Few hours to the governorship primary election conducted by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Enugu State, all seemed to be working well. The reported peace deal among members of the party appeared to be yielding fruitful results.
However, the meeting called by the electoral committee to interface with the aspirants changed the scheme of things. In attendance were Senator Ayogu Eze, Hon Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, Hon Eugene Odo, Dr Sam Onyishi, Mr Chinedu Onu, Prof Onyeke A Onyeke and Chief Anayo Onwuegbu.
DAILY POST correspondent, who was at the venue of the meeting reports that after the opening prayer by Ikeje Asogwa, Chairman of the PDP’s guber primary committee His Highness, Asara A. Asara in his opening remarks said: “We have called this meeting to interface with you, know you and your areas of concerns, to see if we can agree on some issues bothering you.
“This is to enable us have a free and fair exercise that will enable the PDP retain the state during the election. We are here principally to conduct this exercise today and it will be good we understand ourselves before going to the field”.
Then Anayo Onwuegbu who first to speak thus: “Mr Chairman sir, I don’t think it is necessary for me to continue in this meeting having indicated my willingness earlier to step down in the interest of peace and overall good of our great party. Having consulted widely with my supporters and stakeholders, I have decided to withdraw from the race and to be permitted to step aside from this meeting”.
Then Senator Ayogu Eze followed suit: “Mr Chairman, I have a complaint to make bordering on what is going on with the accreditation process where elected delegates who should be part of today’s process are not given accreditation most especially people from Enugu north and Enugu east senatorial zone not Enugu west.
“The people from Enugu north and Enugu east were turned back but I
think the people from Enugu west, they were allowed to do accreditation. I did not keep the list of the people from Enugu west but I found out that the delegates from Enugu West elected on November 1, were able to do their accreditation and were allowed. The people from the two other zones (Enugu east and North) were told that their names were not on the list sent from Abuja. That is why; I want to see to cross check the list that you have to see whether it is the same list of delegates certified by the court from the November 1 ward congress. I won’t take your time, just to show you the areas of difference since we have come to agree on some issues”.
At that point, the chairman (Asara) interjected. “No we won’t be able to give you the list. But give us the list you have so that we can use it to cross check the one we have here. (Ayogu Eze went and gave him the list). The list giving to us by the national secretariat is what we are going to use to conduct the election. I just want to see the list he is complaining of. This one is the certified true copy from the court. What we have here is not what you have. What you have is a true certified copy of delegates list from the federal high court, Abuja, but it is not what we have here.”
Ayogu continued: “In that case, it will be difficult as a law abiding somebody; it is not possible for me as somebody who knows the process
of the law to go and submit myself to a process where my own delegates
who were duly elected were disenfranchised even before the start of the process. I want to put it on record in your presence that I will go to those duly elected delegates recognized by the courts and which the National executive of the party recognized as duly elected as the ones who can actually elect any candidate and anything outside that in my own opinion, is abuse of process of court and abuse of our law.
“I want to say here clearly that you won’t expect me in that venue where
you are going to do your own because, first I will be committing an illegality, I will be working into a booby trap knowing full well that my own delegates are disenfranchised, knowing that the result had already been decided even before the process had commenced. It is like knowing the result of the mathematical equation before you solve the problem. I want to thank you for being able to call this meeting, for giving us opportunity to express ourselves. I want also to put it on record sir that this is what I am going to do, to allow the lawful delegates to use their own initiatives to decide the candidates they want. This is what I am going to do, to allow the lawful delegates who emerged from the November 1 congress to decide who their candidate should be. They went through a process and now you unilaterally remove their name from the list. I am not blaming you because you are only appointed to do a job. I cannot blame you sir or any member of your panel.
“I need to say that as a law abiding citizen of Nigeria, that politics is not a do or die affair but you cannot as a result of wanting to grab power do unethical things that are not lawful. You can win an election but not at all cost. I am prepared to accept a result of an election where if i have lost in a transparent manner, I will embrace and accept it fair and square and walk away. If I don’t understand the process, I will insist that the right things should be done. I will seek permission to step aside but not like the other man who had stepped down because as far as I am concerned, I am still in the race”.
Samuel Maduka Onyishi took his turn and spoke on a similar note: “Some of my supporters who were duly part of the elections held on Sunday in Enugu West senatorial zone from Ezeagu local government, they voted for the person that won the senatorial election, were asked to go back today that they are not supposed to be part of today’s election.
“People from my own local government who also are part of the delegates were asked to go back that they are not part of the election. A situation where somebody in PDP in Enugu state is not qualified to vote for somebody in the House of Representatives election and that person is qualified to vote in the senatorial election for Ezeagu and today, the same person is not qualified to vote for somebody in the senatorial election and today, the person is no longer qualified to vote for somebody in the gubernatorial election, I think this is not good for democracy, it is selective
delegates. You select delegates that you want to vote for the House of Assembly, you select those that you don’t want to vote for another one, you keep mixing up.
“If somebody wakes up tomorrow and say let us see the list of delegates that voted in the House of Representatives election, and Senate in one local government and Governorship in another, there will be no uniformity; hence my appeal to the committee to take a second look so that we don’t end up creating problem for our great party, after all these process, because it will be difficult to convince people that we are actually being sincere with what we are doing. Some of my supporters have already written and myself as a person have written to through the office of the secretary of the committee over my case. As a party man, I have to make my case and listen to your reply after hearing from you. Because as party man, we have to make complaints, then listen to your reply after taking due
consultation. I cannot tell you here that I am not going to be part of what you are doing or not .
“As elders of the party, it is also one of your duties to make sure your children run elections fairly and come out with an acceptable result . All of us can still come together and make sure we support whoever that emerges to ensure that our great party comes out victories in the governorship election of Enugu state”.
On the same note, Prof Onyeke Onyeke, said: “My remarks will be brief and advisory because we are in a democracy where people take it as an abstract. Democracy is toiling with the lives of the people of Enugu state. Democracy is about the lives of the people of Enugu state. I want the aspirants themselves including my very self to know that anybody who takes a form to run for the governorship of Enugu state has something or many things good for the people of Enugu state.
“I want this message to be taking to the headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party because as we are talking now, I am sitting down here with two court cases and none being observed. The first one is that the chairman that was addressed as the state chairman is not recognized by the party and court. The man that was recognized as the chairman of the party in Enugu is Elder David Aja. I can’t see Elder Aja here, which means any exercise that is being carried out here without him is illegal, null and void.
“Secondly, the observation made by the Distinguished Senator is well taken; that decision is already being taken if the people that Enugu state people elected to participate in the gubernatorial primaries are not on the list that came from the national secretariat. We are yet to be advised that the decision of the court had been changed with respect to who our state chairman is. We are yet to be advised with respect to why a delegate will be qualified to elect candidates to our state House of Assembly, qualified to House of Representatives and Senate but that delegate is not qualified to elect candidate for the governorship election. That is inconsistency from the party and this is a party Prof Onyeke O. Onyeke has been part of in rejuvenating, rehabilitating and resuscitating to a point where we are today.
“I served Dr Nwodo, I served Dr Bamanga Tukur and for this to happen to
my own state, I will say that the people of Enugu state; the media is here with us and they are going to publish what is going on here and the PDP will not be better for it if they hear three out of the five contestants in Enugu state moved in droops with their supporters to another political party. It will not be good for the PDP. Let us learn lessons from the people of Imo state, let us learn lessons from Abia state, let us learn lessons from Anambra state where we are fighting to recover the PDP in these states. This kind of action is what causes loss of PDP in those states. It is when things are not done in a legal manner, in a moral manner that things like this happen. But Mr Chairman sir, as the last Speaker said, I will take a decision when you address us or on whether the people are accredited are people that the Enugu people elected or people selected by an illegal group of people because as far as I am concerned, Elder Aja needed to be here as the only authentic chairman of the PDP in Enugu that was recognized by the court and national leadership of our party.
Having heard the complaints from the aspirants, the chairman of the election panel, Asara, spoke thus: “I want to once again plead with you that our business here is to conduct the governorship primary of our party. Our mandate is to come to Enugu state and conduct primaries. We are just because we want to be democratic and that is why we said we want to interface with you so as to be able to know ourselves one on one before we move to the venue of the primaries.
“If there is a list that has been certified by the court, that list is not before us. If that list was given to us, we would have used it to conduct the primaries. That list is not before us. The list you have is a certified true copy of the list of the federal high court, Abuja but the list is not before us. So we will not be able to use that list to conduct the primary. What was given to us is the list we have here. We are not aware that people who voted in the House of Assembly, House of Representatives and Senate are not the people who will vote here today. So what is before us is to go
and conduct this election. But what I want to let you know is that PDP is a party that whichever way you look at it in organization and whatever stands better than any other party.
“As we finish this primary, there is another committee called appeals committee and you still have to go a step further to present the matter to the committee. So what I want to appeal to you is that not to say that we
will be moving out. One thing that I want to plead with you is that in this life God is the giver of power, gives authority. There is no human being that can give power to anybody and sometimes, one even know that he is the most qualified, the most favoured and they are being deprived and yet he allowed it. What God has for you is a better thing than this governorship we are trying to clamour. God has a reason for everything. I want to plead with you that the government of PDP is robust enough to accommodate our interest.
“After the governorship, there is this sense of belonging that my party has won. After one governor, another governor will come. Sullivan has been there and there is going to be another governor by May to take over. So, I want us to exercise some patients with the party as you go to the next level and I believe that your matter will be sorted out. When they finish you will be very happy. For this primary, you have to go on because we have no powers to listen to your grievances or issues.
“We have just one assignment and that is to go and conduct primaries and the document they gave to us which is the list of delegates is this one we have, we have the ballot papers, we have the list of contestants and result sheets. Those are the documents we have and they don’t give us anything of appeal or no appeal. I want to assure of one thing that all the remarks will be captured in our report to the national secretariat so that they will be in a better position to address your issues when the time comes. Your grievances or issues you raised will be captured in our reports. But I will advise that until you exhaust the party’s internal machinery before you take any decision. The list they gave to us is the one we are going to use to conduct the primaries. At least we have been able to do our part by interacting with you and I can assure you that if you bring your grievances, they will be looked into and the party will take their final decision. Having done that, I will advise you to stay put in PDP. The Imo people are not happy and are now struggling to capture it back. If they had allowed Ohakim to be there, by now they would have been taking about a new person.
“The old government is going and the new government is coming. You don’t know whether you are the next commissioner or Special Adviser or next Minister or Ambassadors or anything. Allowing the PDP to win is very reassuring because you know that there is nothing that will prevent us from winning at the national level. We should all strive hard to make the PDP retains Enugu state after this matter must have been sorted out”.
With this, the foundation was laid for paralled PDP primaries in Enugu State leading to the emergence of two candidates from the same party.
While Ayogu Eze emerged at one of the primaries, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was equally elected at the second primary. As it stands, it may take the court to decide the true candidate of the PDP in Enugu State.
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