18 Mar 2006 |
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 In his inaugural address as the Governor of Anambra state, Peter Obi struck a resonant note when he declared that "...in the final outcome, there is no victor, no vanquished. Instead, Anambra state is the winner". Since he was declared the rightful and legitimate winner of the April 19, 2003 Gubernatorial election in Anambra state by a Court of Appeal in Enugu, Obi has refused the temptation to sound triumphant or gloat at the misfortune of the man that he is succeeding. By saying that there is "no victor, no vanquished", he echoes General Yakubu Gowon who had said precisely the same thing at the end of the three-year fratricidal civil war of 1967 -70 from which Igbos are yet to recover more than three decades later. Like Gowon, Obi is being diplomatic. He is playing the politician. He is learning. But as in the civil war, there are definitely winners and losers in the Anambra saga. It is a perfectly melodramatic enactment in which there is an unequal distribution on the emotional scale. Newspaper editors have been underscoring this pictorially by juxtaposing photographs of a smiling Obi with those of a sober-looking Chris Ngige, the man for whom every reference to the ides of March will no longer mean a reference to Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar but his own date with destiny. There are always winners and losers in any court case; the very nature of a legal dispute guarantees either victory or loss. And in the election petition case of Anambra, Peter Obi of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) is the man who came out of the courts smiling. What Ngige has lost, he has gained. What he, Obi, lost initially, he has regained. He fought a courageous battle; he remained steadfast; he kept faith. In a country like Nigeria, where the powers-that-be decide which court rulings to obey or not, where the Presidency or even a political party could overrule a court of law, the circumstances of the politics in Anambra under Ngige's leadership made Obi's victory possible. If he had lost the case, he probably would have borne the disappointment for the rest of his life. But here he is, lucky man, now a symbol of how occasionally the rule of law works in Nigeria. His name has gone down in history as the co-protagonist in one of the major events of Nigeria's Fourth Republic. If he is a religious man, Obi will point to this as a strong evidence of the ontology of God. He has even offered Chris Ngige a job as a consultant to his Government! The whole country will watch Peter Obi closely; the best that he can do is not to create any opportunity for nostalgia in Anambra. In a moving valedictory speech, full of cadence and equanimity, Ngige, the man whose tenure is now history, spoke like a man without a moral burden. He did so from a distance, having left for London, a day after the Court ruling. Three aspects of his parting shot are noteworthy: his announcement that he is leaving N12 billion in the treasury. Second his tongue-in-cheek lecture about court rulings, and the rule of law. Hear him: "...people in authority should endeavour to obey court rulings, no matter how unpalatable they may be. Doing otherwise is certainly an open invitation to anarchy and lawlessness and our nation can ill afford it." Listen to Ngige: do you need to be told that he was addressing President Obasanjo and the PDP? He was more or less telling his enemies who never allowed him a moment's respite: "look, I am better than you, I respect the court of law. I am a more civilised person." The only caveat is that in the circumstances, he did not have much of a choice. The game was up. It was time to bow out. Ngige may have lost in the court of law. He may have begun a short walk into a season of loneliness. But he will be remembered as a man with the heart of a giant. He swore to an oath in a shrine, pledged allegiance to a Godfather and benefited from an open robbery of the electorate, but when he realised the sin that he had committed, he chose to obey the dictates of his conscience. He has been sacrificed, he will no longer be called "your Excellency", his wife may now have to go to the market and haggle over the price of akpu like all other women, but Ngige won't have to hide his face in the company of men. He is a winner because he has learnt a lesson about himself: if in the future he is required to swear to cheat so he may enjoy some advantages, he will be reluctant to do so. He congratulated his successor. He enjoined the people of Anambra to give him all the support that he deserves. He said: "I urge all Anambrarians to have faith in God and to support the new administration." There are many other ex-Governors who left office in happier circumstances who refused to be this magnanimous. Dim Odimegwu Ojukwu, the APGA leader, has been basking in the glory of Obi's victory. The APGA National Executive members have also suddenly found in Obi's emergence, a fresh shot of aphrodisiac for their ailing party. In Anambra, the politics of Godfatherism seems to be woven into the culture of politics in the state. Mbadinuju, Governor from 1999-2003, could not function in part because he was busy battling with difficult Godfathers. In the end, they got him out of the government and the party. Ngige was kicked out also because he refused to listen to his Godfathers. Peter Obi must be on his guard; his own Godfathers may be no different in terms of aspiration. He must refuse the offer of a dinner with the Devil. He must refuse the temptation to enter into deals. He must learn from the mistakes that Ngige made. Chris Uba, Ngige's estranged Godfather is likely to be interested in what happens in a post-Ngige era. Does he control the Anambra House of Assembly that is dominated by PDP members? Or will the lawmakers turn themselves into Peter Obi's Godfathers knowing that he is at their mercy?. How Peter Obi juggles the rather delicate situation in which he has found himself would be the true test of his abilities. Or will he join the PDP, and create a moral crisis of his own? The principal loser in the Ngige case is of course, the Peoples Democratic Party. It has been exposed as a party without character or conscience. In at least two states, Oyo and Anambra, we have been informed that the party rigged the elections. Both incidents vindicate the ANPP Presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari who had insisted, and whose claims were partly upheld by the Supreme Court that the Presidential election of 2003 was flawed. Ngige is out, but questions are now being raised about President Obasanjo's own election which took place on the same day. When figures in all the contested states are reviewed, President Obasanjo may still boast of majority votes, but recent revelations about electoral fraud place a moral question on his own election. Where is the shrine where Uba and Ngige swore to an oath? Before now, it used to be a dreaded shrine. Ngige has demystified that shrine by refusing to honour its rituals. The Okija component of Anambra politics has been exposed to ridicule. Political Godfathers who enslave persons with Satanic rituals now know their method has its limits. The other losers are the beneficiaries of the Ngige government. Interestingly, many of them showed up at Obi's inauguration. This is the same man that they did not want to be seen with only a month ago. They went to his inauguration as spectators. They became funny specimens of the ephemerality of power, the transient nature of all things. Former Deputy Governor Chief Ugochukwu Nwankwo was at the occasion but "he sat somewhere far from Obi's seat". The Punch added: "...other officials of the Ngige administration could not get a seat. They walked about the venue of the inauguration unattended to until they left the place. A particular female commissioner who is pregnant was offered a seat at an uncomfortable position. On many occasions, she was forced to stand up for people to pass by where she sat." These were men and women who less than a week ago called the shots in Anambra state! They could not even get decent seats! They were hanging around. If their pockets and bags had been searched, I bet that copies of their resumes could have been stumbled upon! Nigerians are like that. Anambra contractors are already adjusting to the new situation; the same traditional rulers who used to encourage Ngige have all moved their loyalty to Peter Obi. Nobody should blame traditional rulers. They belong to the Any Government In Power Party (AGIP). I have even seen newspaper adverts congratulating Peter Obi. I agree that the people of Anambra are the main winners. Their emotions have been stretched to the limits in the last seven years of democratic rule. Their state has remained a theatre of political intrigues and instability. Ngige, the man that they didn't elect but who got to power by the help of a vicious PDP machinery became a living paradox in their hands. The man performed. The one they voted for has now regained his mandate. They may not know what tomorrow will bring but the men and women who played games with their votes in 2003 have been exposed; their secrets have become public knowledge. They can breathe a sigh of relief in the hope that it shall be well with their state. As for INEC, that is clearly a vanquished party in the Anambra debacle. Professor Maurice Iwu and his colleagues should hide their heads in shame. For Peter Obi however, the struggle is far from over. He must return to the courts to seek an interpretation of Section 180 of the 1999 Constitution. If Ngige exercised a stolen mandate for three years, it means that technically, his government lacked a basis in law, but does that make all that he did null and void? Can his three years be erased and Peter Obi can start on a clean slate, the four years that he is originally entitled to? Obi went to the court to get justice, would the restriction of his tenure to the remaining 14 months of Ngige's administration not amount to half-justice? Can the truth be half or whole? Is truth divisible for the purpose of convenience? What is the intention of the framers of Section 180 of the Constitution? If the law-givers did not contemplate a defective Electoral Act 2002 and obstructive rules of court which would result in the delay of the determination of election petitions, who should bear the cost? Obi's victory at the Court of Appeal has raised this additional issue of statutory interpretation in relation to Section 180 (2). Lawyers have been quibbling over it on the pages of newspapers. The matter should be taken to the Supreme Court for interpretation, although the meaning of the Section 180 appears plain and evident. The initiation of that process may well facilitate the inclusion in the Electoral Act before the National Assembly of specific provisions to stop endless litigation in election matters such that may result in the kind of embarrassment that, all things considered, the Anambra case amounts to.
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