How Abians recovered the state from Ikpeazu
Sopuruchi Onwuka
The tension in Abia State over the outcome of the gubernatorial elections in the state has been finally defused with the announcement of the Labour Party’s candidate, Dr Alex Otti, winner in the contest which witnessed brazen effrontery on the will of the people.
With the expected outcome, the LP now has a state to showcase its highly applauded development propositions and possibly replicate the performance of its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi.
Besides, the results which are clear reflection of voting pattern in the state indicates the will of the people after over 20 years of PDP in the state only left the people sliding into poverty en masse.
The Oracle Today reports that collation of the results of the governorship state legislature elections ran into stalemate after thugs invaded the Obingwa center and disrupted the process, injured officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and forced the electoral umpire to suspend further announcement of results.
No such incident was recorded in any other part of the state as the election process went peacefully and smoothly until it became clear that the Labour Party was on course to landslide victory.
Obingwa is the political homestead of the highly disliked incumbent governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, whose eight years of clannish administration in the state established new standards for non performance, nonpayment of workers’ salaries and infrastructural decay.
Following the impunity at Obingwa, further collation of results in Abia state was suspended as petitions inundated the INEC national office in Abuja. And along with similar situation in Enugu, INEC called all parties to verification and review meeting in Abuja where it became clear that while the disruptions lasted, results of Obingwa elections ballooned by nearly 400 percent above the number of accredited voters.
Whereas the government of Abia State demanded that the results be announced as delivered, the masses resisted and the INEC stood firm.
As the fireworks continued to crack, political stakeholders closed all flight routes to Abuja to stand up to government officials who are said to have followed INEC officials to the national secretariat of the agency. Abia State is a home to significant bloc of new generation of youths clamoring for good and accountable governance under the under the Aegis of the popular Obidient Movement associated with the Labour Party.
But the results after the interruption of collation awarded PDP whopping 108,000 votes in an exercise where only 27,000 people were accredited. The spate of widespread anger over the results prompted INEC to intervene and avert a looming showdown.
Town unions, youth groups and different political stakeholders issued warnings against subverting the will of the people while government’s spokesmen boasted of control.
After review of the results and confirmation of accreditation through the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), INEC determined that the Obingwa results were exaggerated. The stakeholders gleaned all helpful information from the BVAS and consulted the original results sheets generated at polling booths to recover the authentic figures.
It was determined that registered voters in Obingwa are 157,390 out of which 27,664 were accredited for the election on March 18.
Among the three major political parties in the contest, the All Progressive Congress (APC) scored 721 votes; the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) got 1,445 votes; the Labour Party (LP) secured 3,776 votes and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) mopped 9,962 votes.
Total votes are 20,510 out of which 510 were rejected, leaving some 20,000 valid votes.
With 10 of the 17 local governments of the state in its kitty, LP coasted to victory with 175,431 votes. The ruling PDP followed with 88,529 votes, and the APC grabbed 24,142 votes.
