Okori: I’m Confident the Election Tribunal Will Do Justice to My Petition
Chief Inibehe Okori was the All Progressives Congress senatorial candidate for Akwa Ibom North West senatorial district at the March 28 elections. Okori, who lost the election to the incumbent governor and candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, Godswill A
On his evaluation of the conduct of the March 28 presidential and National Assembly elections in Akwa Ibom North West (Ikot Ekpene) senatorial district.
You are all aware that INEC fixed March 28, 2015 for the presidential and National Assembly elections. They also released the guidelines which I am sure all of you are aware of, starting with the accreditation which was to take place using the card reader machines. I got to my polling unit on time and I was accredited. Findings from all the agents across the senatorial district showed that the card reader worked till about 1:30pm when by INEC regulations, they were to stop accreditation. However, immediately after the accreditation ended, all my agents reported that there was a plan by the PDP, using thugs throughout the 10 local government areas, to pack the result sheets. In the first instance, the result sheets were not available. The rigging was initiated by INEC on behalf of the PDP because if you recall, INEC before now had advertised for positions that are open to adhoc staff of INEC and people were supposed to have applied online, shortlisted, screened and trained for the purpose of conducting the presidential and National Assembly elections on March 28 and, subsequently, the governorship and state House of Assembly elections on April 11.
A day to that election, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Akwa Ibom State changed the list and took the list of people that were not trained that were mainly members of the PDP and posted as ad-hoc staff, made up mainly of Supervisory Presiding Officers (SPOs) and Presiding Officers (POs). Under the regulation, the sensitive and non-sensitive materials were to be given to the SPOs, which were all PDP members. They took out all the result sheets from every polling unit and kept it aside, took it to PDP members’ houses where the coalition was done. There was rigging of monumental proportion. We did campaign in 108 wards of Ikot Ekpene senatorial district; we had an overwhelming support of the masses. At every ward that we went to, what the people were interested in knowing was how their votes would be protected, because if it is voting, they will vote for us. With the assurance we got from INEC that with the card reader, rigging, hijacking of ballot boxes, ballot stuffing were a thing of the past, how would one have done something else than follow the regulation of the electoral umpire, which in this case is INEC. But, unfortunately, the reverse was the case and today you have election results that were declared where there was no collation or where no election took place at all. As law abiding citizens of Akwa Ibom North West senatorial district, Akwa Ibom State and Nigeria, the election results having been declared, we have gone to the tribunal to seek redress. We have filed our matter at the tribunal. We have a very strong case and we believe that the tribunal and the judiciary, being the last hope of the common man, will dispense justice and we are very sure that with the strong case we have, we will redeem the stolen mandate.
court’s integrity.
I am not scared. I don’t have such fears at all. Rather, I have absolute confidence in the ability of the tribunal to deliver justice. The tribunal works according to the case you lay before them. The foundation of your case is what the tribunal will look at. The tribunal will not go and invent what you did not bring before it. So in some instances, we must be fair to the tribunal, that it is what is before the judge that he or she is going to adjudicate on. He is not going to adjudicate on things that are not before him. That is why in this case we have brought to the tribunal all the facts of the matter. It is left to them to decide. But for me, I have absolute confidence in the tribunal that justice will be done.
The issue of the incumbent government influencing the tribunal does not come in. You would have noticed that the constitution amendments made it possible for the judiciary to have direct funding through First Line Charge. Why administrative staff of the judiciary went on strike was because they wanted direct funding and that has been effected in most of the states. So the judiciary henceforth is going to be absolutely independent. And when you are also talking about government of the day influencing the judiciary, you must realise there is a change in the country. From May 29, we are going to have an APC government under the leadership of General Buhari and for those of you who know what he represents, even from the day he was declared president-elect, you have started seeing changes in the country automatically, even without his being sworn in yet. So expect that these changes will follow through because it is the leader that affects the led. The whole country is looking up to the leadership, frankness, straightforwardness, and uprightness of Buhari and Buhari, being the head of the executive arm of government that directs the day-to-day running of government, the legislature and judiciary will follow suit.
Basically, I am not asking for much. I am asking for my rights, which principally border on the fraudulent elections that were conducted. There was no election, as you are all aware of. If there were no elections, what is expected is that you should prove that there were no elections. We have put before the tribunal sufficient evidence to show that there were no elections in Ikot Ekpene senatorial district from the result sheets, which we have gotten, all the Certified True Copies, to electronic videos and footages of what transpired in homes of PDP members across the 10 local government areas in the senatorial district and to pictorials of events that took place on election day. The agents’ testimonies are also included. So, basically, we are asking that the election should be nullified. I am calling for a fresh election; that is number one. Number two, we are saying that there was non-compliance with the Electoral Act by the PDP, which had no candidate for Akwa Ibom North West senatorial district. Godswill Akpabio was never a candidate for the election. The Nigerian Atlas of constituencies and section 71 sub-section 2 of the constitution, which states very clearly that INEC will delineate constituencies in this country, show clearly that Akpabio was not nominated for Akwa Ibom North West senatorial district. If the petition goes through, he won’t be a candidate to compete with me. I wish Akpabio was a candidate because I really wanted real voting. If we conduct real elections, he won’t score 20 per cent of the votes in Ikot Ekpene senatorial district.
The judiciary is made up of men of integrity. You could recall that a lot of judicial officers have lost their jobs in the last one year and I want to believe that everybody and every judiciary officer will be very careful. But the bulk still stops at the table of the press, because this democracy we are enjoying today would not have been there without the press that fought for it to come to pass in 1999. If the media do the same work that I know the media to be excellent at, we should be able to police what the tribunal members are doing. But let us not cast aspersion on their persons before they even arrive to start their work. The press should do their work and allow the tribunal do theirs accordingly.
The laws governing the conduct of REC’s are very clear. The INEC chairman has said that if anybody is found guilty of abusing INEC laws and guidelines, the person will be punished for it. Jega even announced that somebody was already being tried for electoral fraud. So where facts are available to the media, it is your job to bring it to limelight to help correct the system. Jega has also said no matter how highly placed a person is, if he or she commits an electoral offence, the person would face the full weight of the law. The REC in Akwa Ibom is not above the law and at the right time issues will come up. For instance, from the card reading analysis, about 600, 000 were accredited and you went and declared a result of more than a million. This is enough for you to prosecute the man who conducted the election.