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ike thousands of Abia citizens resident in diaspora I have never been involved in politics and have never belonged to any political party. The extent of my limited proximity and association with politicians was way back in the 80's when as a radio correspondent I covered, wrote and produced a program called "From The Assembly" on behalf of the now defunct Imo Broadcasting Service. Next was as an assistant to the late Ikemba, Chief Emeka Ojukwu after his political romance with the NPN. As a student at the University of Benin, the closest I got to getting involved in any electoral process was my election as a member of the student Union electoral commission. Fast forward to the summer of 2014 and all that changed when I was privileged to hear Dr Alex Otti address a cross section of Abia residents in Queens, New York. For that one brief moment the entire political universe changed for me. I suddenly got bitten by the political bug and instead of being an armchair analyst I decided it was time to get involved. To say I was impressed and mesmerized by the personality, depth of knowledge, antecedents and management experience of Dr Otti is an understatement. There and then I resolved to volunteer for his nascent campaign and consequently sent him an e-mail stating my intentions to which he graciously replied to.
My first act of active campaign involvement was to write an article titled 'Alex Otti: The man Of The Hour" which received favorable and critical reviews .Ever since that first article I have written a few others extolling the qualities of this man and urging our people to support and vote for him. Having done the little I was capable of doing from the comfort of my living room here in far away New York, I thought I could do more by travelling to Nigeria and to my home state of Abia to lend a helping hand for whatever it is worth. Like many others from diaspora who took time off from their jobs and their families to make the trip home, people like Ejindu, Leon Ibeka, Dr Mike Ukoha, Ms odinakachi, Ada Abia, Samuel Igwe Obinna who came down from London and many others whose names do not immediately come to mind, we did so 'con amore' because of our belief in in the cause, in Dr Alex, his political morality, his management skills and his ability to bring about the change we all hoped for in Abia state.
For me personally it was important that I travel to Abia to see of what possible assistance I could be to the campaign, fully humbled and mortified by the conviction that the creator has gifted me with some degree of intelligence and a certain talent almost in vain, having not done anything to benefit mankind with it, hence I believe everyone of us is put on this earth to make manifest the glory of God and to put to good use whatever talent the almighty has bestowed on us with the goal in life being to see not what we can make of it but rather what it can make of us. So my trip to Abia, other than just a journey of self discovery was also in response to the saying that "democracy is not a spectator sport, hence it requires one's participation'. However on getting to Abia state after a few days in lagos, no language can describe the desolation of my heart, when I saw the condition of the state, especially the state capital of Umuahia which in my opinion is nothing short of a glorified village not fit to be called a state capital. The decaying infrastructures or absence therein, the piles of gabbage on the side walks, the chaotic traffic and driving hazards and even more annoying the cut out cardboard pictures and posters of the despot called T A Orji in every road junction with the caption "OCHENDO" emblazoned all over the place, all reminiscent of Russia's Stalin.
Then I travelled to Aba, hoping to reconnect with the city of my youth and was for one brief moment paralyzed by the feeling of shock and awe by what I saw. The Enyimba City I found was a decaying metropolis waiting for an epidemic to happen. No picture I had seen on facebook or read about prepared me adequately for what I saw. The Aba I grew up in as a kid in the 70's was worse than it was 40 years ago. It is as if while other cities had moved on time had stood still for this town. The Aba I had hoped to reconnect with was more than just an eyesore, it was more like the valley of the dead, wasted, desolate and abandoned. Which begs the question, how can a duly elected governor do his to his people? How could he criminally neglect a city like Aba with all its economic and financial potential? A city if properly rehabilitated and managed could generate enough financial capital for the development of the rest of the state. It is against this backdrop that I fully came to appreciate and understand the people's desire for change and their warm embrace of Dr Alex Otti as the long awaited messiah who was going to deliver them from Abia's pharaoh and why they voted so overwhelmingly and enthusiastically for him only to watch their mandate stolen by the unscrupulous Ochendo and his team of kleptocrats.
Which brings me to the 2015 Abia elections. In my opinion what transpired in Abia state was not an election, but a travesty. it was broad day electoral robbery of the most sophisticated scale ever perpetrated by a political party. what the governor and the PDP did was tantamount to pushing rigging beyond the limits of good taste. It was the worst expression of reality and revisionist history, having seen it happen earlier but in a more modest scale during the presidential elections. It has become very apparent that while the Alex Otti campaign was busy traversing the length and breath of the state, explaining their plans for the future in various rallies and town hall meetings the Ikpeazu campaign was busy of another sort, perfecting their rigging plans with the full complicity and connivance of INEC officials. To actualize their plans they bribed and threatened anyone associated with conducting the elections, which included, civil servants, Temporary Local Govt Chairmen, youth corpers, and the Police .A minister of state in the defense ministry, rtd colonel Austin Akobundu moved his office from Abuja to the presidential lodge in Umuahia just to lend a helping hand.
Even though the rigging of the Abia elections was quite obvious and glaring for all to see, it has now become very clear and apparent that INEC officials in Abia were knee deep in all the fraudulent electoral malpractices that took place in the state and the recent spate of arrests of INEC officials in the state is proof positive of the extent of their complicity. The resident commissioner was so blind to the happenings in her office to the point where I believe she is the type who will not be able find a rattlesnake in a paper bag, hence even her secretary was also deeply compromised and she did not know it. It is now public knowledge how the election was stolen, hence I will not labor you with the details. In a nutshell what the governor and the PDP did was to use the temporary local Government Council chairman as tools, and their offices as collation centers to falsify election results. INEC collation officers were paid to make themselves invisible during the collation exercises thereby giving the temporary local government chairmen a field day changing the voting figures.. Card readers were tampered with to make them unworkable in certain polling areas like Obingwa and Ossisioma. Voting cards were stolen and thumb printed. Youth Corpers and permanent secretaries were mobilized and paid handsomely to deliver their polling stations, hence one Youth Corper Ms Temitope is reported to have confessed to receiving 80,000 Naira for her role in the rigging exercise. Thugs were hired to disrupt polling stations and to facilitate the snatching of ballot boxes. Even with all these they still were able to successfully execute their coup de Grace which was the falsification of the results from Obingwa ,Ossisioma and Isiala Ngwa north local governments areas where they claim to have received 82, 240, 42, 123 and 27,956 votes respectively. It is absolutely impractical for the PDP to be able to able to garner 60% of their votes from 3 local government councils out of 17? It does not matter how you look at it, any discerning mind will know that something does not smell right or add up. It is now very obvious that the INEC decision to cancel the results from these three local Government councils before it was reversed due to the meddling of the governor was the right decision all along.
APRIL 11 ABIA GUBERNATORIAL RESULT SHEET
Do not take my word for it. Just look at the table above and see for yourself if the figures add up. Can anyone explain to me how a small local government area like Obingwa with a registered voters list of 98,085 be able to accredit 88,917 voters between 7am and 1pm with the unreliable card readers, and still be able to get 88,008 people to vote within the next 6 hours, whereas Aba north with a registered list of 174,549 ,double that of Obingwa comparatively was not be able to perform the same feat. How plausible is that, Ossisioma Local Government area with a registered voters list of 62,340 was able to accredit more than half this number and still unbelievably be able to accommodate the voting of 44, 283 people out of an accredited number of 44, 898 voters. Meanwhile Aba and South North LGA's,, two major strongholds of Alex Otti, both of which as the chart shows combined together could not match the total figures from Obingwa alone, yet both local government areas have a combined registered voters list of over 300,000 ie 200, 000 more registered voters than Obingwa. It is quite obvious from the above figures that without the rigged figures from these three areas Dr Alex Otti clearly won the election. It is also ridiculous for anyone to imagine that Alex Otti was only able to garner less than 4,000 votes from 2 of these local government areas. The truth of the matter is that the extent of rigging by the PDP was not only massive but obscene and brazen. So brazen that they in their haste to submit their fake result mistakenly stamped the Obingwa result sheet with Umuahia INEC official stamp. Yet INEC officials deliberately and conveniently ignored this blunder in accepting the results as well as the fact that no actual election really took place in Obingwa , hence the reported attempt by PDP agents to burn down the INEC office in Obingwa and only last week their attempt to tamper and reconfigure 7 stolen card readers to make it appear as if they were actually used in Obingwa leading to 8 arrests.
To the extent that I and many other campaign workers who were in the field and those in the situation room could have done anything to prevent what happened will be an understatement. Despite criticisms from some who felt more should have been done to mitigate the extent of rigging that occurred, I would say the campaign workers for the Otti campaign did their best under the circumstance.
Granted that APGA as a party before Dr Otti joined it had no appreciable presence or structure in the state, they still performed wonderfully well and actually won the election.
For me personally and for millions of Abians, Sunday, April 28 will forever remain a day in infamy. It is a day many well meaning Abians will never forget as they listened to the announcement of Ikpeazu as the winner in the governorship elelction. As we left Dr Otti's residence to his campaign headquarters in Umuahia to thank his campaign workers you could see the sad faces and dejected look among passersby of the average Abian on the street. People were crying and blaming God for not hearing their prayers for change. You could sense their pain, their feeling of rejection, disappointment and even outrage. It was as if the entire state was in mourning and traumatized by the loss. A few days later as I left Abia back to lagos enroute to New York, I still felt angry that a rigging exercise of such magnitude could be allowed to take place with no possible consequence on the perpetrators. I felt sorry for the citizenry, for my friends, old classmates, relatives and former colleagues, some of whom are retired and yet to be paid their pensions. My young nephews and cousins who after graduating from college cannot find jobs. To think that their suffering and deprivations will continue should Ikpeazu be sworn in as Governor was a proposition I did not want to contemplate, hence I was relieved when Dr Otti informed us he was going to reclaim his victory at the tribunal.
Looking back at that election is like looking through a telescope of dreams. dreams that loomed so large on the other side of the telescope but which turned out to be fleeting. With the loss I could not help but think about the sanguine expectations of the people, and their hope for change and for a better future for their children, all now merged in an abyss of disappointment. It is pertinent to point out however that on that sunday morning of April 29 as the results trickled in Dr Otti was an embodiment of strength, courage, resolve and determination. He gave those of us around him hope which according to Napoleon is the best attribute of a leader. He even sat down and had breakfast with most of the campaign workers at his residence, during which he thanked them for their efforts. For me personally, being acknowledged by him as he did many others for the little we did made the trip worthwhile for me even though I was saddened by the temporary loss.
Even though the moment and exercise that was the election is gone, I believe we must have a sustained political involvement in the tribunal process. All those who have any evidence, oral, written or video recording of the rigging exercise must endeavor to make it available to the Otti campaign. The history of the world tells us that; immoral means will never intercept good ends'. There is no doubt in my mind that the results will be reversed in Dr Otti's favor when the tribunal is done with it, because the evidence is not only overwhelming but convincing.. And on that day when victory is announced by the tribunal the mystic chords of the people's memory will yet swell the chorus of Abia state, when again touched by the better angels of our future, they will finally realize that God did hear their prayers for deliverance.
Did I learn anything from this trip and from the experience. Yes I Did. I learnt that in Nigerian politics you cannot expect your opponent to treat you fairly and to respect the rules just because you have good intentions. It is more akin to expecting the bull not to charge at you because you are a vegetarian. I also learnt that morality and ethics have no place in Nigerian politics and that real life is about reacting quickly to the opportunities at hand and not the opportunity you envisioned. There is no doubt that Dr Otti wanted and did run a clean and issue based campaign, whereas his opponent had a different game plan. There are some people who are of the opinion that he should have attempted to rig the elections in the areas where he had a lot of support by inflating the figures. These people are of the machiavelian school of thought which is that "the end justifies the means". Even though I do not subscribe to that I also have come to learn that in the game of politics, nothing is promised and that victory is not given or granted.
As we await the good news from the tribunal now sitting in Umuahia, it is my sincere wish that the incoming Federal administration will investigate or set up an enquiry about events in Abia state during the last 8 years, including the conduct of the 2015 elections. The outgoing governor in my opinion is the most unmitigated scoundrel I've ever known. I also think that if he had lived in the time of our savior, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of apostles, because he did not only betray his Ibeku, Umuahia kinsmen but also the entire Igbo race. He took corruption and election rigging to a higher realm, while raising the bar on governmental incompetence, public graft and abuse of power. Blinded by self righteousness and cloaked in his full armor of criminal sentiments, he failed to see the error of his ways or that of his son. Despite all the hue and cry in the state it is mind boggling to explain the defeaning silence by most of our Abia elites. People like retd Commodore Ndubuisi kanu, General Ike Nwachukwu, Gen Ihejirika, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, kalu Idika kalu and a host of others conveniently refused to raise their voices in condemnation of happenings in the state, which makes me wonder whether they were all threatened into submission and silence or bought over. Meanwhile while they luxuriated in the comfort of their castles, retd colonel Austin Akobundu, barely one month into his appointment as Minister of state in the defense ministry was having a field day harassing voters with his security detail for the PDP.
In conclusion I will implore the good people of Abia to keep hope alive and be ready to protest peacefully if the tribunal does not overturn the result. As martin Luther King once said, "protest against an unjust law is not a departure from democracy but rather absolutely essential to it.' It is my belief that protests to arouse the consciousness of the people against injustice is in reality an expression of the highest respect for the law, hence non cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperating with good. But it must be done peacefully. I do most sincerely hope there will not be need for one .In the words of George Braque I will conclude by saying 'truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented', and whenever you try to stretch the truth, it snaps back at you.
