“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.”
—Napoleon Bonapart
By Cosmas Omegoh
Labour Party candidate, Mr Peter Gregory Obi, is unhappy with the outcome of the presidential election held on February 25.
Obi began voicing his displeasure with the election long hours before Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared the winner of the contest.
As the results were trickling in, Obi pointed to suspected glitches he claimed had affected the integrity of the polls.
He, therefore, vowed his determination to challenge the eventual outcome of the election in court.
The former Anambra State governor and later the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, then approached the presidential election petition tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja.
Both candidates sought the permission of the court to inspect the election materials especially the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine.
That would help them in their drive to claim their mandate, they believe.
Obi’s counsel, Onyechi Ikpeazu, argued that from the BVAS, they needed to extract the authentic results from various polling units.
Ikpeazu said it was necessary for them to conduct a physical inspection on the BVAS, adding that doing so would help them determine that all the information therein were intact. He said it was necessary “restraining the 1st respondent (INEC) from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the due inspection is conducted and certified true copies (CTC) of them issued.”
But counsel to INEC, Tanimu Inuwa, urged the court to dismiss the Labour Party prayer, contending that not doing so would affect the commission’s preparations and preparedness for the governorship and state assembly elections.
Then in a swift move, INEC on March 4, filed a motion praying the court to vary the order which stopped it from tampering with the BVAS, claiming it needed to reconfigure the machine to enable it conduct the next elections.
Last Wednesday, March 8, a three-member Court of Appeal panel led by Joseph Ikyegh, held that failing to grant INEC’s request would hamper the conduct of the next elections.
It was a ruling that divided opinions.
Some people hailed the decision, maintaining that granting Obi’s request would derail the polls. That INEC would have been forced to cancel the elections.
On the flip side, some Nigerians berated INEC for squandering the people’s goodwill, accusing it of being more partisan than an umpire. Some insisted the commission was colluding with politicians to ensure that the people’s wishes were subverted. They said INEC’s decision to reconfigure the BVAS was a deliberate plan to destroy information in it. Some added that INEC’s decision to approach the court was a ploy to shop for its imprimatur, insisting it was religiously executing a grand plot to rig the elections.
Till this moment, some analysts are resolute the last elections ended “shambolic.” They demand that INEC and the winner of the presidential poll, Tinubu, needed to explain to the court and the watching world in details how the presidential election was won and lost. They claimed that INEC’s “antics” with the BVAS determined the eventual outcome of February 25 polls whose transparency is now being questioned.
Obi had alleged that reports from his party’s fieldsmen, some concerned citizens, as well as local and international election observers suggested that the vote management process was tampered with. Thus the elections fell below the minimum threshold set by INEC itself. He is accusing INEC of failing to use its own guideline for the elections, and that must be called to question.
At the moment, the deployment of the BVAS machine remains the heart of the matter.
INEC had emphatically promised it would use technology to cut back on the perennial electoral malpractices that characterise its elections. And by saying so, it raised the hope and expectations of many, mostly the youths who yearned for a sweeping change of the old order which had entrenched misery and corruption of gargantuan proportion in the land.
Till this moment, INEC’s claim that the BVAS machine malfunctioned in many areas like Lagos is not sitting well with many election observers.
The commission further fueled people’s suspicion that it had become partisan when it claimed it must reconfigure its controversial BVAS before it could conduct the next elections.
Just as the court was granting it conditional permission to tamper with the said BVAS last Wednesday, in the dead of the night, it announced a postponement of the elections scheduled for yesterday. That left Nigerians picking what to believe about INEC as constituted and its elections.
In the days ahead, ferocious fireworks are sure to characterise the judicial space.
Obi, it was learnt, had assembled a team of legal experts, the same for Tinubu and Atiku. The trio will square off in yet another ground-breaking legal contest to determine who won and lost the presidential election.
Obi comes through as a man of destiny.
Millions of his admirers mostly the youths – the Obidients – believe in him. They see in him hope, courage and reason to believe in Nigeria and a Nigeria they wish for. They see him as one in pole position to change the face of things, and indeed he is already doing so.
Left to many, Obi has become both an enigma, and the enigmatic. His switch to the Labour Party had triggered a political tsunami across the land. His followers, the Obi-dients, count on him as the man with the balls to cause a rebirth. That comes each time they listen to him sermonising that “a new Nigeria is possible.”
A veteran of many political wars, Obi served as two-term governor of Anambra State, a feat that didn’t come as easily as children break biscuit.
Obi in 2003, on the platform of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), contested against Dr Chris Ngige then of the PDP for Anambra State governorship. But INEC gave victory to the PDP.
Obi, suspecting he won the election, fought a long-drawn battle to reclaim his mandate. In 2006, the court upturned Ngige’s victory and declared Obi winner. He began serving as governor in March 2006.
He was impeached in November the same year by the state House of Assembly. But his removal was reversed by the court which reinstated him to office in February 2007.
Obi was again removed as governor in 2007 after the Anambra State governorship election. But like a cat with nine lives, the judiciary again came to his rescue, declaring that he was constitutionally entitled to finish his full four-year term. After four years in office, he was re-elected governor in 2010 for a second term.