A Rigging Foretold

Roland Uwa

By Oji Odu
The inconsistencies and contradictions unearthed about a week to the Anambra gubernatorial election slated for Saturday, February 6, 2010 are very mind-boggling, such that there are fears that it is an already rigged process, unless urgent measures are taken to stare off the looming electoral robbery.
From monumental flaws detected in different released documents of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) showing that there are 1.8 million and 2.1 million registered voters in Anambra state respectively, most of whom are dead prominent Nigerians, as well as those who are not of Anambra origin, to the alleged rigging options of the Commission, fears have reached a crescendo that the state may, somehow, not escape election and post-election violence, if immediate corrective actions are not taken.
Political analysts and critics have not only questioned the appointment of Chief Josiah Uwazuruonye as the state’s new Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) to conduct a credible election, based on his alleged marriage links with the Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate , but also the composition of INEC’s “Anambra 2010 Governorship Election Monitoring and Observation Board,” whose members are described as ‘conformists and dependents,” plus other issues, such as the arrest of a trailer-load of unauthorised election materials at a check-point in Okija, Anambra State, two weeks ago.
Anambra state, is, indeed, sitting on a power keg waiting to explode, if the Electoral Commission (INEC) refuses to break the “accord of the graveyard,” allegedly entered into by some of its top officials to rid the process of credibility.
Notedly, an aggregation of human rights groups, including Inter-Society Nigeria, the Civil Liberites Organisation (CLO), Anambra Democratic League, Traders Rights and Empowerment Project (TREP), and the Alliance for Credible Elections and Good Governance in Anambra State, had in September last year listed and elaborated on some factors that might cast a slur on the all-important Anambra guber poll. These issues included the “rougish delineation of electoral constituencies (electoral words and polling booths) by INEC, shrouding in secrecy of these electoral constituencies, non-registration and non-updating of eligible voters register, with names of the dead and fictitious names,” et cetera and formed part of The Source’s cover story in its edition dated September 28, 2009 and entitled: “The Man Who Will Rig Anambra’s Guber Election.”
Following The Source’s expose, the then Resident Electoral Commissioner, Roland Uwa, was removed and redeployed, and only about two weeks ago, no fewer than 10 staffers of INEC in the state were interdicted for voter registration fraud, with about eight of them already dismissed from the employ of the commission.
Today, only days to the guber contest, the key contentious issues subsist: bloated and varied voter figures, flying booths, and a seemingly compromised electoral umpire.
Here-under are excerpts from the Anambra Human Rights Coalition’s latest letter to the President, United Nations Human Rights, Council, Alex Van Meeuwen, a Belgian, on the onminous dangers beclouding Anambra’s February 6, 2010 gubernatorial election.
Statistics:
Anambra State of Nigeria has a total population of about five million people according to independent sources. Out of this, the dependent population or ineligible voters are about three million people, while the independent adult population or eligible voters are about two million people. In other words, those in the 0-17 years age bracket are about three million, while those between 18 years and above (say 85 years) are about two million.
In 2006, the Independent National Electoral Commission embarked on registration of eligible voters, who would vote in the 2007 general elections in Nigeria, including in Anambra State. The exercise was poorly conducted by INEC, which resulted in many eligible voters in Anambra State being disenfranchised. Apart from poor civic/voters’ education, INEC deliberately disenfranchised many eligible voters so as to build up a roguish voters’ register for the purpose of effecting massive vote-allocation to its favoured candidates.
True to its brazen arrangement, the Commission manufactured “1.76million to 1.8million voters” over-night in its voters’ register and in the controversial April 14, 2007 governorship poll, which Nigeria’s Supreme Court later invalidated, the Commission brazenly and magisterially allocated “1.006million votes” to its favoured candidate of the ruling PDP (People’s Democratic Party), whom it declared “winner”. Before this court-invalidated poll, INEC had arbitrarily disqualified some leading candidates such as the incumbent governor, Mr. Peter Obi, former illegal governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chris Ngige and Prince Nick Ukachukwu of the opposition All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP).
This despicable action by INEC resulted to voter-apathy, which forced many voters to stay away on Election Day, yet INEC went ahead and allocated a whopping “1.006 million votes” from God knows where to the said candidate, against the voters’ turnout of about 200,000 for presidential and governorship polls. In March 2009, we wrote INEC, through Inter-society, rejecting the said roguish voters’ register and demanded its immediate review or update so as to remove all fictitious names so imported. We also reminded the Commission about the nearness of the staggered governorship election in Anambra State.
We further tasked the Commission to begin meaningful preparations for the said poll, which would include: proper delineation of electoral constituencies such as electoral wards and polling booths, which must be traceable, locatable and recognisable. Other constitutionally imposed duties, which we tasked INEC to carry out, are: intensive and extensive voters and civic education, proper registration of eligible voters, publication of the authentic voters’ register for proper and timely verification of same by core stakeholders including the registered voters and political parties participating in the said election. But unfortunately, these noble calls were ignored by the Commission with reckless abandon.
When pressures became so intense on the Commission, it grudgingly and frustratedly commenced a skewed voters’ registration exercise within a constraint of time. Sensing that meaningful registration of voters would lead to explosive voters’ register data, which might not be reconciled with the existing population data, the Commission turned back about 1.5million unregistered voters who trooped out so as to be registered, having not been registered before. To ward off further expositions, the Commission arbitrarily and magisterially brought the registration exercise to an abrupt end on the 28th day of September 2009, citing a provision in the 2006 Electoral Act of Nigeria, which it claims allows it to act the way it acted.

INEC’s Motives and Our Recent Findings:
INEC had never wanted and still does not want to conduct a credible, popular, free and fair governorship election in Anambra State, so as not to break the “accord of the graveyard” it reportedly entered into with its paymasters. To say that the Commission has reportedly earned sophistication in the art of election rigging is to say a little. The Commission now claims that it has in its voters’ register “2.1 million registered voters”. It further claims that its pre-2009 voters’ register contains “1.8 million registered voters” and its post-2009 “2.1million registered voters”, yet another version of its recently released documents contained 1,767,519 registered voters for pre-2009 and 1,814,127 registered voters for post-2009 voters’ register. What an INEC of contradiction.
The implication of allowing this bogus and roguish voters’ register to be used in the said poll will be far-reaching. It was the insistence of the Commission to conduct the poll with the said discredited voters’ register that led us into intensive enquires to ascertain the authenticity or otherwise of the names and pictures so contained. And in the course of the said enquires, we discovered monumental flaws. For instance, in the printed copy of the voters’ register obtained from the Ezinifite Ward 1 (Awor Primary School Polling Unit) in Nnewi South Local Government Area of Anambra State, the following flaws were observed:
1. The pictures of some prominent Nigerians, who are not from Anambra State, not to talk of being hailed from the said remote town, were pasted and given names other than theirs. For instance, the late legal icon and human rights colossus, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, had his picture pasted. His voter’s name was changed to Albert O. Asoanya (an Igbo-Nigerian name). Other initials allocated to him are: age 49; voters’ register number: 36; code number: 90800201145; occupation: civil/public servant.
The picture of Chief Jim Nwobodo, a former governor of old Anambra State, who is from Enugu State, was also found in the said Ezinifite Ward 1. His name was changed to Donatus N. Egwu. Chief Nwobodo who is over 60 years old was classified as being 51 years old and Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who died at 71 years was classified as being 49 years old. Chief Alex Ekwueme, the former vice president of Nigeria, had his name written but with another person’s picture. He is over 70 years but was given 45 years. He is from Oko in Orumba North Council Area of Anambra State, but his name with a different picture and age, was found in another electoral ward in Nnewi South Council Area of Anambra State.
To our further consternation, the pictures of the South Africa’s leading Anti-Apartheid activists such as: Steve Biko, Oliver Thambo, Walter Sisilu, Chris Hani and Nelson Mandela were found in different electoral locations with Igbo-Nigerian names and fictitious ages allocated to them. These discoveries so made were very widespread.
2. We were thrown off balance, when in the course of our further enquiries, we saw the symbols of windows, doors, trees, human skulls and some domestic animals with human names, voters’ register and voting code numbers, different ages, gender classifications and occupations.
3. It is our further discovery that in selected polling booths, the number of “registered voters” were inflated or jerked up from supposed 500 voters per polling booth to as high as “4,000 to 5,000 registered voters”, while in others, there were zero registered voters, when we all know that polling booths cannot be created in the bush or forest.
Our investigations further revealed that in Achalla Community, Awka North Local Government Area, which is one of the 10 communities that make up the Local Government Area, it is allocated with highly inflated registered voters. This was allegedly facilitated by a Federal legislator from the area, in collaboration with INEC. This alarming and roguish allocation of “registered voters” by INEC is also found in Umuleri, Anambra East Local Government Area, and the home own of the deputy gubernatorial running-mate of the PDP governorship candidate.
The number of the so-called “registered voters” in the community is said to be very alarming. In Nteje Community, Oyi Local Government Area, the story is reportedly the same, whereby the community reportedly parades the over-bloated registered voters. We challenge INEC to be bold enough to publish the list of the so-called “registered voters” in the areas so mentioned as well as in the entire 326 electoral wards and 4,653 polling booths in the State.
4. Though INEC has been forced to release the so-called “voters’ register” for public consumption, it has only released same to the participating political parties. Other core stakeholders such as pro-democracy and human rights bodies, churches, markets and community leaders, and the mass media are yet to gain an access to same. The data is no where to be found on the Commission’s website. Also, till date most of the eligible and registered voters do not know how to locate the 326 electoral wards and the 4,653 polling booths, which INEC claims it has created and designated for the said poll.
5. During the last days of the so-called “registration of voters exercise”, which INEC closed on 28th day of September 2009, two sets of registration exercises were reportedly carried out simultaneously in different parts of Anambra State. While one of the two exercises took place at the publicly designated centers with inadequate registration staffs and machines, the other was reportedly organised in the private residences of some political parties’ chieftains as well as in the secret areas that are only known to selected INEC officials and conspiring political parties and their recruited agents.
We also discovered that the latter’s chief business was to register fake voters particularly those recruited by the PDP. Once you possess the membership card of the ruling PDP, you will be registered instantly in any of the secret registration centers. Those who got registered were reportedly given “temporary voters’ slips”. They did not thumb-print or undergo the stipulated processes such as age, residence, gender and occupational verifications. Their temporary voters’ slips were back-dated to 2007, among other fake data. Funny enough, while hundreds of thousands of eligible voters, who trooped out en-masse at INEC’s public registration centers, were un-attended to, due to gross inadequacy of the registration materials and personnel, enough materials and personnel were reportedly made available by INEC in the secretly designated places meant to register fake voters.
While most of about 1.5million disenfranchised eligible voters waited in vain at the INEC’s designated centers without being registered, many of those allegedly registered in secret places including private homes, were found to have been registered previously. Our further investigations showed that two, out of every five members of the roguish political parties possess at least 60 permanent or temporary voters cards, bearing different names, occupations, polling booths, code and voters’ register numbers, different ages, same or different pictures, et cetera.
6. In the area of the unclaimed voters’ cards, we discovered that at least 100,000 of such cards still lie undistributed in all the 21 local government area offices of INEC in Anambra State as well as at its State Secretariat, Awka, Anambra State. We saw at least three to four thousand of such undistributed cards in each of the INEC’s area offices in Onitsha South and Ogbaru Local Government Areas, when we visited.
INEC had after the registration of voters exercise in 2006 informed those who registered that the permanent voters’ cards would be produced afterwards and subsequently made available. When the cards came out, some corrupt staffers of the Commission were reported to have unlawfully tasked their owners to pay a stipulated amount of money before collection. When the affected people refused to offer bribes, the Commission allegedly withheld them and even refused to take them to their owners’ homes and offices, which was the way and manner the distribution of the Nigeria’s National Identity Cards was successfully carried out.
We have it on good authority that those undistributed cards are being sold or released to people other than their owners for the purpose of rigging the said important poll. Some roguish political parties’ candidates and their agents are reportedly going about buying up voters’ cards from their owners with intent to disarm them and cripple their voting rights. This criminal exercise is reportedly concentrated in the rural parts of Anambra State, populated by rural dwellers. Each voters’ card reportedly goes for N5,000.00, which can malnutritionally feed the family of five for four days.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, which is reported to be at the center of these rabid crimes, is also accused of mopping up unclaimed permanent voters’ cards from the neighbouring States of Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Abia and Delta so that they can be used incase the Commission reportedly adopts “let-us-rig-it-in-the-field” option. This option involves setting up of “mobile polling booths” in private residences and other secret places, including hotels and school buildings. It also involves “receive, thumb-print and leave” method, whereby youths and hooligans would be ferried from within and without the State, taken to such legally unauthorised voting places, instantly issued with the hoarded voters’ cards, made to thumb-print, given a fat envelop containing naira notes and asked to leave at once.
Our position, to the effect that the INEC’s current voters’ register is a hoax was further strengthened by the Commission’s recent sack of its 10 top staffers at its Anambra State headquarters, at Awka, made up of Electoral Officers (E.Os) and some staffs of its ICT unit over their ignoble roles in flooding the said register with fake names. Ten more top staffers were interdicted for the same offences. As far as we are concerned, this administrative punishment has not addressed and will never address the illegalities and anomalies complained of. For the said poll to be credible, popular and fair INEC must stick to the roadmap for free and fair governorship poll in Anambra State listed below.
Inconsistencies have also trailed the INEC’s version of the voters’ register data. The immediate past REC for Anambra State, Chief Rowland Uwa had severally told newspersons that the pre-2009 voters’ register for Anambra State contained “1.8million registered voters” and that post 2009 voters’ register was “2.1million register voters”. But according to the list of the “registered voters”, released by the Commission recently, it gave pre-2009 figure as “1,767, 519 registered voters,” while the post-2009 figure was given as “1,814,127 registered voters”. In other words “1,76million registered voters” is for pre-2009 and “1.81million registered voters” for post-2009. This data simply shows that a total of 46,607 more people were registered during the continuous voters’ registration exercise that ended abruptly on 28th day of September 2009. This is contrary to the Commission’s earlier information that 300,000 voters were registered during the said continuous registration of voters exercise.
Furthermore, before the 2009 continuous registration exercise, for instance, the total number of “registered voters” for Ayamelum Local Government Area, a sparsely populated area dominated by fishing, with 11 electoral wards and 174 polling booths, was 103,540 “registered voters”. But after the continuous registration exercise, instead of increasing, the number decreased to 99,317”registered voters”. In Aguata Local Government Area, which is the largest local government area, both in landmass and population, with 20 electoral wards and 300 polling booths, the number of registered voters was given as 93,264.
The import of the foregoing is that selected areas especially river-line communities have been marked out as rigging spots with highly inflated number of the so-called “registered voters”. For instance, in Okukwa Hall Polling Unit or Booth, in Amansea Community, Awka North Local Government Area, the number of the so-called “registered voters” was jerked up from the statutory 500 voters per polling booth to 5,427 “registered voters”. In Umuogbe-Village Square Polling booth and Udoka Primary School Polling booths 1& 2, in Achalla Community, Awka North Local Government Area, 1,764; 1,629; and 1,868 “registered voters” were created, contrary to statutory 500 voters per polling booth. The law is that where a polling booth is found to be over-populated, extra polling booths should be created to maintain the status quo.
Similar inflated figures are also found in Ayamelum, Oyi, Anambra East, Anambra West and Ogbaru Local Government Areas, which are all river-line areas. Some polling booths in some communities were completely disenfranchised with records of zero registered voters. For instance, in the Community Primary School, Igbokenyi and Aniocha Town Hall Polling Units in Olumbanasa-Ode Community, Anambra West Local Government Area of Anambra State, zero registered voters were recorded.
Also in the same roguish voters’ register being bandied about by INEC, we came across thousands of fake names with blank passport photographs. We also saw thousands of others bearing “photo not found” inscription. Many names and their passport photographs were duplicated with same credentials. Our investigations further revealed that in order to cover up the monumental illegalities, INEC reportedly hired passport photographers so that they could surrender their clients’ passport photographs for them to be attached with the coded fake names. Thousands of passport photographs were also reported to have been detached from the community-based and faith- based organisations’ almanacs and affixed beside fake names’ columns in the INEC’s voters’ register. INEC’s paid agents and its collaborating political parties and their agents are reportedly going about in the rural communities, forcing the unsuspecting bearers of voters’ cards to release their voters’ card numbers as well as their recent passport photographs. The reason for this despicable act is still very sketchy, though the dummy being sold to them by these electoral criminals is that the exercise is to “ascertain those who would “vote” for them in the said poll”.

INEC’s Alleged Rigging Options:
Considering the fact that Nigeria’s INEC reportedly has in the history of election rigging in Nigeria, been seconded only by the defunct National Election Commission of Nigeria (NECON), headed by Chief Dagogo Jack, which mid-wifed the late General Sani Abacha’s “five fingers of a leprous hand” (roguish transition process), it is our repetition that INEC is the most incompetent and dependent government agency in Nigeria. And as such, anybody expecting a credible, popular, free and fair governorship poll from INEC may have mistaken purgatory to be heaven. As a result, reliable sources in the INEC’s strong room are of the firm view that the Commission might have designed the following rigging options:
1. Sweeping Rigging Style:
This involves the repetition of the 2007 method, whereby the larger chunk of the bogus and roguish “2.1million votes”, which the Commission says it has in its present roguish voters’ register, will be allocated to its favoured candidate in, some say either Labour Party, or PDP, or PPA, or HOPE parties. The sources further revealed that in the INEC’s rigging chart lies four political parties. They allegedly are: Peoples Democratic Party, which still leads other three, Labour Party, which comes second, Progressive People’s Alliance, which comes third and Hope Democratic Party, which emerges fourth. The four parties reportedly have their common ancestry rooted in the PDP.
On the other hand, only two political parties make the INEC’s free and fair election chart. The two are: All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Action Congress (AC). This option is the least to be considered by INEC and can only be considered in the event of the failure of the Commission’s four rigging options.
2. “Let-us-rig-it-in-the Field” Option”:
This involves allowing voting to go on in some polling booths evenly, while other designated polling booths are hijacked and relocated to secret places as mentioned. It is also called “creation of flying polling booths”, whereby in an electoral ward with five polling booths, for instance, two or three may exist on election day, while the remaining two may be relocated to a hotel or private residence, where procured fake voters will be asked to vote and leave at once. Party agents from the statutorily required number may be bought over so as to endorse FormEC8As, which are the most vital of the INEC’s election results’ computation forms. The method whereby one person is hired to thumb-print as many ballot papers as possible is becoming out-fashioned owing to forensic super- highway.
3. Let-us-do-it-Idi-Osi-Way Option:
It was first experimented in the governorship rerun poll of 2009 in Ekiti State of Nigeria, and this is the most advanced form of election rigging introduced by INEC in Nigeria. It is widely believed to be borne out of years of research by the “experts of the graveyard” allegedly recruited by the Commission. Among them are alleged mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, geographers, and computer scientists. This advanced option involves voting in the majority of the local government areas or voting centers.
For instance, voting may be allowed in 17, out of the 21 local government areas in Anambra State. Polling booths with over-bloated “registered voters” will be marked by INEC for vote-inflation. Also, in an electoral ward with five polling booths, three polling booths may be allowed to exist, while the remaining two may be relocated to off-the-scene locations nearby, where make-up votes may be produced for the INEC’s alleged favoured candidate. In the remaining four local government areas, vote-allocation may be the order of the day so as to ensure that its alleged favoured candidate gets the highest number of votes (dominated by dead votes), after securing one-quarter (¼ ) of the total votes cast in two-thirds (2/3) of the entire local government areas of the State.
In the area of “sweeping-rigging” option, many of the registered voters who may come out to vote may be turned back deliberately, on the grounds that their names are not in the voters’ register, even when they have valid or authentic voters’ cards. The sweeping election riggers may also have held a view that through the “voters’ card-back-back” method, the Election Day might witness low turnout of voters, which would make it possible for their favoured candidate’s bogus and roguish results to be written on a table without much hitch. Instances are too numerous to be mentioned, Your Excellency!
Conditions (roadmap) Upon Which the Anambra Governorship Election May be Credible:
Your Excellency sir, for Anambra governorship poll to be credible and universally acceptable, the following measures must be put in place:
1. The so-called“2.1million registered voters”, or 1,814,127 registered voters” (these two figures emanated from INEC) which INEC claims to exist in its current voters’ register, must not be used in any manner as a benchmark for the poll. INEC must accept that 70 per cent or 1.4million of the “2.1million” or 60 per cent of the “1.8million” names being paraded in the register, are fictitious names and names of the dead. Any votes that originate from such names amount to dead votes or votes of the dead, fossils, trees, windows and doors, and domestic animals. It is a taboo to equate non-living objects and animals with human beings. Out of the State’s estimated two million eligible voters, about 35 per cent or 700,000 of them are genuinely registered. About 100,000 of this figure are further disenfranchised by INEC through the act of seizure of voters’ cards. The remaining 65 per cent or about 1.4 million or 1.1million eligible voters are disenfranchised by the Commission.
2. INEC must accept manageably that between 500,000 and 700,000 genuinely registered voters, and not “2.1million” or “1.8million” registered voters” exist in its voters’ register. And that the conduct of the said poll must be based on this circumstantially authenticated figure.
3. INEC must acknowledge that under normal circumstances, out of the said 500,000 to 700,000 believed to be authentic registered voters, and between 300,000 to 400,000 voters are expected to turn out on Election Day to cast their votes. This figure may appreciate or depreciate depending on the prevailing circumstances. Therefore, it is expected that 300,000 to 400,000 voters will be heading to 4,653 polling booths in Anambra State on Election Day. Governors Peter Obi and Adams Oshiomhole of Anambra and Edo States are governing their States with 240,000 votes and 195,000 votes respectively, which they garnered from credible voters.
4. The 24 to 25 governorship candidates must share the 300,000 to 400,000 votes, because even the most unpopular among them must have a vote. No candidate will be expected to win the poll with more than 200,000 votes if the voters’ turnout is 300,000 votes or 300,000 votes if it is 400,000 voters. Any candidate that is declared winner based on the current bogus and roguish voters’ register of “2.1 million” or “1.8million” voters” is a fraudulent winner of a roguish election. The instant case was the allocation of “1.006million votes” to a PDP governorship candidate in the 2007 court-invalidated governorship poll in Anambra State whom INEC said won the poll.
5. Because of the brazen illegalities and anomalies inherent in the INEC’s current voters’ register, the Commission must adopt “operation show your permanent or temporary voters’ cards” (with the bearer’s pictorial inscription) and use it in the said poll. The brazenly abused method of cross-checking the voter’s credentials in the voters’ register must be set aside. This method has reportedly been included by the Commission as a rigging strategy to further disenfranchise voters’ card bearers at polling booths.
6. All the 326 electoral wards and 4,653 polling booths in the State must be made public for proper verification and easy location. All “flying polling booths” must be abolished and authentic or non-flying ones made traceable. Voting must not be allowed in areas other than statutorily designated areas. There must be no voting in private residences, hotels, bushes and other hideouts before or on the Election Day.
7. Sensitive and non-sensitive electoral materials, especially INEC’s FormEC8As must be adequately and timorously provided at all voting centers.
8. The “sweeping-rigging”, “let-us-rig-it-in-the-field” and “let-us-do-it-the-Idi-Osi-way” methods, which are being suspected must be discarded and popular, free and fair method strictly subscribed to.
9. INEC must not engage in “voting-before-voting” rigging strategy, whereby its hired agents are made to engage in massive thumb-printing of ballot papers and stuffing of ballot boxes in private residences, hotels, and other hidden/unauthorised places before the voting day and where some accredited political party agents are procured to enter the roguish results in the INEC’s FormEC8As and sign as authentic party agents. All the polling booths with over-bloated or inflated (fictitious) names other than the statutory 500 registered voters per polling booth must not be allowed to form part of the Commission’s voters’ register for the said poll.

Further Observations:
Critics from far and near have continued to raise credibility questions over the appointment of Chief Josiah Uwazuruonye as the new Resident Electoral Commissioner for Anambra State. He is expected to conduct the poll proper. His critics had alleged that he has a marriage link with the governorship candidate of the Labour Party in the said coming poll. In fact, the national Vice Chairman of the PDP in Southeast, Nigeria, Mr. Olisa Metuh recently joined in making the allegation. If this allegation holds water, certainly, the poll suffers further credibility problem. It is our position that the said new Resident Electoral Commissioner should be removed with immediate effect and replaced with a seemingly impartial REC who will conduct the said poll credibly.
Similar allegations have been raised as per the integrity and impartiality of members of the so-called “Anambra 2010 Governorship Election Monitoring and Observation Board”, which was constituted and inaugurated by INEC’s Professor Maurice Iwu. The instant case is the allegation that a top member of the Board, who is an official of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), is a sympathiser of the governorship candidate of the Action Congress. A cross section of the Nigerian Civil Society Community has also described some members of the Board as “conformists and dependents”.
Another top member of the Board who is a senior legal practitioner from Edo State of Nigeria was reportedly caught red-handed by security agents in Edo State during the 2007 governorship election in the State, snatching ballot box allegedly for the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to the extent that his requests for SANship (Senior Advocate of Nigeria) in 2008 and 2009 were denied based on petitions allegedly written against him by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, governor of Edo State, Nigeria. Most of the so-called “Board Members” are pro-establishment and pro-electoral roguery. Therefore, any reports emanating from them should be regarded as the handiwork of the “baptisers of electoral illegalities”, and such reports must be disregarded.

Our Fears:
While it is appreciated that there has been near-zero pre-election violence in Anambra State, fears have reached a crescendo to the effect that if care is not taken, the State may not escape from election and post-election violence. Seventy percent of the factors that may cause the said violence may be caused by the manner with which INEC conducts the poll, while thirty percent may come from politicians’ inordinacy and desperation to capture power.

The Consequences of Election Rigging in Nigeria:
It is important to inform Your Excellency that election rigging has been responsible for Nigeria’s socio-economic woes since 1964. It was the brazen rigging of the 1964 regional elections that led to the first military coup in Nigeria in 1966, which eventually led to the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970), in which over one million people died and over two million others were made homeless.
The brazen rigging of the 1983 general elections in Nigeria led to coming to power of the military dictatorship in December 1983. The manipulation of the 1993 presidential election adjudged freest and fairest locally and internationally, led to the socio-economic crises of deafening magnitude in Nigeria. The rigging of the 2003 general elections also led to bloody insurgency in the Niger Delta Region where the ballot box snatchers and armed political thugs were converted to armed criminal gang operatives. Also the white-collar criminals in the Niger Delta Region had in the past 10 years stomached about 70 percent of over N8trillion allocated to the region from the Federation Accounts.
The election rigging has thrown up an assemblage of white-collar criminals who had invaded Nigeria’s 13,700 elective offices with utter alacrity, rapaciously milking her commonwealth dry. Since 1999, over $400 billion had reportedly been stolen by members of the Nigeria’s white-collar criminal community. Over one trillion naira might have been spent in the post-election litigation in Nigeria since 2007, courtesy of INEC’s professorial title in election rigging.
Furthermore, Anambra State is one of the militarised States in Nigeria. Its fragile nature makes it prone to anarchy in the event of any election rigging by INEC and its collaborators in the election rigging industry. Anambra State of Nigeria may go up in flames again having done it in 2004, in election rigging-related crisis unless INEC is compelled to re-think and change.
We also have it on good authority that the 30,000 police personnel being proposed for deployment in Anambra State on election day by the Nigeria Police High Command is being contemplated for the purpose of abetting the election rigging, which has been programmed to favour the candidate of a ruling party in Nigeria. The proposed deployment is other than ensuring peaceful, participatory, free and fair governorship poll. We prayerfully and respectfully urge Your Excellency to prevail on Nigerian security authorities led by the Inspector General of Police to ensure that the security forces do not become the instruments of election rigging, stuffing of ballot boxes and snatching of same, election violence, voters’ intimidation, illegal voting in un-authorised places, et cetera