Ngige Details How INEC Rigged Anambra Guber Election

The All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in last Saturday’s 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.