By: Chinedu Ekeke:<\/p>\n
I have read the judgement of the learned justices of the Appeal Court and
\ncan confirm that it is flawless. But the rented protesters, including
\nthose who contracted them, hadn\u2019t read a line of the judgement they were
\nprotesting. One then wonders why a people who have the option of appealing
\nat the Supreme Court will take to intimidation and blackmail. Do they
\nintend to instigate violence as a tool to sway the justices of the Supreme
\nCourt to their cause?
\nFor the avoidance of doubt, let me summarise the reason for the judgment.
\nThe Appeal Court\u2019s argument is that INEC, which was defending its
\ndeclaration of Ikpeazu as Abia governor in the suit, was the same body
\nwhich presented to the Election Petition Tribunal with evidence of
\naccreditation in the election.
\nThe INEC official who was subpoenaed by the tribunal said the
\naccreditation report she brought was conclusive, and that every
\naccreditation that took place in that election was captured in that
\ndocument. When this witness said these, Ikpeazu\u2019s lawyers did not
\ncross-examine her to fault her claim.
\nAnd in law, once you don\u2019t fault a witnesses\u2019 claim with
\ncross-examination, you have agreed with her testimony. It was based on
\nthat evidence which Ikpeazu\u2019s lawyers acquiesced to with their silence
\nthat the Appeal Court judges established a case of over-voting in some
\nareas in the election.
\nNow, here are the figures. Accreditation in those areas, according to
\nINEC accreditation report was 93,369.
\nNumber of votes from those areas was 160,252.
\nThe unanswered question then became how 93,369 people manufactured
\n160,252 votes. It was evident that people sat in their living rooms and
\nmanufactured election results and then allocated votes to candidates as
\nthey wished.
\nBecause voting can only be exercised by those who went through
\naccreditation, the learned justices determined that the results from
\nthose areas were concocted, fictitious and fabricated. The votes are
\nunlawful. And our laws have it settled, that when over-voting is
\nestablished, the election is nullified and voided. A null and void action
\nis without validity, it lacks force of law.
\nAs at the time the election held, it had already produced a clear winner
\nin Alex Otti. The learned justices then held that there would only be a
\nneed to call for a rerun if there was no clear winner. Alex Otti met the
\nconstitutionally required 25% of votes cast in two-third local
\ngovernments of the state, as well as garnered majority of votes cast.
\nIn all the noise I\u2019ve heard from the custodians of a stolen mandate and
\ntheir cheerleaders, none has boasted of having won the April election.
\nListen to the arguments, they all have implicitly owned up to having
\nrigged. And rather than plead that we don\u2019t jail them, they are pushing
\nfor a rerun, as if robbing Abians of their mandate wasn\u2019t bad enough.
\nAlthough their arguments have majorly come off as incoherent, yet I\u2019ll
\ntry to interrogate some of the falsehood they\u2019ve been selling to the
\nworld:
\nThat the cancellation of the lawful results will be a disenfranchisement
\nto voters in those parts of the state. Well, every declaration on
\nelection matters by any court or even INEC disenfranchises people.
\nThere\u2019s no way every registered voter will vote in an election.
\nThe declaration of the appellate court was to achieve punitive ends. It
\nwas meant to discourage election rigging in the future as declaring a
\nrerun will empower a vote rigger who, having stolen another man\u2019s mandate
\nand having used same to appropriate the state\u2019s resources, now seeks to
\nbenefit from his robbery.
\nAware that he was never the winner of the election and knowing there\u2019s a
\nchance the courts will sack him, a beneficiary of electoral theft would
\nnaturally go populist, while his lawyers at the same time labour to lure
\nthe courts into conceding him a rerun. That is the game of Abia PDP which
\nall lovers of justice should condemn.
\nThat the disenfranchised people in those areas are over 350,000 in
\nnumber. This is laughable, because first, I heard Mr A.C.B Agbazuere, the
\nstate\u2019s Commissioner for Information say on Channels TV that the number
\nof disenfranchised people was 200,000; later Charles Ajunwa, former S.A.
\nto immediate past governor T.A.Orji published in This Day newspaper that
\nthe disenfranchised people were over 150,000.
\nFinally I heard Eziuche Ubani, another Commissioner in the state claim on
\nRay Power that the number being disenfranchised was 350,000. For them,
\ndepending on the speaker\u2019s level of comfort with falsehood, the more the
\nnumber is exaggerated, the more they stand a chance of winning public
\nsympathy.
\nTo puncture this claim, we will need to know how many people voted in
\nAbia during the 2015 presidential election. First, all core Igbo states
\nwere hugely supportive of President Goodluck Jonathan. Secondly, his
\nwife, Patience grew up in Umuahia since her own mother hailed from there.
\nIt therefore stands to reason that Abians came out en masse to give
\nJonathan their votes; yet he got only 368,303 votes while Muhammadu
\nBuhari got 13, 394. The total was about 381,700 votes. This is the true
\nvoting strength of Abia state, not the over-bloated pre-Card Reader
\nfigures bandied around by Abia PDP.
\nNow, Abia has 17 Local Governments. If Only 3 local governments have more
\nthan 350,000 votes as the PDP claims, where was the votes from the rest
\n14 local governments including Aba North and South, Ohafia and Bende all
\nof which have the highest voting strength? How come President Jonathan,
\nin spite of the love Abians have for him, could only poll 368, 303 votes?
\nYou see, no matter how fast falsehood sprints, truth will overtake it at
\na point.
\nThat accreditation of voters was not with Card Reader alone. This
\nargument was advanced by the noisy lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, in a bid to
\nflaw the appeal court judgement. It is not certain that Mr Ozekhome was
\non earth when the governorship elections held in Nigeria. If he were
\nhere, he wouldn\u2019t have boldly made that statement on national television
\nwithout any scruples.
\nI will assume the lawyer was out in space exploring novel areas in
\nelectoral jurisprudence when INEC issued a guideline for the governorship
\nelections, insisting that ONLY card readers would be used for
\naccreditation. INEC went further to insist that if any card reader failed
\nat any polling unit, the device would be replaced, and if the replaced
\none failed again, the election would be postponed to the next day so
\nanother card reader would be brought for accreditation.
\nThat way, INEC made it impossible for anybody to write fake results under
\nthe guise of card readers not functioning well. It is worth repeating to
\nMike Ozekhome that INEC gave no room for manual accreditation.
\nSo it is evident that the learned justices of the appellate court were
\nright to decide the matter on the strength of the evidence by INEC which
\ngave the concluded accreditation figures in the areas where unlawful
\nvotes were exorcised.
\nThat the justices of the Appeal Court should have called for a rerun. Of
\ncourse, Alex Otti will win Okezie Ikpeazu any day in Abia state, but does
\nit serve the course of justice that someone who won election be made to
\ngo through another round of elections while the person who stole his
\nmandate is allowed to benefit from his crime? At what point do we as a
\nsociety put a stop to incentivizing crimes?
\nIn any case, the learned justices of the appeal court unanimously stated
\nthat \u2018\u2019ordering a fresh election will only arise where a clear winner did
\nnot emerge after the deduction of the illegal votes.\u2019\u2019
\nThere was a clear winner, and he should be allowed to exercise his
\nmandate. Those who disagree with the judgement should face the court, not
\nthe streets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Chinedu Ekeke: I have read the judgement of the learned justices of the Appeal Court and can confirm that it is flawless. But the rented protesters, including those who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\n