By Onwuasoanya Fcc Jones

On Saturday the 25th April, in this year of elections 2015, Imolites across twenty three of twenty seven LGAs in the State, will be returning to the polls to complete a business they started on the 11th of this month. What is at stake as you may have been led to know are one hundred and forty four thousand and some few hundred precious votes. We are yet to be properly educated on the real statistics of those who have their Permanent Voters Cards within these areas, but I can bet you that more than ninety percent of those within these rerun poll areas have their permanent voters card safely tucked in and waiting to deploy it to crown whoever they choose as Imo’s Governor for the next four years.
Before I delve into a prognosis of the unknown, let me remind you that Imo is familiar with this path. The last governorship election held in Imo State was also inconclusive, hence, introducing a new word in our national political lexicon- because INEC was handicapped by the Constitutional provision which requires the electoral umpire to conduct an election into any of the elective positions, at least thirty days before the expected date of swearing in of the eventual winner. INEC, under this same Jega had to invent a new term for that election of May 6th that ushered in the incumbent Governor Rochas Okorocha. As supplementary as that election was, doubts still pervade the minds of many political analysts and watchers as to whether that election actually reflected the wishes of majority of voters, especially as an entire Oguta local government with over seventy thousand registered voters were denied the right to take a stand on who they want as their Governor. One thing we can take from what happened in 2011 is that whenever it comes to rerun elections, Imo people hardly have the final say on who takes the seat eventually. In 2011, Abuja was blackmailed into standing against the PDP, hence, ceding the governorship to the APGA, This time around, there are two strong Abujas who will play a role in who takes the spoils eventually; Buhari’s Abuja and Jonathan’s Abuja.
While Jonathan is the incumbent President, Buhari will be displacing him from Aso Villa come May 29th, and I am also afraid that Buhari and his APC have more control over the INEC than Jonathan and his PDP. While it is natural to think that Jonathan will side with his Party man and do whatever he can to ensure that his Party recovers Imo, it is not guaranteed. For a President who floats so carelessly on matters concerning his Party, even when he had something at stake, it may be foolhardy expecting him to go out of his way in trying to swing victory to his Party now that he has nothing at stake. General Buhari on his own part can be seen as a more committed and responsible Party man, but no one can guarantee his preference for his Party’s governorship candidate in Imo State, nor can anyone wager on the APC national leadership coming all out to ensure that Governor Okorocha is declared winner by the end of 25th April. There lies the crux of the matter; just like in 2011, whoever will win the governorship seat after April 25th’s rerun election will be a beneficiary of high level sabotage and political trade off. Who will that be?
Before we start crying for justice and fair play, we must not fail to take cognizance of the reality that the two candidates for whom this rerun election is being conducted were both caught pants down, stealing votes and indulging in all manners of electoral malpractices. The candidate who is presently enjoying some numerical advantage is the candidate whose rigging plans succeeded the most. With the many confirmed and unconfirmed reports of fraud and massive intimidation of voters coupled with violence associated with the election of April 11th, the best step INEC should have taken to restore the confidence of the electorate in the entire process would have been to cancel the entire exercise and begin afresh. But they dodge that by quoting a part of the Constitution which forbids them from cancelling election results once it has been announced.
With the APC being accused of intimidating some electoral officials into entering fictitious figures in fake result sheets, massive incidents of ballot box snatching and some result sheets that were meant for elections in parts of the North being used to write the results of some LGAs in Imo State, the INEC will find it difficult securing the confidence of majority of Imolites with its decision to go ahead with those results.
The truth is that none of the two candidates seem to be sure of getting the support of its top ranking leaders from Abuja. For the Deputy Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives who is the PDP’s governorship candidate for this election, some of those in his Party’s NWC and also the presidency may understandably decide to abandon him to whatever fate he gets, considering his roles in destabilizing the PDP, by first colluding with top APC leaders to distort the PDP’s zoning formula and secondly, being involved in every legislative efforts to frustrate President Jonathan’s programs and policies. Some people argue that had Chief Emeka Ihedioha and his fellow renegades in the House of Representatives accorded the President the necessary cooperation, President Jonathan’s popularity and acceptability wouldn’t have taken the kind of tragic nosedive that led to his ouster from power. That has not been proven. Also, the President may also feel reluctant to help, considering the fact that Emeka Ihedioha did not help him enough during the presidential poll. For a President who polled a handsome one point three million votes in 2011, it is disappointing that under Emeka Ihedioha’s leadership of the Party, the President could only manage a meagre five hundred and fifty nine thousand votes.
For the incumbent Governor and candidate of the APC in the election, it will be a difficult task convincing his fellow leaders in the APC, that he is not in the Party as a mole who will eventually sink the Party if he fails to get what he wants from the Party. Governor Rochas Okorocha holds an infamous record as the single Nigerian politician who has succeeded in sinking more political Parties than any other politician. Starting from his days as one of the original founders of the PDP, he vied for but failed to get the Party’s governorship ticket in 1998, he went away with all his supporters within the PDP and joined the ANPP, where he challenged General Buhari to the Party’s Presidential ticket. He left the Party before the presidential election and rejoined the PDP, where Obasanjo compensated him for destroying or at most reducing the influence of the ANPP, with a portfolio as the Special Adviser to President Obasanjo on inter Party affairs. Within this period, Okorocha threw in bundles of money into funding his own political Party, the Action Alliance, but before the 2007 elections, he had dumped his followers in the middle of the road and defected to the PDP, where he again vied for the Party’s presidential ticket (against the PDP’s understanding that the presidency be zoned to the North), as expected, he got less than ten percent of the votes cast at the Party’s national convention.
Two years before the 2011 elections, precisely in 2009, he set up a group called AGENDA 2015, making everyone think that he was preparing a political machinery to vie for the 2015 presidency. He remained a member of the PDP, and the PDP Governor, Chief Ikedi Ohakim appointed him as one of the members of the Board of Trustees of the New Face Organization; the former Governor’s political organization. Okorocha did not turn down the appointment, he rather made everyone think, he was seriously into it with the Governor, when he made a pledge of five million Naira to the New Face Organization when the former Governor launched the organization in Ideato South. It is unfortunate that Governor Okorocha reportedly refused to redeem this pledge. He joined the bandwagon of Abuja politicians who were desperate to snatch the Party’s structure from Ikedi Ohakim. When he did not succeed at securing the PDP Senatorial ticket for Orlu zone, he gate crashed into the All Progressives Grand Alliance, where he literally bought off their governorship ticket. having become Governor on the APGA platform, he began to scheme for the Party’s downfall. He went against the Party leadership to negotiate a merger with the now defunct ACN, CPC and ANPP. He went ahead to lampoon the APGA as a ‘mere cultural organization’ and led a massive campaign of lies and destruction against a Party that gave him the platform with which he got the governorship seat.
In the APC, he was appointed the Chairman of the Progressive Governor’s Forum. This forum under his leadership reportedly had a gentleman’s agreement that all the Governors would support General Muhammadu Buhari to get the APC presidential ticket, but he derailed from that agreement and went in the dark of the night to obtain the Party’s nomination and expression of interest forms to vie for the Party’s presidential ticket. He performed abysmally in the contest, but sowed bad blood within the Party members which took a lot of efforts to cleanse. The same Governor Okorocha has been going around town telling whoever cares to listen that General Buhari has promised to hand over power to him in 2019. This is obviously not the truth, but he is deliberately sowing bad blood within the Party to ensure he succeeds at crumbling the Party if he does not eventually have his way.
Those at the apex of the APC leadership will be doing their Party great favour if they take steps to ensure that Okorocha does not return as Governor. Okorocha’s return as Governor of Imo State will be more beneficial to the PDP than it will be to the APC, hence, the APC leadership will be doing itself a great favour if they move in to arrest the insurgence of the Imo Governor, by clipping his wings now, before he flies away with the Party’s flag and dumps it in the Atlantic Ocean.
For Emeka Ihedioha, there are so many other things working in his favour apart from the possibility that he might get help from his rival’s Party leaders. This rerun election isn’t a balanced one. Most of the polling booths where this election will be conducted are the strongholds of the PDP, hence, it will no longer be a surprise if the PDP candidate garners enough votes to clean out Okorocha’s seventy nine thousand advantage. Okorocha on his own part may have to depend on deploying his foot soldiers to the field to cause mayhem and scare potential voters away, so that the earlier result will be used in determining who is the actual winner, but I do not think the PDP will fold their hands and watch some hoodlums wreck their chances at the rerun election, their style of response will determine what manner of violence we may have to contend with in the election.
The APC in the State and Governor Okorocha’s government have left no one in doubt about their fears concerning this election. They have come out with separate statements denouncing the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Gabriel Adah whom they accused of being hell bent on advancing the PDP’s interest and skewing the rerun election to deny the incumbent Governor of victory. They have been made a ridiculous claim that the REC is a senior member of the PDP who recently served as a Speaker of the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly. Their protestations to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), demanding for the REC to be redeployed may have fallen on deaf ears may not fly eventually, but one can be sure that INEC will deploy a high powered team of the Commission’s high ranking officials to help Gabriel Adah in overseeing the rerun elections. This will surely not eradicate all chances of manipulations in the elections, but it will go a long way in checkmating the excesses of the two political Parties. Therefore, I expect a more credible election this time around than what we had in the past.
While it will be difficult for the PDP to upturn the advantage being enjoyed by the APC at the moment, I no longer think it is impossible to do so. If the APC does not succeed in stopping the election from holding in some or most areas as I understand they plan doing, then, Imo may get a new Governor-elect come April 25th or at most the 26th.