It might seem odd to a neutral observe that the Supreme Court would impose a governor on the people of Rivers State, and of all the people they could thus impose, would choose a man who was not even on the ballot, and thus received no votes. But this was consistent with the Fourth Republic Supreme Court's interpretation of the function of the judicial branch of government.
The Supreme Court in the Fourth Republic has acted as though its constitutional role was that of a referee officiating a bout between various boxers. We the citizens, like the audience at a boxing match, play no part in the actual contest; we just watch to see who "wins", with victory determined by the brute strength of the pugilists in the ring. The Court has not acted to give we the people the right to use our votes to pick the contestant we want to win; if anything the fact that we do not vote means brute strength is the only recourse for political contestants (you cannot survive in Nigerian politics if you are not tainted by violence, corruption, fraud, and several other vices). It isn't even much of a spectacle for the viewing public, because most of the fights are "fixed" anyway.
But seriously, the Nigerian Supreme Court has not upheld the constitutional rights of the citizens of the federal republic. Perhaps it does not think we have any rights. Perhaps it does not think it could enforce our rights even if it wanted to, and so serves the governing system to avoid falling afoul of it. Or perhaps the judiciary is part of the governing system, a system that has always been based on government chosen by "the few" and imposed on
"the many".
As the referee and arbitrator in this system, the Supreme Court has tried to moderate the disputes within "the few", while doing nothing to expand the franchise to "the many". The Rotimi Amaechi decision does not make sense democratically, constitutionally or legally, but it was never intended to. There was a set of parties in dispute (Celestine Omehia, Rotimi Amaechi, Seargent Awuse, etc), in dispute over the Rivers State governorship, none of whom was legitimately elected to the office of governor by the people of Rivers State. Since the option of having the people of Rivers State choose a governor was ruled out, the Supreme Court as arbitrator was left to decide which of these unelected disputing parties should be given the prize. The language of the Court's verdict was flowery, but in simple layman's language, the Court acknowledged the fact that the People's Democratic Party in the Fourth Republic has the same right of conquest over Rivers State that the British imperialists had over colonial Nigeria, and with it has the right to impose a governor, regardless of the people's wishes. If Rotimi Amaechi had been the PDP candidate, the PDP would have "engineered" a general election win for him, regardless of what the people wanted. Ipso facto, the Supreme Court decided that if it was going to resolve the separate Amaechi vs. Omehia dispute in favour of Amaechi, it might as well make him governor too.
Ta-da.
To truly understand the Supreme Court's interpretation of its role in the Fourth Republic, you have to study the fascinating case of Anambra State. The key ruling in this respect was the Supreme Court's 2007 verdict in the lawsuit filed by Dr Peter Obi, the Governor of Anambra, seeking to extend his term in office by three years. The significance of that 2007 verdict can only be fully comprehended by going back another 8 years to 1999 and the start of the Offor/Mbadinuju war.
Generally in Nigerian history, the men who hold visible political offices are in actuality the representatives of real power-brokers who prefer to operate behind the scenes. This is true of both military-led diarchies, and civilian-led administrations. For all the pomp and pageantry, the office-holders do not necessarily wield much actual power; indeed, one of many reasons Nigerian governments perform poorly is the fact that most of the "leaders" at all three tiers of government are not really "leaders" as such. None of them has a mandate to actually do anything. It is not just that we the people never gave them our permission to do anything, but that the power-brokers who impose them on the people invariably chose them for the part because they were perceived as unlikely to rock anyone's boat. Both military and civilian leaders come to office because a strong enough coalition of "interests" are comfortable with them as front-office representative; these office-holders spend their time in office trying to keep their initial coalition happy while expanding the coalition to make their hold on office more secure. Since the "coalitions" are comprised of Big Men whose prime interest lies in not rocking the systemic boat, Nigeria has become a country where there is a lot of motion, but very little movement.
The dominant theme of the Fourth Republic has been the wars waged between office-holders (in common parlance, they are "godsons") and the coalitions of interests who put the holders into office (colloquially, the "godfathers"). The biggest of these battles may have been the one waged at the federal executive level in the 2003-2007 term between President Olusegun Obasanjo and a phallanx of his former godfathers led by Vice-President Atiku Abubakar. On the other hand, perhaps the three overlapping "wars" waged in Anambra State between 1999 and 2010 takes the prize for most insidious godfather/godson war.
In 1999, Emeka Offor was the capo-da-tutti-capi of Anambra State's godfathers. He had been part of the political/economic/social coalition backing the presidency of the late General Sani Abacha, and as is the case with many Nigerian plutocrats (including the late Moshood Abiola), Offor's membership in the alliance was rewarded with economic benefits. In the concentric system of patron-client relationships that runs Nigeria, each player is simultaneously a client to someone else and the patron to clients of their own. As a client of Abacha's, Emeka Offor duly became one of the wealthiest men in Nigeria, which in turn made him the patron of the biggest network of godfathers (each with their own clients, who had clients of their, and so on) in Anambra State.
As of 1999, the close of the Abacha era (notwithstanding the brief Abdulsalami regime) Offor was the "decider" in Anambra State politics. He made Chinwoke Mbadinju governor in 1999, and filled the Anambra State Assembly with his clients.
Then Mbadinju turned against Offor, seeking to use the office of governor as a launch-pad (i.e. resource base) from which to build a new network of godfather/clients thus making him (Mbadinuju) the new capo of Anambra. And thus began a war.
There was violence, murder and intimidation, which is an extreme issue in an of itself. But beyond that, there was political paralysis, as Emeka Offor flexed his muscles and basically made it impossible for Mbadinuju to govern the state. The flaws in Nigeria's institutional and systemic structure have been seen and felt over the decades, but the power show in Anambra from 1999 to 2003 was something else. Any pretence that this was "government by the people" was well and truly exposed as farce.
Filth piled up in city streets, public sector salaries went unpaid, infrastructure decayed and violent crime soared. Desperate citizens welcomed vigilantes, with no one bothering to find out what proportion of the more than 1,000 victimes of lynchings were actually guilty of the crimes they were ostensibly lynched for; all you had to do to prove you were an effective vigilante is lynch random people. (EDITED 18-03-10: Read this story to understand the injustice of lynchings of alleged/accused/suspected criminals all over Nigeria. I understand the public's frustration with the police and judicial system, but that could be you or me who is falsely accused and then murdered without a chance to defend ourselves against the accusation.).
Mbadinuju took control of the most famous of the vigilante groups, the Bakassi Boys. Officially, the then-governor was using them in place of the police, who were, like all other public institions, rendered non-functional due to Emeka Offor's shutdown of governance. Unofficially, the Bakassi Boys became Mbadinju's enforcers, and were the prime suspects in the assassination of Barnabas Igwe, a leader of the Nigerian Bar Association in Anambra State, and his wife Amaka Igwe. The Igwes were unaffiliated to Emeka Offor, but were civil society critics of the Mbadinuju government; they were dragged from their car in broad daylight at a busy intersection and killed in full view of shocked bystanders and motorists by murderers who simply departed with no fear of judicial retribution.
The worst thing about the Offor/Mbadinuju war was its futility. After all the lives lost, property destroyed, an entire state left in limbo for four years ... neither man won the war. In fact, they both lost.
In 1999, retired General Olusegun Obasanjo was inaugurated first president of the Fourth Republic. As of 1999, many of Abacha's staunchest supporters had joined the All People's Party, but Obasanjo still maintained a low, non-threatening profile to the generality of godfathers in Nigeria in order to maintain their support for what was essentially a coronation in 1999.
Obasanjo had been jailed and nearly executed by Abacha, and fired by the desire for vengeance had launched into something of a vendetta against the late Abacha's family in his first term as a civilian president.
as such was in no mood to humour an Abacha loyalist like Emeka Offor.
Offor was at the height of his powers in 1999, but his power has always been based on his connection to the late Sani Abacha. By 2003, not only was Abacha long dead, his government history, but Nigeria's federal government had been presided over for four years by Olusegun Obasanjo, an implacable enemy of Abacha. was sworn in as Nigeria's president. Maybe in 1999 Obasanjo needed the support of as many leading godfathers as possible (including those from the Abacha-era) to become president, but by 2003 the comparative power relationships between the different Big Man cliques had changed. Many who had been Abacha-era titans were no longer quite as influential as they had once been. Many Abacha-era titans had aligned themselves together in the All Nigeria Peoples Party; when these Abacha-era giants started leaving the ANPP and joining the PDP, it was clear things had changed amidst the Big Men.
Politics in Nigeria is about profits, not principles, so there was no point for them in remaining on the losing team; alas, the financial desperation of it sometimes leads to zero-sum calculations and resultant violence. Arthur Nzeribe's move from the ANPP to the PDP sparked Ogbonnay Uche's move in the opposite direction; Uche couldn't stay in the PDP because Governor Achike Udenwa of Imo State gave Nzeribe a PDP Senatorial candidature he had promised to Uche to seal the deal. Uche had been Udenwa's chief confidante, enforcer and adjustant; as a new member of the ANPP, he made statements to the effect that Udenwa/PDP would not dare rig the election against him because he knew the governor's secrets. To make a long story short, Ogbonnaya Uche was assassinated. Naturally suspicion floated towards Udenwa and/or Nzeribe, but both men denied the charge. The Nigerian Police Force, the Nigerian Federal Intelligence and Investigations Bureau, the Nigerian CID, the Nigerian SSS, the Nigerian DMI, and all the rest of the security agencies did the usual thing they usually do, and to make the long story short (againg) the assassination remains unsolved crime today.
While Arthur Nzeribe maneuvred (as always) and remained relevant in the new dispensation, Emeka Offor had become politically irrelevant by 2003. After four years of making Anambra ungovernable, he walked away from politics-in-the-public-eye, and is somewhere enjoying his immense wealth as I type this. As for Chinwoke Mbadinuju, well, he was NOBODY without Offor's backing to begin with, and as of 2003, he too subsided to irrelevance.
As I noted earlier, Obasanjo as of 2003 had seen the need to create his own political machine, and to ease his dependence on the godfathers who had put him in office in 1999. Given the fact that the PDP hierarchy was as sick of Offor/Mbadinuju as the rest of the country, there was an opening for the President to handle the situation. With the approval of the PDP he stepped in; by his own admission, Obasanjo and PDP National Chairman Audu Ogbeh personally informed Mbadinuju (at a meeting in Aso Rock) he would not be allowed to contest the 2003 elections.
Obasanjo then put the full power of the federal government behind his chosen instruments for converting Anambra State (or more correctly the Anambra State Treasury, and the near-imperial powers of the state governor's office) into a useful resource for the soon-to-be Obasanjo political machine. He leaned on his trusted lieutenant Nnamdi "Andy" Uba, an Anambra native. This Day ran an excellent story on Andy Uba's mysterious movement of raw cash from Nigeria to the United States and the suspicions of money laundering on his own and Obasanjo's behalf (note This Day's archives require registration, but original story is here; a copy that does not require registration can be found here, but be warned it comes with excessive pop-ups). Nuhu Ribadu, then the boss of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, saw no need to investigate either Andy Uba or President Obasanjo (indeed, he saw no need to follow up on two auditors-general's reports on widespread graft, fraud, corruption and waste in the federal executive and the federal cabinet); till today there has been no investigation or clarification of the Uba money bad scandal (it isn't even a "scandal"; our collective apathy is dismaying).
In any case, Andy Uba was one of President Obasanjo's closest lieutenants; he stayed in Abuja while his brother Chris Uba used the covert and overt support of President Obasanjo and the national PDP machinery to replace Emeka Offor as capo-da-tutti-capi of Anambra State godfathers. Ahead of the 2003 "elections" (if you can call them that), Chris Uba moved to stuff the Anambra State Assembly with his clients and godsons; and for the state governor's office, he chose a namesake, Chris Ngige.
Nigeria may lack reliable statistical information and polling, but we can all agree that near 100% of Nigerians expect elections to be rigged. Even by this low standard of expection, the 2003 Anambra State elections attracted national attention for the unabashed openness of the fraud. It was almost like they relished doing what they did in full public view, making no attempt to hid or sugarcoat their actions.
Chris Ngige "won", but the new governor was on a very short leash. Chris Uba knew the story of godfathers and godsons in the Fourth Republic, and as such didn't really trust Ngige. Uba definitely had Ngige swear an oath of fealty at a juju shrine, and also had Ngige sign an undated resignation letter to be held by Uba (this latter precaution would prove crucial in the coming points). Uba wanted to bind Ngige to a set of promises, one of which was the promise to transfer a fixed proportion of the Anambra State treasury to his patron, Uba. That promise, the promise of the cash transfer, turned out to be the fork in the road for the Uba/Ngige partnership.
I have often said that "corruption" and fiscal "crime" in general are not Nigeria's principal problem in fiscal governance. We waste the larger portion of our fiscus in contractual and other relationships that are technically "legal". For example, the act of transferring state treasury funds to your godfather need not be a "crime". In Lagos State, Governor Babatunde Fashola outsourced the collection of state taxes to a tax-collection company; the tax-collection company is owned by ex-Governor (and state capo-da-tutti-capi) Bola Tinubu; the company (i.e. Tinubu) is paid on commission (i.e. it gets to keep a percentage of the state's tax receipts as payment for collecting the taxes). The deal is entirely legal, but Tinubu's personal wealth (and the warchest of his political machine) is boosted by the de facto diversion of a percentage of Lagos State's tax receipts (the state boasts the federal republic's highest "internally generated revenue (IGR)" total).
Alas, Chris Uba is not quite that sophisticated; he demanded Ngige approve the transfer to Uba of =N=3 billion in Anambra state treasury funds -- and Uba bluntly said the transfer was meant to defray his expenses in funding Ngige's gubernatorial campaign. Ngige, being the more intelligent of the two, opted instead to approve the transfer of =N=960 million to Uba, disguised (for the purpose of ensuring legality) as payment for a contract Uba supposedly completed years before. Had Uba been willing to accept the advance, which was slightly less than one billion, and/or given Ngige more time to sort out another two billion over the course of four years, recent Nigerian history would have been very different. As it stood, Uba perceived Ngige's move as the first sign of a disobedient godson and moved to crush him immediately.
The war commenced in earnest on the 10th of July, 2003, about two months after the 2003 General (S)Elections. Segun Toyin Dawodu has put together a good compilation of newspaper excerpts that give an clear idea of the events of the day (and a little bit of the prequel too).
Early in the morning on the 10th of July, 2003, the Anambra House of Assembly (which was packed with the Uba brothers' loyalists) convened. A detachment of the paramilitary "Mobile Police" sealed the Assembly ground. A "resignation letter", purportedly written by Ngige, was read to the House. Two federal legislators, Senator Ikechukwu Abana and Rep. Chuma Nzeribe were in attendance. Ngige's spokesman would later accuse the two of having drafted the letter; following this accusation, Ngige's spokesman was arrested and briefly detained.
The legislators accepted the letter of resignation and directed the State Chief Judge to swear Deputy Governor Okechukwu Ude (also an Uba loyalist) in as the new Governor of Anambra State. The Chief Judge obliged.
Following this, an Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Raphael Ige and a detachment of 200 Mobile and regular policemen abducted Governor Ngige from the governor's mansion. AIG Ige and his men held Ngige prisoner in a hotel. If you pardon my sarcasm, the governor at the time of his confinement was unaware that he had just resigned in absentia.
But someone was playing both sides. It was most likely one of the policemen holding Ngige, as I doubt any of them had any particular personal devotion to the Uba brothers. Whoever it was, the smuggled a phone in to the detained Governor Ngige, who promptly called Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, PDP National Chairman Audu Ogbeh, and PDP National Secretary Vincent Ogbulafor. Two things are immediately significant; the first is that Ngige called Atiku, and the second is that Ngige did not call President Obasanjo.
Ngige was released. I am not sure who gave the order to release him. Perhaps more importantly, no one is sure (even now) who gave Assistant Inspector-General Ige the order to abduct and detain him in the first place.
Chris Uba has no constitutional authority to give orders to the police. We have seen uber-godfathers like the late Lamidi Adedibu appear to be giving orders to the police. Godfathers in this category are acting as the regional "sheriffs" of whoever is in power at the federal executive. Did Uba order AIG Ige to kidnap a sitting governor? That seems a little extreme, even for godfathers; the aforementioned Adedibu was able to use police officers to blockade the assembly, denying freedom of movement to legislators loyal to then-Governor Rasheed Ladoja, and even in Anambra previously Emeka Offor's power left Chinwoke Mbadinuju to hire the mercenary Bakassi Boys to serve (ostensibly) as his stand-in police force (and de facto political enforcers) ... but kidnapping and confining a state governor is unheard of. Surely Ige would have sought clarification from his superiors?
Assisant Inspector-General is the third-highest rank in the Nigerian Police Force. The only people with a constitutional-legal right to have given or confirmed an order to abduct a sitting governor, are the President, the Minister of Police, the Inspector-General of Police, and the Deputy Inspectors-General of Police. The Police Minister and the above-mentioned police commanders would not dare give or confirm such an order (kidnapping a governor?) without obtaining Presidential assent.
Raphael Ige was retired unceremoniously from the Nigerian Police Force after the events of July 2003, and died shortly after his forced retirement. In reference to the events with which he will be associate forever, he only said "It was orders from above."
It had to be Obasanjo.
Ngige's release from captivity, on the other hand, had to have been Atiku Abubakar, who was, in 2003, still the most powerful man in Nigeria. Atiku was the dean of the godfathers that had just secured Obasanjo a second term, and per their arrangement was also Obasanjo's heir-apparent.
The newly-freed Governo Ngige insisted his purported resignation was fraudulent. That same evening, the pretender, "Governor" Okey Ude, flanked by the Speaker of the State Assembly, Mrs Eucharia Azodo, and the State Chairman of the PDP, Chief Obi Okoya, held a press conference to insist he was still the governor. Beyond Anambra, all of Nigeria watched agape; it takes a lot to surprise us politically, but the attempted civilian coup in the state was a bona fide shocker.
Because that is what it was ... an attempted coup de tat. It was treason.
But no one was ever investigated, prosecuted, convicted or punished for it.
In fact, what followed was farce. Nigerians got an insight into the farce from the open letter written to President Obasanjo by PDP National Chairman Ogbeh, and by the open letter Obasanjo wrote to Ogbeh in response. Amusingly, both men tried, through their letters, to exculpate themselves from the public derision attendant upon the disgraceful (and criminal) events in Anambra. But the thing that caught the public eye was Obasanjo's admission that the 2003 Anambra gubernatorial elections had been rigged.
Obasanjo did not admit to involvement in the rigging, and unconvincingly professed not to have known the election had been rigged until he was told after the fact. Nevertheless, he told all of Nigeria (through his letter) that he and Ogbeh had invited Chris Uba and Chris Ngige to a peace conference of sorts at Aso Rock, and that during the course of the meeting
Chris Uba looked Ngige straight in the face and said, "You know you did not win the election" and Ngige answered "Yes, I know I did not win."
Chris Uba went further to say to Ngige, "You don't know in detail how it was done."
Obasanjo said (well, wrote) all this as part of a process of denying involvement in the election or in its aftermath, but even if he was truly innocent of those crimes (and he was not), his open letter implicated him in a crime that was just as bad. Here was the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, revealing that two men had admitted to a serious, serious, very serious crime, a crime that had spawned other crimes (fraud, kidnapping), a crime that was intended to open the way to more crimes (economic and fiscal crimes, as the plan was for Ngige to sign over chunks of Anambra state treasury funds to Uba).
Indeed, in his letter Obasanjo says of himself:
I told Chris Uba and Ngige that their case was like the case of two armed robbers that conspired to loot a house and after bringing out the loot, one decided to do the other in and the issue of fair play even among robbers became a factor.
Again, this is Obasanjo distancing himself from responsibility for the crime itself. But having been told of the crime, what did the President of the Federal Republic do?
I decided in consultation with Governor Ngige, to set up a fact-finding and reconciliation committee under the Governor of Ebonyi State to put an end to the violence,
create a conducive atmosphere for the Governor to return to his station and to ensure permanent peace, security through reconciliation of the known warring party members - Chris Ngige and Chris Uba - and their supporters.
No prosecution, no conviction, no punishment. Just "reconciliation". What really caught the attention of the Nigerian media and the public, was Obasanjo's self-alleged response when he initially heard of the attempted coup in Anambra
You will recall that the team reported to you and I that what was happening in Ananm-bra required urgent party action to resolve it as a family affair.
The attempted overthrow of a state governor (who had been rigged into office anyway), was an internal PDP "family affair". No need for such distractions as law enforcement, constitutionalism, or even democracy ... you know, "democracy", that system where it is the people who choose their leaders? Citizens had been denied that most vital of constitutional rights, the right to choose their government, and the President's reaction was to try to reconcile the criminals.
The right to choose your own government is the most important right of all. If citizens do not have the right to choose and thus control their own government, then all other rights, including the right to life, are effectively moot because you the citizen are in no position to do anything to enforce institutional respect for your rights. Your government or your fellow citizen can spit on you, and ... well, and what? Is it any wonder there is so much violence, from lynchings of suspected robbers, to conflicts over land "ownership", to extra-judicial killings by police and soldiers. Underneath the bloodlust and murder, you often find a lot of very, very insecure people who lash out, not only in the belief that they are securing what little rights they have (particularly to land) but that in so lashing out, they can intimidate everyone else into "not trying them". Vigilantes, lynch mobs, as well as ethnic/regional/religious militia enjoy a legitimacy out of synch with their real-world effect which is the preservation of uncertainty, promotion of violence, and destabilization of the very institutions whose absence creates the pervasive fear that seemingly legitimizes the vigilantes, lynch mobs and militia (in other words, the chicken and the egg).
But I am digressing again.
Back to Anambra.
Now, inasmuch as President Obasanjo (who, as stated earlier, was Chris' brother Andy Uba's patron) said he was working with Governor Ngige to restore peace, order and stability to Anambra, he in fact moved penultimately to support of Chris Uba's attempted coup.
In March of 2004, Obasanjo's federal executive went to the Supreme Court to have Ngige's resignation declared valid which would make Ngige's government invalid (and hand the governor's office to Okechukwu Ude, the Uba loyalist).
True, Ngige had not "resigned" per se, and had no idea of it at the time of his abduction and detention, however, before the election, as a sort of insurance policy Chris Uba had had Ngige sign an undated resignation letter, and had (apparently, per Obasanjo's open letter) videotaped him doing this. So there were two resignation letters and one videotape; Ngige's spokesman (the one who was briefly arrested) had accused two federal legislators of writing the second letter and reading it to the State Assembly, but the first, undated, letter was most likely signed properly by Ngige (the process presumably caught on video).
The federal government went one step further and withdrew then-Governor Ngige's security detail. This act was particularly telling, because only three months before, in December 2003 Ngige had survived an apparent assassination attempt; there had been a gunfight between Governor Ngige's security detail (the same security detail the federal government withdrew) and Chris Uba's men. Neither Chris Uba nor anyone in his entourage was arrested or charged regarding the gunfight, and oddly, Uba (who had no constitutional right thereto) rode around town surrounded by a security detail of police officers, while Ngige, the putative governor, had to stay alive without a security detail.
With institutions of public security in Anambra State essentially subordinated to Chris Uba in 2004, he had nothing to fear. And in November of 2004, as the year drew to an end:
the nation woke up to the shocking news of a devastating attack on Anambra State resulting in the burning down of radio and television stations, hotels, vehicles, assembly quarters, the residence of the state Chief Judge and finally, Government House, Awka. Dynamite was even applied in the exercise and all or nearly most of these in the full glare of our own police force as shown on NTA for the world to see. The operation lasted three days.
The above description came from (and prompted) PDP National Chairman Audu Ogbeh's open letter to Obasanjo. The letter was his attempt to distance himself from what had happened. Violence was and is normal in Nigerian politics, but the Big Men always retain the semblance of plausible deniability. Chris Uba's operations were just too public, just too primitive, just too unabashed; it takes a lot for the denizens of the PDP to feel embarassed enough to seek public absolution, and Audu Ogbeh certainly felt compelled to defend the party in the court of public opinion.
Obasanjo's response to Ogbeh was discussed briefly earlier. He too attempted to distance himself from the mayhem in Anambra. Thugs employed by Chris Uba had just burned down the governor's mansion, attacked the State Assembly quarters and the Chief Judge's residence, and committed other acts of sundry violence.
I remind you that everything I described above, from the rigged 199 election that kicked off the Offor vs Mbadinju war, through the killings, kidnappings and fraud, to the November 2004 attack on the physical manifestations of government in Anambra, were done in the full view of the Nigerian public. Everybody knows who did what, because none of the principals were concerned about hiding what they did (comically, Obasanjo's letter, intended to exculpate himself, actually incriminated himself as an accessory after the fact at the very least).
It was almost as if Chris Uba reveled in the notoriety. He seemed to want everyone to see him, to know it was him, to marvel at the impunity with which he broke any and every law.
Perhaps that was why the Supreme Court, in May of 2005, slapped him down and ruled Ngige's purported resignation letter to be fraudulent. On the other hand, May of 2005 is also the month that the Nigerian political class, the Big Men, collectively rejected President Obasanjo's attempt to amend the constitution to allow himself to run/rig for a Third Term.
Perhaps the 2005 judicial defeat of the federal government's case against Ngige was the Supreme Court justices adding their voice to the generalized rebuke of Obasanjo-style politics.
In the aftermath of the defeat of the Third Term agenda, however, Nigerian politics changed. And part of the strength of the "do-or-die" politics (as Obasanjo called it) was its ability to use truth in the service of dishonesty. I have spoken frequently on this blog of the abasement of the EFCC, of how Ribadu and Obasnajo used its prosecutorial powers selectively to weaken opponents of their political project, and to strengthen their supporters (willing and cajoled alike). The point to note here is their victims were definitely guilty of economic and financial crimes (Governor Ahmed Sani Yerima, extorted into backing Obasanjo, was the most noteworthy for me, more so than the Diepriye Alamieseyegha, who was impeached, dethroned and prosecuted, because Alamieseyegha, unlike Yerima, never pretended to be religiously pure), but far from fighting corruption, they were sustaining and promoting it, albeit controlling and distributing the right to be corrupt the way the Shagari administration controlled and distributed licenses to import rice.
This tactic of using truth in the service of dishonesty extended to the Anambra front, in what was becoming a major war between President Obasanjo and Vice-President Atiku Abubakar in 2006.
Chris Uba's allies went to back to the Federal Appeals Court arguing this time that the 2003 Anambra State gubernatorial elections had been rigged, so even if the resignation letter was fake, Ngige had no right to be governor. As Chris Uba's political machine was responsible for having rigged the, Uba's machine had a wealth of evidence to prove the elections had been rigged ... and they used that evidence in their new case against Ngige.
In plain English: Chris Uba admitted to rigging the 2003 Anambra gubernatorial race, and presented proof of his guilt, in order to prove that Ngige should not be governor of Anambra!
And so, in March of 2006, nearly 3 years after the 2003 Anambra elections, the Federal Appeals Court nullified Chris Ngige's "victory" and handed the Anambra governor's mansion to the real winner (according to the court), Dr Peter Obi of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the regional party backed by Chukwumeka Ojukwu. There was just one year left in the 2003-2007 electoral term when Governor Obi took office.
This was not really a triumph of democracy. For one thing, Ngige was not the only beneficiary of rigging in Anambra State's 2003 polls, though he was the only one forced out of office. The rest of the beneficiariesls (federal legislators, State Assemblymen, local government chairmen and local government councillors) kept their jobs. In fact, inasmuch as the verdict removing Ngige was essentially predicated on the judicial conclusion that that major crimes had been committed in 2003, no one was charged, prosecuted, convicted or punished for any of the crimes revolving around the 2003 Elections or any of the mayhem that followed it. Fraud, violence, corruption, suborning treason, economic, fiscal and financial crimes, kidnapping, sorcery (yes, sorcery for goodness sakes), vandalism, attempted murder, etc, etc, etc, and all in full public view.
Besides, unlike 2005, when the Supreme Court was free to join the slap down Obasanjo's Third Term ambition parade, by 2006 the courts were coming under increasing pressure to toe the line. Indeed, the Supreme Court would find itself handling the very, very, very politically charged question of whether Atiku Abubakar had the legal standing to be a candidate in the 2007 Elections.
Ngige had received assistance from Atiku during his abduction/detention experience; it was most likely Abubakar who secured his release. Given the wide-ranging, near-imperial powers wielded by state governors, he would have had the resources (i.e. state treasury funds and the power of "legal" patronage) to hold onto Anambra State (and potentially make it a power base for Atiku, if for no other reason than to weaken his enemies the Uba brothers) in the 2007 Elections. The effect of Ngige's dismissal from the governor's mansion was to deny him the chance to "fix" the 2007 elections for himself.
And Ngige's replacement was Dr. Peter Obi, a neutral, non-threatening figure (i.e. not affiliated to Atiku Abubakar). Between its credentials as an regional party, and the endorsement of Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, APGA was well-liked in Anambra State, and allowing Peter Obi to serve out the single year left on the term would calm things down (as opposed to the turmoil that would ensue if an Uba loyalist was levered into the job). Significantly, and most importantly, Peter Obi did not have a political machine to compete with the Uba brothers in Anambra State, and one year would not be enough time to use the power of the state government to create one; in other words, Obi would not be able to "fix" the elections for himself in 2007, and (more importantly) would not be able to stop the Uba brothers from "fixing" it for themselves.
Nnamdi "Andy" Uba, had announced his candidacy for Anambra State governor in the 2007 Elections. That he would get the PDP nomination was a foregone conclusion; he and his brother controlled the state party. That he would win the general election was a certainty; it was "do-or-die" time in the Obasanjo camp and nothing would be left to chance. In fact, just to be sure, the Independent National Electoral Commission, led by Dr. Maurice Iwu, disqualified both Peter Obi and Chris Ngige from running in the 2007 elections.
The funny thing is, the only "opposition" to Andy Uba in Anambra came from his brother Chris Uba, who was upset at being shunted to secondary status in a state he had bestrode like a collossus for four years. And it got funnier. Just to make sure his brother Chris didn't pull any coup-type mischief, Andy had Chris arrested and locked up in jail. Yep, just like that. But don't worry, Chris was released from prison after the election, and continues to feud with his brother in Anambra politics as I type this.
In any case, Andy Uba duly emerged "victorious" in the 2007 electoral race for the Anambra State governor's mansion, and was sworn in as governor in 2007.
I am going to stop here and stress something.
In the paragraphs above, I have detailed eight years worth of crisis, chaos, mayhem and anarchy in Anambra State politics. You will notice that in all of that time, not once did the people of Anambra State get to use their votes to decide who should occupy government office.
It did not matter what the people wanted or who the people wanted. Powerful men, Big Men, fought each other openly and behind-the-scenes, like prizefighters with the state treasury as the purse. Like the proverbial grass while elephants fight, the people of Anambra bore the brunt of the primitive contests, and the resulting "winners" were then imposed upon the citizens of Anambra, whether they liked it or not.
But then came what I believe to be the worst part of the whole saga.
After Andy Uba's "victory" in the 2007 Elections, Governor Peter Obi went to court, arguing that 3 years of his 4-year tenure had been stolen by the illegal Ngige regime. He asked the courts to give him the missing three years ... by extending his tenure to 2010. To do that, the Court would have to essentially do away with the fixed 4-year terms meant to run 1999-2003, 2003-2007, 2007-2011, in favour of a brand-new, special, unique, just-for-Peter-Obi term of 2006-2010.
Here is the thing. The 4-year terms and the 2-term limit as set out in the constitution were not created for the benefit of politicians. They were created for the benefit of we the people. We the people have the constitutional right to choose our political leaders EVERY FOUR YEARS. That is the way it is supposed to work. You cannot invent a 7-year gap between elections (2003-2010) because a politician says he deserves 4 years.
If there was a problem in the system (i.e. rigging in 2003, and a 3-year delay in officially acknowledging the rigging even though everyone knew it as far back as 2003), then you should fix that problem because the problem is denying the people their right to choose their leaders every four years. And until that problem is solved, the people will continue to lack the right to choose their leaders even if you extended Peter Obi's tenure to the moon and back.
Finally, I agree with Governor Obi that it is unfair for him (assuming he was the real winner of the 2003 elections) to lose 3 years of his term to fraud, theft and criminality. The solution to the dilemma would have been for the Supreme Court to rule that the 2003-2007 term did not count as Obi's first term vis-a-vis the 2-term limits imposed by the constitution, because it was not a full term. I am no expert in international law, but from historical research I am given to believe that if a deputy-governor (or vice-president) takes over from the governor (or president) due to incapacity or death just one year before the end of that governor or president's term, that one year of service does not count as a full term for the purpose of constitutional term limits.
The Supreme Court should have ruled that constitutionally, Governor Peter Obi could run for re-election in 2007 and 2011, as opposed to being term-limited in 2011. That would have preserved the citizens' right to vote every four years, as enshrined in the constitution (that no one seems to obey), while restoring to Peter Obi the potential to get another four years (as opposed to three) should he manage to win two terms.
You might ask: "Well, what if he lost in 2007, what good would his extra term do him"?
To which I would answer: "If he is not popular enough to win in 2007, that would by definition mean the people of the state don't really want him to be their governor in 2007-2010, the three years the Supreme Court gifted him."
Then you will ask: "But you have spent this entire, long blog post pointing out that the elections in Anambra are not really about popularity or democracy, but about crude power plays."
To which I would answer: "No, I have pointed out in this blog post that this type of chaos, anarchy, violence and maladministration occurs PRECISELY BECAUSE NOBODY IS STANDING UP TO FIGHT FOR THE ENSHRINEMENT OF TRUE DEMOCRACY IN ANAMBRA AND NIGERIA."
Recall I said earlier that the Independent National Electoral Commission, led by Dr Maurice Iwu, had disqualified Peter Obi and Chris Ngige from running in the 2007 Elections. As much as Ngige was (and is) as guilty as Chris Uba, and should probably be barred from running for any office, ever, the fact is this intervention was pure politics, intended to assure victory for Andy Uba (himself exposed as a money launderer for the Obasanjo government, though Ribadu's EFCC and Iwu's INEC both pretended not to notice).
But none of this "dirt" had besmirched Dr Peter Obi as of 2007. The Court should not have extended his tenure by 3 years, because that did not, could not, would never fix the core, fundamental problem with Anambra and Nigeria. It would have been so much more apt had the court instead had nullified the 2007 Anambra Elections, and ordered new elections to be held late in 2007, leaving Peter Obi in place as Interim Governor until then.
Ideally the Court could have taken it upon itself to make sure these new elections were clean. The then-new President Yar'Adua was amidst ridding himself of some vestiges of the Obasanjo era, including Ribadu, and (significantly) would go on to champion Professor Charles Soludo for the 2010 Anambra elections, thus sidelining both Uba brothers from the PDP. Iwu was then, and is now, under serious pressure to quit, surviving due more to inertia than anything else. Surely the Courts had nothing to fear from organizing a semi-credible repeat election?
As it stands, the Supreme Court (as usual) did not act to defend the rights of the people of Anambra, and the so-called "progressives" who hailed the Obi Extension reminded me of why we can never count on so-called "progressives" to lead the charge in a fight for real, substantive change. As always in Nigeria, a way was found to "manage" a situation that should have been rejected and discarded long time ago.
It isn't just about Anambra. The recurrent violence in Jos and elsewhere in the country is symptomatic of our continued refusal to face up to problems and actually SOLVE them, rather than just looking for quick fixes that enable us continue to "manage".
But I suppose dreams of reform, restructuring and transformation remain just that -- fantasy. In the real world, Andy Uba was stripped of the governor office in 2007 (as Ngige had been in 2006, karma?) and Peter Obi was returned to the governor's mansion to fulfill an extended term.
It is now three years later, and the 2010 Anambra gubernatorial elections just concluded.
President Umaru Yar'Adua's faction of the PDP had given the PDP nomination to Professor Charles Soludo, the former head of the Central Bank of Nigeria. This being the PDP, there was nothing democratic about the nomination. I suppose the Yar'Adua faction perceived Soludo to be a more intelligent, more urbane figurehead, a man who best symbolized what they wanted in the new Anambra politics of the Yar'Adua era (never mind Soludo's increasingly discredited supervision of the Nigerian banking sector).
Andy Uba angrily decamped from the PDP to join the "Labour Party". Now get this, the Nigerian Labour Party was founded, principally by the Nigerian Labour Congress trade union, to be a part-socialist, part-social-democratic, left of centre political party. Supposedly the NLP is "progressive" and "pro-workers". And, with no trace of irony, the Anambra State NLP nominated Andy Uba to be their candidate in the 2010 Anambra gubernatorial race. I don't know what to say. I mean, Andy Uba is not exactly "socialist", a "reformer" or a "progressive", so what was the connection, other than a crass desire to get their hands on power and patronage?
Chris Ngige also ran, this time as a candidate of the Action Congress, a party which could best be described ex-Lagos Governor Bola Tinubu's sole proprietorship.
In any case, Anambra's 2010 electoral race to the governor's mansion was won by incumbent Governor Peter Obi of APGA. Mind you, APGA has sort of split into two factions, one of which did not recognize Obi as a member. But that doesn't matter; after three years as governor, he has certainly been able to use the power of the governor's office to secure his hold on the governor's office. Too many Big Men have adjusted to the new system of sharing the spoils, and I don't think anyone was willing to rock the boat.
Amusingly, "losing" candidate Andy Uba complained about the legitimacy and credibility of the polls (as did the other candidates, including Charles Soludo, who had himself unabashedly benefited from "administrative rigging" during the PDP primaries).
To be fair to him and the other candidates, a curious thing happened on election day in Anambra. Sure, there were the usual irregularities attendant upon every Nigerian election, but what was more curious was the turnout. Out of 1.8 million registered voters, only about 300,000 votes were collected on election day; this is a turnout of 17% (seventeen percent) of registered voters. And of those 300,000 votes, some 16,000 were declared invalid.
Wow. Only 17% of registered voters bothered to vote?
Can a person really be said to have been credibly elected governor of a state, if only 17% of the state's voters (far short of 50%) voted for him? But then, Obi didn't exactly get 17% of the vote; he got 98,000 votes or 5% (five percent) of the registered electorate.
Wow. The elected Governor of Anambra State was put in office with a massive plurality of 5% of the vote?
But it gets better.
No one actually knows how many of those 1.8 million registered names are "real". In other words, there might not be up to 1.8 million voting age citizens of Anambra. What I am saying is the voter's register may have been padded with fake, nonexistent voters which someone could use to pad their vote tally, thus rigging without the use of crude techniques.
Tunde Rahman and Chuks Okocha wrote an interesting piece (part one, part two) analyzing the validity (and legality) of the 1.8 million number on the electoral register. They point out that there were 800,000 total votes cast for all gubernatorial candidates in the (rigged) 2003 Anambra elections, and over 1.1 million cast (supposedly) for all candidates in the 2007 elections (of which some 1.093 million were allegedly cast for Andy Uba), before this year's 300,000 figure.
Perhaps some of the "voters" in 2003 were ghost voters ... ghosts that intermarried and gave birth to more ghosts for the 2007 polls. By 2010, the ghosts may have had grandchildren, who pushed the voters' register up to 1.8 million.
Who knows.
As Rahman and Okocha point out, it could just have been voter apathy. And who would blame them? There hasn't been a proper election in Anambra since .... ever.
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