By Collins Opurozor

In one fell swoop, the Election Petitions Tribunal in Nasarawa, on Sunday, September 10, sacked two members of the House of Representatives from Imo State. They are Jonas Okeke for Okigwe South and Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere for Ideato.

The summary of the setback of these two Lawmakers is that the primaries on May 27, 2023 at Aladimma Mall in Owerri which produced them as PDP candidates should have held within their respective constituencies.

We, therefore, have it on the Court’s authority that their nominations were a nullity, given that the extant provisions of the Electoral Act, particularly on the question of appropriate venue for primaries as stipulated in Section 87 (9) of the Electoral Act, were grossly violated.

If this law had been applied stricto sensu, the PDP in Imo State ought to have only three validly-nominated candidates in the last General Elections, namely Uche Onyeagocha for Imo East (Owerri) Senatorial District, Ikenna Elezieanya for Owerri Federal Constituency and Solomon Anukam for Owerri Municipal State Constituency, in view of the fact that the thirty-seven (37) other candidates were, in patent breach of the Electoral Act, elected at a single location in Owerri.

Recall that on the strength of the above, the Supreme Court had on January 13, 2023, nullified the primary election that produced Jones Onyereri as the PDP candidate for Imo West (Orlu) Senatorial District.

Similarly, on January 20, 2023, the Federal High Court in Abuja also sacked Albert Chibuzo Agulanna, PDP candidate for Aboh Mbaise/Ngor Okpala Federal Constituency. The same reason of improper venue was adduced by all these courts.

What should necessarily agitate the public is the reason that PDP in Imo State railroaded itself into a legal booby trap by bypassing the unambiguous provisions of the Electoral Act and organizing all of its Primaries at one central location.

To properly explain this, it is important to understand the events of April 30, 2022 and the chaos, violence, theft, brutality and abuse of power brought upon the ill-fated party in Imo by agents of the National Secretary, Senator Samdaddy Anyanwu.

On that day, the scheduled ward congresses of the party to elect the 3-man adhoc delegates in the 305 wards of the State could not hold because those who were sent from Abuja for the exercise by the National Secretary willfully stole and made away with the result sheets for Ideato North and South LGAs. This was the most audacious move by Wadata to impose an anointed candidate on the party in Ideato. And war broke out at the Secretariat of the party in Owerri.

The Samdaddy-induced war was so dirty and so total that it took the intervention of the officials of the Department of State Services to arrest the situation. The retrieved result sheets for twenty-five LGAs were taken by the DSS for safety. And the crisis continued thereafter.

This incident was reported in Vanguard Newspaper of May 1, 2022 under the caption: “Imo PDP Ward Congress:  Tension as angry youths capture panel over missing result sheets”.

Scared of the imminent recurrence of the disappearance of result sheets, the leadership of the party in Imo came up with the idea of holding all the party’s primaries at one venue in Owerri. They reasoned that such arrangement would make for a better control over the process. They had no illusion about the fact that allowing any panel to  move out of Owerri for any other location would mean that the panel would simply disappear and resurface in Samdaddy’s office with results already written.

So, they wrote INEC, stating that they were not sure that the materials and personnel for their primaries would be safe if deployed to the appropriate constituencies. It could now be understood how unsafe and insecure Samdaddy has made everything and everyone in Imo PDP.

Initially, Kanu Nwankwo Sports Center in Owerri was selected, but eventually the party settled for Aladimma Mall. Unknown to them, they were running from one danger only to fall into another.

What is deeply mischievous is for anyone to ignore Samdaddy and blame this tragedy that has befallen Imo PDP on anyone else. That will be the depth of self-deceit. In short, it would mean telling a story from the middle.

Those who speak ill of the Judiciary over these issues and suggest any form of compromise on the side of the Courts, know they are only grandstanding. Without interrogating the circumstances that laid the foundation for the catastrophic disqualification of PDP candidates, whatever anyone is saying is mere gossip, nothing more.

The misadventure of Samdaddy in PDP is the next most cruel thing in history after Cain murdered Abel. Those, though very few, who still lend any support to him must always remember the saying, that he who rides on the back of a tiger will end up in the belly of the tiger.

It may interest everyone to know that when Samdaddy finally became the Governorship Candidate of the PDP in Imo State, he visited the Secretariat of his party in Owerri for a reconciliatory meeting with members of the State Working Committee. The long and short of every thing he could say in the meeting was to ask for forgiveness, explaining that all the atrocities, brigandage, bellicosity and ravages visited on the Party through his unbridled quest for domination, including the looming disqualification of about thirty-seven candidates of his party, were a “survival strategy”.

This clearly speaks to the real character of Samdaddy: a man who will never give a hoot about destroying everything in pursuit of personal survival. This is a complete reversal to everything a leader should be. Leaders are altruistic. Leaders are compassionate. Leaders are not selfish survivalists.

Essentially, democracy itself faces grave danger if people of Samdaddy’s ilk are allowed to gain some significance in the political firmament.

To be sure, the revolution that has now engulfed Imo PDP is as a result of the determination of the leaders and stakeholders of the party to resist the authority of Samdaddy who they all know as the architect of the Party’s doom.

The constituencies affected by these verdicts, as well as the supporters of the affected candidates, should therefore pick themselves up, dust themselves off and prepare to repay Samdaddy in his own coin on November 11, 2023. They must never allow anyone to deceive them. Samdaddy is the aggressor. He is the bringer of every calamity that has befallen them. If the sweat of your brow and the strength of your brawn had gone into building Imo PDP, it is against natural justice for you to sit by and watch. You must stand and be counted among your party men and women who have resolved to chant on election day: “Never Shall Our Common Enemy, Samdaddy, Rule Over Us!”

A man that could ruin an institution like Imo PDP just to be called “Governorship Candidate”, what do you think he will spare in his morbid quest for vainglory? Is there anything he will fail to destroy to keep Imo to himself and convert it to his personal fiefdom if by mistake (God forbid!) he is allowed to govern? Nothing!

To know how Imo State under Samdaddy will certainly be, take a look at Imo PDP which has been damaged beyond redemption, now heading irreversibly to its terminus.

But the God of Imo State will not allow such to befall His people.

Opurozor, until recently, a member of Imo PDP State Working Committee, is the Special Adviser to the Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodinma, on Strategic Communications.