RE: Ihedioha: The Mandate Is Ours

By Stanford Arinze Nwokedi

I read an article written by Collins Opurozor on the above subject matter. Obviously, he used the fables and hoodwinks in his platform as the New Media Director of PDP to attempt a flimsy sentimentalization of his well rehearsed bundle of lies and propaganda. Unfortunately, PDP deals with easily punctured bandwagons. It is laughable that his earned laurel for the mere academic exercise remains the beautiful nonsense he displayed with skilled literary summersault and grammatical gymnastics. What a waste of a budding literary talent! He was obviously substantively empty and devoid of legally and intelligibly weighty logics. He shied away from the facts and figures of the election he has come open to castigate the Supreme Court on.

For reasons, however, of his new but strange civility, though intermitently dainted with his understandable political prejudices and wrongly footed leaning, I have elected to do this rejoinder to set the records straight. This should enlighten him and the few gullible sympathizers in his massively diserted party.

Yes, I decided to do this rejoinder with a firm belief that no matter how far a lie is taken, truth is able to always puncture the thin-thickened balloon of lies. Facts are sacred.

To succinctly begin, permit me to state categorically that Chief Hon Emeka Ihedioha (Rtd) did not win the long settled gubernatorial election of 2019 in Imo State and was not elected ever by Imolites to govern them from May 29th, 2019.

May I also place it on record that Chief Hon Emeka Ihedioha (Rtd) did a poor and shabby job of his electoral fraud, so much so that he was caught pants down in his nocternal haste and criminal effrontery to steal the people’s mandate. Ordinarily, for his complicit implication in the punctured electoral fraud, many think that Chief Emeka Ihedioha ought, by now, to be serving his second year in prison. Howbeit, 2024 offers to all and sundry an electoral opportunity where no such brazen electoral theft shall be condoned ANYMORE.

Now to the metrics that Opurozor craftily dodged, the said gubernatorial election took place across the State in 27 Local Government Areas, 305 electoral wards with about 3,523 polling booths. At the end of the election, INEC- the statutory electoral umpire collated results of the election from 2,883 pulling unit, cancelling election results from 252 polling units. For no known legal reasons, election results from 388 polling units were excluded even with the same INEC filing no cogent reason(s) for the exclusion. The Presiding Officers in the eventually excluded 388 polling units had presented duly endorsed results from these 388 polling units to the agents of all the contesting parties’ agents with their signatures captured in the duplicate copies and of course the security agents were also given their own endorsed copies as those that manned the polling units.

The question now arises: does the party ( in this case the APC) reserve the constitutional right to contest the unlawful exclusion of the results where the party overwhelmingly floored other parties in the election? Was it a legitimate course to seek judicial scrutiny to know why the party’s overwhelming votes (that placed them as first and not forth) should be excluded even with the colloborative evidences of the signed duplicate copies of the 388 booth results given to the party’s agents that were authenticated by the duplicate copies with the Police that manned the election in the affected 388 booths? Was the eventual legal proofs faulted by any substantive evidence from both the INEC or the PDP or even any other participating party?

Everyone knows that the courts in a constitutional democracy is the arbiter who present the level playing ground for all parties in an election to argue their cases based on extant laws and conventions.

The APC’s candidate – Distinguished Sen Hope Uzodimma exploited the constitutional window presented by the court to argue his case up to the Supreme Court. This, perhaps, makes the election of 2019 the most scrutinized election passing through the minutest microscope of legal rubrics and balanced adjudication.
The tribunal did their best and rendered their judgement. The Court of Appeal had their due opportunity to scrutinize the verdict of the Election Tribunal and came up with a minority dissenting judgement in favour of the Petitioner.
Hence, based on the legal window available to the Petitioner, he appealed the majority judgement of the Court of Appeal up to the highest Court in the land, which was the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court put the entire judgements through finer judicial probe and got the Umpire – the INEC to explain the reasons behind their endorsed results vis-a-vis the final collation. When the INEC could not and had no legitimate reason to have excluded the 388 polling results, the Supreme Court, in their infallible wisdom, upheld the prayer of the Petitioner ( now the APC candidate, Dist Sen Hope Uzodimma) as the dully elected Executive Governor of Imo State. That was not without the insignificant minority judgement from only one of the Justices.

Now, to summarize, why should a party that believes in the institution of Democracy be still rueing their electoral loss after a thorough legal scrutiny?

I challenge Collins Opurozor to a public debate on this matter. Has it not even come to his knowledge that even disregarding the excluded 388 polling units that his Principal – Hon Chief Emeka Ihedioha (Rtd) did not get the constitutional spread to be declared a Governor?
What, if not for the inexplicable desperation of the PDP, could explain the continued bitterness of this expired Political Party in Imo State called the PDP over a concluded matter post-two years?

When and where had anyone been declared a Governor in Nigeria with an overvoting recorded in 3 out of the 27 Local Government Areas, with incidentally the 3 Mbaise LGAs in this case? What does the electoral law and our constitution say about such aberration?

Gov Hope Uzodimma and indeed the majority of Imolites have long proceeded with good governance which evidently reflect in the monumental feats of achievements in Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Recovery.

If the political motivation behind this legally foreclosed sentimentalism of the 2019 election by Imo PDP is to seek a pseudo-basis to reverse the legendary achievements of the 3R Government in especially the last R (RECOVERY), permit me to dash such hope with the fact that majority of Imolites will not accept the reversal of their gains especially with the publicized new romance between Ihedioha and the Imo Public Enemy Number 1, Sen Rochas Okorocha.

Yes! The mandate is ours – APC’s, not Opurozor’s PDP’s.

We move!

© Stanford Arinze Nwokedi SSA(Gov) Public Enlightenment.