It is more than a year since the last elections were conducted. Only last month, the first anniversary of the elections was celebrated with pomp and pageantry to indicate that the machinery of government had effectively been working in the last one year. It is not for nothing that the results of the elections in many parts of the country were hotly disputed. The elections were alleged to have been marred by irregularities in many states, this, notwithstanding, many candidates decided not to challenge the results so that they will not, by their action, heat up the polity and in the process, endanger our fragile democratic experiment. In most states of the South-West, the influential social-political group, Afenifere, and Alliance for Democracy, AD, decided not to contest their loss at the polls despite the fact that it lost monumentally in a zone which even its rivals admitted was its stronghold.
However, it has been twists and turns concerning the matter of who won the election in some other parts of the country, a situation which has negatively affected the conduct of business of government in the affected areas. One of such areas is Anambra State where the decision of the PDP to substitute the names of its candidates in the senatorial election, a decision that was later reversed, has denied the people of the state adequate representation in the senate since the second national assembly in this republic was inaugurated.
The matter is still a subject of litigation. The Anambra North Senatorial District election has pitted Emma Obi Anosike against Mrs Joy Emordi, both of the PDP. Strangely, the issue is not who won the senatorial election on April 12,2003 in the district but who should have been fielded for the polls between Anosike and Emordi, by the PDP.
Emordi filed the suit before the election petition sitting at Awka presided over by Justice G. Nabaruma against Anosike, who was declared winner of the election, on the grounds that she was the person who should have been the PDP candidate in the election and not Anosike. But Anosike’s grounds of defence before the tribunal, among others, were that he emerged the PDP candidate for the April 12,2003 national assembly elections in Anambra North Senatorial District after he was screened and cleared and in the primary election conducted in the seven local government areas that constituted the district, he came first while Emordi, the petitioner, placed third.
“On the publication of the primary elections, the PDP submitted to INEC a letter dated 10-2-2003 together with a list of its successful candidates for Anambra State. Senator Anisike was nominated for Anambra North Senatorial seat”, he said in his statement of defence. He continued: “Subsequently and out of the blues, the PDP sent a letter and a list dated 06-3-2003, titled substitution of Anambra State Nomination list of candidates and the letter clearly stating, “kindly accept the attached list for substitution of the earlier one”.
The candidates whose names were substituted without explanation protested and on the same day, the PDP sent another letter with the original list of candidates attached to INEC. The letter raed: “Re- Validation of Anambra State Nomination List of Candidates of 10th of February 2003 clearly stating, kindly accept the attached list of revalidation as it had earlier been submitted to your commission on the 10th of February 2003.This letter serves as our instruction for its revalidation”, he explained.
While Anosike pursued the processes that will lead to the April 12,2003 polls, Emordi went to court on the issue of he authentic list of candidates. Worried by Emordi’s suit, alongside otherss, pdp went to the federal high court, Abuja to compel INEC against tempering with its unfettered discretion to nominate candidates of its choice. Election concluded, the returning officer, Dr. R. Aqwuna, made only one return of a candidate and that ws Anosike who was issued with form EC8E. INEC later invalidated some result which did not include Anosike’s. This of course paved the way for Emordi’s suit along with Honourable Ukachukwu and six others before an Enugu Federal High Court in which they sought an order to compel INEC to revalidate their form EC8E for senate and EC8E for House of Representatives.
Emordi equally filed a petition at the national assembly election tribunal Awka wherein she claimed to have contested the April 12 polls and was issued form EC8E with serial number 00000191 R. N. Agwu after having being declared winner. Strangely, the form EC8E with which Anosike was declared winner of the elction by INEC carried the same serial number. She claimed in the petition that her return was invalidated by inec through a press release and that the electoral body had no powers to cancel, withdraw or invalidate an already declared result. Emordi stated that INEC and its officials had no power to declare Anosike after the returning officer had duly declared her. In a nutshell, she asked the tribunal and the judgment of April 14,2003 filed by the PDP on its right to unfettered discretion to nominate candidates of its choice for election and upon which the party presented Anosike as its candidate in the April 12, 2003 senatorial election.
INEC countered the petitioner’s position on three grounds: That the PDP candidate who contested the election was Anosike and it was he who won. That Emordi was not a candidate at the polls, and That any form EC8E in her possession must have been mutilated or a name other than the one written on it fraudulently inserted.
During the trial, the returning officer insisted that it was Anosike to whom Form EC8E was issued as the winner and not Emordi, who he alleged to have inserted a forged Form EC8E at the tribunal. Anosike raised preliminary objections to the petition. He claimed that the tribunal members absented themselves from hearing and that apat from the chairman, no other member was consistent on the days evidence were led, witnesses cross-examined and documents tendered. This objection was over ruled. Anosike also contended that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction to entertain that petition because it was not presented by a candidate in the election but someone claiming to have been a candidate.
The petition, according to Anoske, was also faulty to the extent that, from the perspective of the petitioner, the petition was not filed against a candidate in the election since it was Emordi’s contention that he was not a candidate. He also averred that the tribunal was incompetent in looking into the petition because it was designed to decide who was the PDP candidate in the election, a matter that was clearly beyond the purview of an election tribunal. And to make mater worse, the PDP whose political interest as the owner of the prerogative to sponsor a candidate of her choice was not joined in the petition.
Notwithstanding the weight of evidence against Emordi, the tribunal delivered its judgment in her favour January 21, 2004. The tribunal held that she was the PDP candidate whose name had been substituted for Anosike’s who the tribunal claimed contested for election into the House of Representatives. This is not the only curious aspect of the judgment. Although all the five members sat while the judgment was delivered, it was undated and only three members signed. Anosike has since taken the matter to the court of Appeal, seeking for the following reliefs: The proceedings and judgement of the Tribunal a nullity because only the Chairman was consistent in sitting throughout the hearing and judgement. It is to be noted that although, the Constitution in Section 285(4) provides that the quorum of an election petition shall be the Chairman and two others, going by the provision of Section 28 of the Interpretation Act, the Chairman and the two other members must sit throughout the proceedings to confer legitimacy and validity on the proceedings; and that the petition is incompetent and should have been struck out against the backdrop of the preliminary objections highlighted above.
Aanosike averred that the tribunal in arriving at its decision among others ignored the unchallenged evidence of the constituency officer wit: -
(a)That Mrs. Emordi was not a candidate at the Election. (b)That theye did not issue her with any Declaration of Result Form EC8E.
(c)That the Form EC8E tendered by Emordi was forged.
These have inevitably raised this question: is the tribunal, through this act of omission or commission trying to frustrate Anosike from getting justice on a matter that is dear to his heart ?
