Alphonsus Nweze
A foremost Civil Society activist, Nze Emeka Umeagbalasi has warned those who are tinkering with the idea of replicating what happened in Imo State Governorship election where the person who came distant fourth was declared the governor by the Supreme Court to desist from the idea because it will not work in the state.
Umeagbalasi who is the chairman of Board of Trustees (BoT) of International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), said in an interview that the fears many Anambra people have was not out of place, given the scenario already playing out.
He said some politicians play god, thinking that they were the owners of this country, including determining who becomes what in the country.
“If you have carefully watched what has been going on within the context of the level of electioneering,, you will find out that your suggestion is not out of context.
“The seed is being sowed, whereby some people have litigations, frivolous litigations, granting of exparte order, forum shopping and what have you. These litigations have been flying from left, right, centre. So what it means is that they don’t want to play by the rules. They are looking for loopholes so as to get INEC to instal them as governor” said the activist.
He continued “: They want court to instal them as governor just as it was done in Imo State but Anambra is blessed with very vibrant and robust democratic forces and they are still around here. They are very much around .That is why we have started getting involved in their programmes”.
He said they monitored the primaries, the court litigaions and at the same time they are monitoring the electioneering.
Umeagbalasi said looking closely how some political parties conducted their primaries, it left much to be desired given outrageous figures that was manufactured even when no person voted in those primaries.
“You will notice the whole thing is suspicious. Suspicious in the sense that if care is not taken, if they are not well checkmated, they are experimenting what they are going to eventually do but we are not going to allow them.
” A situation where a governorship candidate was said to have got over 230, 000 votes during the primary speaks volumes” he said.
He said they have established how that figure was arrived at, stressing that what happened was that some people in the wards were given booklets to fill ahead of the primary and they came out with that outrageous figure.
Umeagbalasi said what this alarming figure means was that we, the people of the state must be alert because they are going somewhere.
He said what happened in Imo State was that they got some people to sign caliphate agreement, then some people in the Judiciary took over the role of INEC, organised their own election, collated the result and announced it, declared the winner and installed the governor.
But all the things they did in Imo State, he said, would not happen in Anambra State.
“Anambra State is not going to be like Imo State. We are going to fight. Every candidate should go and sell his manifestoes to the people.
We expect nothing less than free, fair, popular and credible election in Anambra State. Anybody thinking that he is going to repeat what they did in Imo or Zamfara here is joking. We want all the political parties to participate. We don’t want anybody to be disqualified on frivolous ground or technical ground” said Umeagbalasi who was former chairman of Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) in Anambra State.
