Issues as Kogi holds fresh election

Ibrahim IdrisAssistant Editor, Niyi Adebimpe, writes on the build-up to the forthcoming fresh governorship election in Kogi State.

By the end of this month, the coast would have been clear on the question of who holds forte as the substantive Kogi State governor among the horde of candidates jostling for the coveted position. The candidates, alongside their supporters, are currently busy traversing the nooks and crannies of the state while canvassing for votes of the teeming electorate against the fresh governorship election slated for March 29, 2008.

The road to the current political situation in the state began shortly after the 2007 general elections when the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) governorship candidate in the state, Prince Abubakar Audu, filed a petition before the Elections Petitions Tribunal. Audu had protested his disqualification by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) from participating in the April 14, 2007 governorship election which result was declared in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris.

That the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Hon. Clarence Olafemi, was immediately sworn in as acting governor of the state following the tribunal’s ruling upheld by the Appeal Court which nullified the embattled former governor’s election is no longer news.

The main issue revolves round the new reality likely to emerge after the fresh election ordered by INEC. If the emerging signals are anything to go by, then, the much-touted re-run election may not be a mere child’s play, a development which suggests that there is a need for relevant stakeholders in the politics of the state to be more vigilant and put in more efforts to douse any unforeseen circumstance that may put the politics of the state in a deeper quagmire.

The scheming by political parties as well as the extant alliance between some of them may not pose any danger to the election. However, the peculiar antics of the stakeholders and their tendency to spring surprises may pose an unexpected danger. Only last Thursday, a meeting of the stakeholders convened by the state chapter of INEC to ensure a peaceful conduct of the election was said to have ended in fiasco with many of the stakeholders leaving earlier than expected.

To state that the development is literally making the nation’s electoral body to have sleepless nights amounts to stating the obvious more so as the tribunal’s ruling on the governorship election is understood in different political quarters as an indictment on the INEC, a development that seems to be prodding opposition political parties, the Action Congress (AC) for instance to canvass for the removal of the commission’s chairman, Professor Maurice Iwu.

Barrister Phillip Umeadi, the INEC Commissioner for Information, had during a recent media briefing averred that the electoral body would adhere strictly to the stipulations of 2006 Electoral Act while alluding to the judgment of the Appeal Court on conduct of fresh for Kogi governorship office.

Said Umeadi, “In lieu of the judgement of the Court of Appeal, it is important for us to emphasise that only political parties which contested the last gubernatorial election in Kogi State would be part  of the by-election. The political parties which contested the election are entitled to change or re-nominate candidates of their choice except the ANPP. The court has ordered that we conduct the election with the name of the candidate of the ANPP.”

Analysts, therefore, believe that INEC may have stirred the hornet’s nest by Umeadi’s conclusion going by the rate at which the high hopes of candidates in the April 14, 2007 governorship polls in the state would have been dashed. The development, according to analysts, may create discord within parties which resolve to change their candidates. If that happens, the structures of the affected parties would have been weakened in competing favourably with others during the election. It may also avail the judiciary of more litigations as cases of governorship aspirants resorting to legal action against the commission or even their political parties are not remote.

But INEC appears to have taken cognisance of this while mapping out plans for the election as Umeadi, in a chat with the Nigerian Tribune believes that the beauty of the nation’s nascent democracy would be further enhanced with situations of such litigations over the fresh election.

It will also be recalled that in a bid to give the PDP a good run for its money, the major opposition political parties in the state, the ANPP had decided to go into alliance with the AC, preparatory to the much touted by-election. But the alliance, according to sources close to the two political parties, may later prove to be an albatross for the opposition political parties as not all the loopholes have been blocked. According to these sources, even though the AC might have reached a consensus in presenting ANPP candidate, Prince Audu, as a joint governorship candidate while the AC governorship candidate, Senator S.M. Ohiare, would be his running mate, the agreement has generated a controversy within the two camps especially as Ohiare was alleged to have tacitly dissociated himself from it on the ground that he was not contacted while it was being conceived. 

As at the time of filing this report, Nigerian Tribune learnt that the AC governorship candidate was still resisting overtures being made in order to cool his frayed nerves and consequently make the alliance a reality.

Apart from Ohiare, a number of AC chieftains within the state, sources further disclosed, have also felt offended by the decision of the top echelon of the party in Abuja to ratify such alliance, arguing that the programmes and manifestoes of the two parties appear distinct from each other. Should the alliance eventually work, they were said to have queried whose programmes and manifestoes would be executed between the two parties in government.                     

The strained relationship between Idris and his predecessor, Prince Audu, does not also appear to help matters. The duo had been at loggerheads since the assumption of office of Idris in 2003. So much is the animosity between them that allegations and counter allegations of threat to life has become the order of the day just as uneasy calm that pervaded the atmosphere in certain parts of the state especially in the central Senatorial district of Kogi State has become an issue for scoring political goals against themselves.

In all these, one party that hopes to feed on the inability of both AC and ANPP to ally is the Democratic Peoples Alliance (DPA). A top notcher of the party disclosed to the Nigerian Tribune that its chances at the polls are bright against the backdrop of unfolding scenarios in the state, most recently. Whether the party will be able to make good its words or not in the forthcoming governorship polls is better left to conjecture.

Though the concern of many particularly indigenes and residents of the state bothers on who eventually clinches the governorship position of the state, analysts and watchers of political events in the nation however believe that more searchlight should rather be beamed on the preparations for the election that will midwife the prospective governor of the state into power rather than the governor himself. As they argue and rightly too, this is moreso especially as the 2007 general election has, in the estimation of many, proved to be a mere charade and waste of resources - human, material and financial - judging by the array of election nullifications the nation has witnessed so far.

In order to douse this, it is not in contention that not only the law enforcement and other security agencies but also the politicians themselves alongside their political parties have a role to play just as INEC itself could regain its lost confidence by proving to be an unbiased umpire.

Unless all these are done, analysts argue that the redeployment of additional 300 policemen into the state by the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro, as recently disclosed by Hon. Olafemi, the state acting governor, may not make any difference.