Ochereome Nnanna and his two tongues

A revered Columnist with Vanguard Newspapers, Ochereome Nnanna, published an article in his column of April 20, 2015, he titled, “Abia’s pathetic election conundrum”. Reading the columnist’s article, one would know where he was coming from. He laced his biased article with lies, just to score a cheap publicity stunt.

Much as we know, it takes absolute morality to expose absolute immorality. This brings to bay how immoral Nnnanna was. A man, who said that he participated in the coverage of the Presidential and National Assembly Elections in Lagos on March 28th 2015, also told the world that he was in his native Abia State to observe the proceedings; and at the same time Nnanna monitored the Imo State election.

We knew that Nnanna was telling lies just to malign the personality of the Abia State governor, Chief Theodore Orji, by insinuating that the PDP rigged the election in the state. Anyway, those close to the happenings in Abia would attest to the fact that Nnanna who had benefited bountifully from the government of Governor Orji, vented his frustrated self in that article as a presumed payback to the governor whom he had requested to buy him a house in Lagos; an offer the governor said was elusive.

Speaking from the sides of his mouth, Nnanna lengthened his attack on the INEC, calling the revered agency election a misnomer. His anger was that the revered agency noticed the rigging mechanism of the APGA, the party that the phony Alex Otti has said that it is representing.

In his jaundiced viewpoint, Nnanna wrote, “How can you say an election is inconclusive when your officials allowed politicians to alter the results with figures that flew in the face of trends established by results recorded in areas where the Card Reader and PVC were used in line with INEC’s directives? Why call an election “inconclusive” when there were clear evidences that the rules were violently subverted by politicians in cahoots with INEC officials and security personnel deployed to safeguard the polls and the electorate? The polls in Abia and Imo were not inconclusive; they failed woefully.”

It was Otti and his cohorts that caused the election to be inconclusive due to their excesses during the election. There were open bribery from Otti and intimidation of electorates with the help of the Nigerian Army that Ihejirika allegedly helped to deploy from Enugu to the state against the knowledge of Governor Orji. That was the same Ihejirika that Governor Orji assisted very well when he (Ihejirika) was serving the Army.

What Nnanna will not tell the world because of his biased nature is that, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu declared that "Going from the result already announced and entered into INEC form EC8D, by INEC which is summary of results from the 17 local government areas of Abia State, collated at the state level, declared and duly signed by Prof. Benjamin Ozumba, and all the accredited agents of political parties in the state collation center in Umuahia, including Chief Ahamdi Nweke, of APGA, and Dr. Solomon Ogunji of the PDP, shows I am the winner of the election.

“In that result, the number of registered voters is 1,217,632. No. of accredited voters is 470,900, total valid votes is 430,561, rejected votes is 8,893 and total votes cast is 439,454. PDP has 248,459, while APGA has 165,406, and I have a margin of 83,053 ahead of Otti. What on earth is preventing INEC from seeing that I have made 25% of the votes cast in the 2/3 of the local government areas in the state, and scored majority number of votes cast?”

The above was contained in a press briefing from the Abia PDP, according to Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu. So, what was Nnanna writing about in the following lines? “On Sunday, 12th April 2015, the collation of the results at the INEC centre in Umuahia was in full swing. When the results from Obingwa, Isiala Ngwa North, Osisioma and a few other areas were brought in for collation, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) polling agent, Mr. Ahamdi Nweke, hotly raised objections.

When Nnanna lied that Governor Orji “stormed the collation centre with other leaders of the PDP, such as the National Publicity Secretary of the Party, Chief Olisa Metuh; Minister of State for Defence, retired Col. Austin Akobundu; former presidential Aide, Dr. Onyema Ugochukwu, and others”, one is meant to laugh his head off. Yes, the governor went to the INEC office after a confirmation that it was not Jega who asked the state REC to cancel the result, whereas the REC had said that it was Jega. What was expected of Nnanna was to pressurize the REC to understand on whose order the election was cancelled.

.Hart writes from Lagos

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Articles by Madubuko Hart