APGA’s governorship candidate in the 2003 general elections, Mr Peter Obi, has endorsed President Obasanjo’s position that Governor Chris Ngige did not win the election in the state. He faulted the claim by Ngige that he actually won the election.
Mr. Obi in a statement enjoined the people of Anambra to be patient because they are on the threshold of justice. His words: "Immediately after the INEC announced what it called the result of the Anambra governorship elections of April 19, 2003, the people erupted in indignation at what they rightly saw as barefaced robbery. They knew that I, Peter Obi, the APGA candidate, had won the election fair and square. They knew that Ngige, the man fraudulently declared the "winner" had not even come a distant second in the ballot.
"Nigerians cannot have forgotten already that the civil liberty and human rights groups who had accredited observers in all polling stations in Anambra State averred that the governorship election was massively rigged. We cannot have forgotten that the labour unions, and the Christian churches in Anambra, not just Catholics, not just Anglicans, not just Pentecostalists, but the aggregated Christian church, under the aegis of Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, pronounced the gubernatorial elections a monumental fraud. Even the European Union observers specifically mentioned Anambra State as a terrible case of electoral fraud.
"I challenged Ngige’s "election" at the Anambra State Elections Petitions Tribunal and, nearly two years later the case lingers. Anambra State has known neither peace nor development under Ngige. The long-suffering people of Anambra whose mandate to me was stolen have continued to be subjected to negative publicity, wanton destruction of lives and public property, and negation of all known democratic principles.
"It is a welcome development that President Obasanjo has finally put a finger on the Anambra problem. This dispensation of robbers has been at the root of the upheavals in Anambra State. Democracy is basically the government of the people by the people and for the people. But in Anambra State, as the President has rightly observed, the people are reeling from the excesses of bandits in a stolen mandate."
