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Fraudulent Election
Malpractices
in Imo State of
Nigeria Election of President
By
Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu
16 April 2011
1. In
Abakuru, in Ohaji/Egbema/Oguta Local Government
Area polling station for the election of the President
of Nigeria, one Mr. Chidiebere Roland Nwaneshi, a
Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) Polling
agent challenged the Presiding officer who gave several
ballots to an individual PDP (current President Goodluck
Jonathan’s ruling party, PDP [People's
Democratic Party]) voter. He observed the same
people voting and thumb-printing repeatedly. He then
informed them that it was illegal to have the same
person vote over and over again.
a. There was
an observer present, an Anglican pastor by the name of
Rev. Victor Ndukwe from Abakuru who observed what was
going on. The CPC agent tried to get him to help stop
the voter fraud and intimidation going on and the pastor
did nothing. Then he now observed the INEC officer
there thumb-printing 85 times and signing each voter
registration card by himself. He informed the INEC
official by name of Chigozie (Stationed at the Abakuru
Station) that what he was doing was fraudulent.
b. The INEC
official kept thumb printing and refused to stop. The
CPC agent, Mr. Chidebere Nwaneshi then called on them
again to stop the ongoing malpractice. He also then
took from one of them a batch (12) of pre-signed and
stamped ballot papers as EVIDENCE. Upon seeing that the
CPC agent had physical evidence of Voter Fraud and
Multiple Voting by the same Individuals, the PDP
officials and INEC agent got angry and told the police
when they came that the CPC Agent had snatched the
ballot box.
Without allowing
him the opportunity to explain and defend himself, Mr.
Nwaneshi (CPC Agent) was thrown forcibly into a Police
vehicle and sent to jail and kept there overnight.
Even, after CPC officials came to bail him out, the
police refused and repeatedly beat him throughout the
night when he would not sign the FORGED confession they
wrote. His arrest and detention was authorized by the
PDP Government appointed Local Government Area Chairman
and he was refused bail despite all entreaties by CPC
state party officials.
c. The
following morning, CPC officials then went to see the
Commissioner of Police who had heard the story and he
was also given the “Evidence,” the ballot papers. The
Commissioner of Police then authorized the release of
the CPC Agent on bail saying that his story was very
convincing and gave instructions for the DPO and all
other named accomplices be brought to Owerri for further
investigation. Names of people who voted repeatedly
include (according to the CPC Agent) Godson Amuchie, Sebastian
Obichere, Metu Onyeneri, Kyrian Nwakuna, and Obichere
Okechukwu.
2. CPC is
asking for these elections in Imo State to be cancelled
as this election was marred by voter fraud,
intimidation, double voting, thumb printing by electoral
officers who should have been insuring a free and fair
election. Democracy means ensuring that citizens are
not disenfranchised and that voting is not done
illegally by multiple voting by the same people or
coercion of voters by some security agents and
recalcitrant INEC officials some of whom thumb-print 85
times because they see voting and victory as “now their
own project and no longer that of [the candidate] as
they will do their best to ensure victory at the polls.”
3. In
several polling booths in Owerri zone like booths 001
and 002 at Ihiagwa, site of the
Federal University of Technology, votes for CPC were
not recorded and several ballot papers showing a vote
for CPC were torn and destroyed.
4. At Irete
polling booth votes for CPC were equally not recorded
and others were torn. This was the situation in Agbala
and Naze and these incidents were severally reported to
the police to no avail.
5. At Okwu
Emeke in Owerri North Local Government, a young lady in
security outfit and uniform positioned herself by the
polling booth and stand and directed all that came to
vote and ensured that they thumb-printed for the PDP [People's
Democratic Party]. When accosted she was shielded
and hurried out of the premises by two men who said that
they would have killed the challenger if they did not
have respect for him.
6. Yet in
all polling stations, in spite of ballots torn and/or
destroyed near maximum votes were recorded all mostly
for PDP and voting was conducted in most booths without
accreditation, and practically all duplicate copies of
Result sheets are not legible.
7. Finally,
it is wrong to use the Vice Chancellor of FUTO whose
wife is running for PDP Deputy Governor of Imo State as
a Returning Officer especially when political parties at
a meeting with the State Commissioner of Police, SSS
Director and Heads of other Security organizations had
expressed reservation about the propriety and fairness
of such anomaly (see exhibit “A” “FUTO VC, Staff may be
delisted as INEC …” Announcer Weekend, Friday,
April 8th-9th, 2011, p. 4.
8. The
inappropriateness of using FUTO Vice Chancellor and
staff of FUTO and allied Federal Institutions in Owerri
is further confirmed by the declaration of FUTO staff
when called to a meeting by the PDP Deputy Governorship
Candidate, Prof. Viola Onwuliri, wife of the FUTO Vice
Chancellor. Labour Leaders who spoke on the occasion
included Mrs Ekwemalor, Chairman of Senior Staff
Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and Comrade
J. K. Okere, Chairman Non Academic Staff Union (NASU)
both of the
Federal University of Technology Owerri who
“expressed joy that one of their own was chosen as the
governor’s (Ohakim) running mate and that it was now
their own project and no longer that of Mrs Onwuliri as
they will do their best to ensure victory at the polls.”
(see exhibit “B” “Deputy Governorship Candidate Meets
Varsity Labour Leaders…” The Leader, Sunday
April 3-Sunday April 10, 2011, p. 5.
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During the recent
Presidential elections in Imo State, the people
sincerely came out and cast their votes but the
electoral officials in most cases took the law into
their own hands thumb-printing and casting ballots for
people who never showed up for the elections including
some who had died in between registration and voting.
There was no accreditation in most polling centers even
though Presiding Officers recorded fake numbers of
accredited voters. As above evidence shows, there was
multiple voting by individuals, thumb-printing of ballot
papers by presiding officers and their PDP [People's
Democratic Party] accomplices. A forensic test will
more than confirm several ballots bearing same
thumb-prints. This was not an election. It is voidable
and should be voided and if other elections are to go on
these anomalies should be corrected. |
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Dr. S. Okechukwu
Mezu, Deputy Gubernatorial Candidate Imo State, Congress
for Progressive Change (CPC), For and on behalf of CPC
Imo State, Nigeria
Dr. S.
Okechukwu Mezu, a graduate of Georgetown University
(Washington, D.C.) has a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins
University (Baltimore, Maryland) and studied at the
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) and was
formerly the Biafran Ambassador to Ivory Coast during
the Nigerian Civil War.
* *
* * *
Goodluck Jonathan wins peaceful election in Nigeria
/
Buhari: A great Nigerian who will not be president
Nigeria's early election results hint at losses for ruling
party /
Democracy
1, vote-rigging 0
Nigerian President Reelected, Violence in North Continues
/
Nigeria President Heads to a Win
Nigeria election: Riots over Goodluck Jonathan win
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Analysis
By
Muhammad Jameel Yushau
BBC Hausa Service
It is the first time in
Nigeria's recent history that the election result has
exposed the huge division between the Muslim north and
Christian south. Incumbent
Goodluck Jonathan has won in nearly all southern states,
which are predominantly Christian except for one, while his
main challenger
Muhammadu Buhari won in the Muslim north-east and
north-west. Both candidates shared votes in the north
central area which has a substantial Muslim and Christian
population.
|
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Elections in Nigeria
are not necessarily about issues but about ethnicity,
religion and regionalism. So historically they have been won
as a result of either a formal alliance by political parties
or—more recently—an informal agreement within the governing
PDP [People's
Democratic Party] to alternate the presidency between
north and south.
For this reason, the
winning candidate—irrespective of region, religion or
ethnicity—normally commanded a wide national spread. In
1999,
Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian from the south, won the
majority of the votes in northern Nigeria. However, the
rotation was broken when Mr Jonathan succeeded to the
presidency last year after the death of
Umaru Yar'Adua, a northerner. This election, described
by international observers as the most successful for
decades, seems to be compounding the country's regional and
ethnic divisions.—BBC
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Analysis
By Caroline Duffield
I'm inside Nigeria's
election collation offices in Abuja and this is the nerve
centre of the election.It's where officials scrutinise
results for fraud before declaring them. Election Commission
Chairman Professor Jega is sitting on a raised platform,
slowly reading out results. Behind him is a glass office
where official paperwork is being matched and compared with
data captured at 120,000 polling stations.
It's only when
officials are all agreed on what they're seeing that they
can confirm the authenticity of the results. It's a
painfully slow process but it's designed to expose any
tampering or fraud with either the computer records or the
paperwork.And this building itself is under massive
security. We came through several military cordons to get
inside. People here are grimly determined to get through the
next six to 10 hours of this count without violent
incidents.
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According
to regional results, Mr Jonathan has passed that
threshold in at least 24 states. He polled 20.3m
votes to the 10.4m cast for his nearest rival,
General Muhammadu Buhari.In Akwa Ibom state, he
was credited with winning 95% percent and in
Anambra it was 99%. In his home state, Bayelsa,
he took 99.63%.
"Figures of
95% and above for one party suggest that these
are fabricated figures and, personally, they
worry me because they pose serious questions on
the credibility of the election," Jibrin Ibrahim
of the Centre for Democracy and Development told
AFP news agency. Former government minister
Nasir el-Rufai, a supporter of Gen Buhari, told
Reuters: "In most of the south-east and
south-south, no real elections took place. |
"In the south-west and
the north, the results have no relation to what happened at
the polling units and we will prove it in due course."A
spokesman for the general, Yinka Odumakin, also said
irregularities had taken place but any challenge would come
after the vote count. Mr Jonathan's campaign team have said
they will not publicly comment until the election commission
has formally declared all the results in the capital Abuja,
an announcement expected later on Monday.
"This is no time for
triumphalism," Oronto Douglas, a senior adviser to Mr
Jonathan, told Reuters news agency. "It is a time for deep
reflection, for strengthening the bond of our union and for
all of us to work together." Previous polls were marred by
widespread violence and vote-fixing but Saturday's election
was reported to have generally gone smoothly, after violence
in the run-up left dozens of people dead.—BBC
News, Lagos
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Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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