After reading Dr. Ikedi Ohakim’s comments on Senator Chris Anyanwu’s recently released memoir, BOLD LEAP, I was compelled to begin a search for the book. Senator Anyanwu had personally shown me a copy of the book sometime in August last year, and had hinted that she was going to involve me in the arrangements for the public presentation. Naturally, I looked forward to that but somehow, that opportunity was no longer availed me; neither was I able to attend the book’s unveiling in Abuja despite the fact that I was personally invited to it also. So, even though I was ordinarily eager to get a copy of the book after its release, Dr. Ohakim’s comments – via a recent newspaper interview – heightened my curiosity, particularly aspects of it that have to do with the 2011 Imo governorship election.
In the interview, Dr. Ohakim chided Senator Anyanwu for hiding some facts concerning that election, a claim that again widened my appetite for the book. So, once I got a borrowed copy of the book, needless to say, I went straight to the areas concerning that election. Two things informed this. The first is Dr. Ohakim’s claims and knowing that the former governor is not known for frivolities, I was eager to educate myself properly. The second is that I had, as early as 2012, published a book devoted entirely on that election under the title, “DEMOCRACY BY MILITARY TANK”, and which sold over eight thousand copies in the first one month after publication. So, I can cite myself as an authority on the subject. Just a few weeks ago, December 24, 2024, to be precise – the day my latest (the fourteenth)book was unveiled in Owerri – one of my guests pulled me aside to inquire on how he could obtain a copy of “that book you wrote about military tank…”. Of course, I understood what he was talking about.
On Dr. Ohakim’s claim that Senator Anyanwu deliberately concealed some facts about the 2011 Imo governorship election, one must concede to her the right to present matters the way she deemed fit.However, where there is a dispute, as we now have between the two, there arises a need for further interrogations in the hope of filling some of the gaps for the interest of the generality of the reading public.
Here, two major areas stand out: her treatment of what led to the declaration of the first balloting on April 26, 2011 as “inconclusive” and two, what happened at the “supplementary” election of May 6, 2011. On the first, Senator Anynawu’s version was that the April 26, 2011 election was declared inconclusive because suspended and unannounced results “made up a statistically significant portion of the registered voters”. She wrote: “At the end of the election, Okorocha scored slightly higher than Ohakim in the areas where the results were announced. But there were many voting booths where announcement was suspended and combined, they made up a statistically significant portion of the registered voters. Therefore, INEC decided to declare the Imo governorship election “INCONCLUSIVE”. (Page 467).
Concerning that election, however, the (above) information volunteered by Senator Anyanwuis too scanty to serve the purpose of educating those who were not in a position to know what really happened. The election of April 26, 2011 was won squarely by the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Ikedi Ohakim but was declared inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as part of a big plot to stop him from doing a second term. Contrary to Senator Anyanwu’s claim, the results from 23 out of 27 local government areas had been received and announced by the state returning officer, Professor Enoch Akobundu, before he declared the entire election inconclusive. He had earlier declared the results from three local government areas – Oguta, Mbaitoli and Ohaji-Egbema – inconclusive because Ikedi Ohakim was leading his closest rival, Rochas Okorocha, by a wide margin. As a matter of fact, it was the result from Ohaji-Egbema – where Ohakim scored 28, 799 votes as against Okorocha’s 6,008 votes – that sent the signal to the anti Ohakim elements that he had won the election.
At that stage, results from 26 local government areas, excluding Ngor Okpala where no election held, and which were already widely known, showed that the PDP candidate pulled a total of 310,106 votes to beat the APGA candidate, who polled 305,263 votes. The results also showed that Ohakim scored at least 25 per cent of the votes in twenty two (22) local government areas, four over and above the statutory minimum of 18. But fortunately for the conspirators, the result from Ohaji-Egbema was still on its way to the state collation center in Owerri; and so, the deal was to prevent that particular result from being taken into account in the overall result schedule for the entire state. Hence, the methodic and carefully choreographed drama that took place at the INEC state collation centre in the evening of April 26, 2011.
The returning officer of Ohaji-Egbema, one Mr. Valentine Nwoke, had been intercepted by soldiers at the gate of the INEC headquarters – following a brief – and brought before Akobundu. But on sighting Nwoke, Professor Akobundu told him to go and wait and immediately announced a ten-minute break, just as the soldiers who had earlier brought in Nwoke reappeared and led him into adjoining room. Later reports had it that in order to ensure that Nwoke did not make any fim, the soldiers, in the company of a chieftain of the Action Congress of Nigeria, took him to Onitsha where he was incarcerated in a hotel until the supplementary election was over and Okorocha declared winner. The party man, a well known politician in the state, later confess to that act.
Before announcing the break, Akobundu had received a telephone call which lasted for more than ten minutes. While Nwoke was ‘imprisoned’ inside the room, Akobundu returned from the ‘break’ after more than an hour later and began to ask for the Ohaji-Egbema returning officer. Before anybody in the crowd could say “Okonkwo”, Professor Akobundu announced that the result of the election in Ohaji-Egbema was inconclusive, claiming that elections did not hold in some places in the local government areas. But that was the second stanza of the script.
Earlier, some chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), who were part of the conspiracy against Ohakim, had, upon coming to terms with his imminent victory, approached the leadership of INEC – which was, in any case, part of the plot– to prevail on Akobundu not to accept the result from Ohaji-Egbema. Once an understanding was reached, a desperate search for the Ohaji-Egbema returning officer began in order to intercept him and the results. Once that was also accomplished, Akobundu was comfortable enough and vamoosed into thin air.
At about 11:00pm on Sunday April 27, 2011, he returned to the state collation center and before an anxious crowd, made up of television crews and other categories of stakeholders, declared that the governorship election in Imo state was inconclusive, while announcing the cancellation of the results of the election in Ohaji-Egbema, Oguta and Mbaitoli local government areas. He, therefore, did not announce a winner for the election.
On Tuesday, April 29, 2011, INEC headquarters in Abuja announced that a “supplementary” election was going to be held on May 6, 2011 in the entire three local government areas where it claimed elections did not hold on April 26; plus Orji ward in the Owerri North local government area. Not surprisingly, however, both APGA and the PDP opposed the idea of a supplementary election. In a suit at the Federal High Court, Abuja Division, APGA and its candidate prayed for an order of interlocutory injunction suspending the decision of INEC to conduct the supplementary election. It, however, demanded that its candidate be declared winner of the April 26, 2011 election, even without the results from Ohaji-Egbema and Oguta (which had been declared inconclusive by the state returning officer) and Ngor Okpala, where no election held on April 26, 2011.
The PDP on its part did not go to court but wrote INEC to demand that its candidate be also declared the winner of the April 26 election on the basis of results which must include those from Ohaji-Egbema, Oguta and Mbaitoli. The party held that once all the results from the twenty six (26) local government areas (excluding Ngor Okpala) were put together, its candidate won the election by polling 310,100 votes as against APGAs’ 305,263 votes; having also scored 25 per cent of votes cast in twenty two (22) local government areas.
But in spite of the insistence by both APGA and PDP, together with other categories of stakeholders, that a supplementary election was unnecessary, INEC went ahead to conduct one on May 6, 2011. In other words, the supplementary election held in spite of the pendency of APGA’s suit at the Abuja Federal High court challenging it as already mentioned. As a matter of fact, legal pundits were unanimous in their views that the purported supplementary election of May 6, 2011 ought not to have been conducted by INEC when the suit filed by APGA challenging its propriety was yet to be determined.
There is, however, a conspiracy theory surrounding what observers described as APGA’s “mystery suit”; wherein it is believed that both INEC and APGA together with its candidate were acting out one and the same script. In other words, it was believed in several quarters that APGA instituted the case against the commission in order to give the impression that there was no collaboration between the two. Even though there was, and has been, no empirical evidence to back up that claim, not a few observers were quick to point at the fact that the “mystery suit” was withdrawn immediately after the supplementary election from which its challengers, APGA and its candidate, became the beneficiaries.
Needless to say, the supplementary election was part of the script to ensure that Ohakim did not return for a second term. In her book, Senator Anyanwu gave details of movements to and fro Abuja, together with names of those involved in the “lobby” to persuade INEC to conduct the supplementary election. But there was no lobbying. What happened was that each character acted out his or her script perfectly. President Goodluck Jonathan, for example, was already part of the plot before the supplementary election, contrary to her claim that she went to Otuoke, his home town in Bayelsa state, to convince him to support the bid to install Okorocha. At best, she was preaching to the converted. Going by her account, the speed and totality with which Senator Anynanwu mobilized the military just within a few days after getting the “Ok” (page 470) from the Commander-in-Chief would have been impossible if there had been no prima facie involvement and knowledge of the military commanders. How Senator Anyanwu was able to singularly mobilize the entire Nigerian military and the police just in a few days after her meeting with Jonathan at Otueke would marvel even the most brilliant military strategist in the world. Before the supplementary election on May 6, Imo state was a theater of war for more than three days. Beginning from May 2, 2011, troops of the Nigerian Army took over the streets of Owerri, the state capital, with military tanks positioned in strategic places.
The execution was so precise and the success so resounding that even the Isreali Mossad would reel with envy. Overall, I think it would be proper for Nigerians to further interrogate how, as claimed by Senator Anyanwu, an elected civilian president gave an “OK” for the military to be officially drafted into an election process. That singular act, in my view, laid an ugly precedence that may haunt our democracy for a long time to come. Even the military itself should make a retrospective review of the role it was made to plan in that ugly episode and say, “NEVER AGAIN”!
“Needless to say, the supplementary election was part of the script to ensure that Ohakim did not return for a second term. In her book, Senator Anyanwu gave details of movements to and fro Abuja, together with names of those involved in the “lobby” to persuade INEC to conduct the supplementary election. But there was no lobbying. What happened was that each character acted out his or her script perfectly. President Goodluck Jonathan, for example, was already part of the plot before the supplementary election, contrary to her claim that she went to Otuoke, his home town in Bayelsa state, to convince him to support the bid to install Okorocha. At best, she was preaching to the converted. Going by her account, the speed and totality with which Senator Anynanwu mobilized the military just within a few days after getting the “Ok” (page 470) from the Commander-in-Chief would have been impossible if there had been no prima facie involvement and knowledge of the military commanders. How Senator Anyanwu was able to singularly mobilize the entire Nigerian military and the police just in a few days after her meeting with Jonathan at Otueke would marvel even the most brilliant military strategist in the world. Before the supplementary election on May 6, Imo state was a theater of war for more than three days. Beginning from May 2, 2011, troops of the Nigerian Army took over the streets of Owerri, the state capital, with military tanks positioned in strategic places“
