact that the presidential ticket was denied to the southern Nigeria, that is enough to make people move away from PDP.
PDP has outlived its usefulness for power in Igbo land and we can see everywhere. In Abia, Ebonyi, Imo, Anambra PDP is long gone. In Enugu, they basically see it as a meal ticket but people who are driven by principles in their polity have moved away from PDP to LP, APC, APGA or have gone quiet with their lives. So, people who are in PDP and think PDP is still out there are just like those in the top deck of a sinking ship. Ice-berg has compromised the bottom and they don’t even know. For a long time, PDP has been sinking in performance, in public expectation, in their response to the expectation of the Igbo people with regards to the presidency. So, PDP was already dying gradually before the impetus of Labour came, the reformed electoral process came and impetus of the reformed electoral system will perform optimally, so, PDP is not there anymore and what is left there is the carcass. All the arms and legs of the party have been amputated.
Credit: The Nation.
