The Tribunal Is A court of Justice And Justice Will Be Done –Ndukwe
A day after testifying at the Tribunal in Awka on August 19 as a prime witness in his petition number EPT/AWK/S/12/2015 challenging INEC for declaring Andy Uba winner of the Anambra South Senatorial contest of March 28, 2015, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe granted an interview, dwelling basically on his moments in the witness box and his expectations from the Tribunal.
Here are excerpts…
Q: You were spotted at the Tribunal yesterday where your lawyer indicated that he has closed his own case in respect to your petition. How has it been?
ANS: I must say that was the first time in my life that I had to sit inside the witness box to give a testimony, be led in evidence by my lawyer as well as cross-examined by counsels to the respondents. I have to add that it was an experience I’d say I enjoyed and the good thing about it is that when you are saying the truth, you do not have any fears. I was able to express myself well and when they fielded their questions, I answered them with boldness. So, I hope that those listening, including the audience, would have gotten a good idea of our point of view in this case and why we came to the tribunal in the first place.
Q: Giving testimony… what were you anxious to prove?
Ans: We, and I mean my campaign team and I, were actually surprised after the election when we noticed that some of the result sheets used for the elections were not customized result sheets. You know that INEC had to resort to customized result sheets some years back in order to prevent arbitraries by election officials who may resort to removing a genuine result sheet and replace it with another concocted after the election. In Anambra South Senatorial Zone, all the result sheets were customized for every particular polling unit. So one is at loss as to why any polling unit will use a non-customized result sheet or “voting point” result sheet.
By law, by the regulations of INEC, only results in the customized result sheets should be recognized as genuine. There is actually provision for use of ‘voting point’ result sheet in the regulation but that is when the number of voters in a particular unit exceeds about 750 … and this will be determined ahead of time and not on the spur of the moment. Actually, there were many cases in this particular election where VP result sheets were used when the number of voters was much less than 750. Some of them 300 and many of them less than 500 and yet voting point result sheets were used to write the results. In view of these anomalies, we lodged in our petition. My being in the witness box was to help drive home the point that I actually won the election.
Q: While testifying, you referred to the issue of using voting points and non-customized result sheets in the contentious election as no – go areas. Can you throw more light on this?
Ans: The use of any other result sheet apart from those customized for each polling unit represents a red signal for fraud and that’s what had happened in a number of places in this election. So I told the honourable tribunal that where ever it was used and whether it favoured me or favoured anybody else, that they should be discountenanced. That all voting point result sheets should be discarded as well as non-customized result sheets which I described as a no- go area. That the Tribunal should never admit any of them in collating the results and I hope I made my point very clear. Because we have to start doing things the right way. This is an era of change; we don’t have to allow people to continue doing the wrong things with impunity.
If I lost the election, I would have been the first to congratulate my opponent. But in this case, the results announced were grossly incorrect. The biggest evidence of proof that the right results were not announced was the fact that after election, when the purported collation was done, I was given 73,000 votes; only for INEC to make a U-turn and awarded me extra 20,000 votes in their submission to the tribunal, thereby bringing my score to slightly over 92,000 votes. Meanwhile, my own computation in my petition gave me 92,002 votes. Really, I did the right thing in my petition and my opponent got less than 80,000 votes. So, the issue here is that because of those phony result sheets that were brought in, things were messed up and I suspect that even when the right polling unit results are collated, the margin between us might even go higher when the computation is based only on customized result sheets. It really comes down to just a question of simple arithmetic.
Q: You were shown a document as exhibit in the case, delving on the 1st respondent’s school certificate result and you responded it couldn’t have been what it looked like…could you expatiate further sir?
Ans: Really, I was so surprised that during my cross-examination that the counsel to the 1st respondent produced this controversial certificate which I thought they would have been silent about. To bring it up in an open court was absurd because despite the fact that I ran an election with Andy Uba, we have been friends for a long while… So, the issue about this election is not all about running anybody down, the issue is about running a campaign and winning an election.
But when I was presented with this certificate which I know was not genuine to the best of my ability, I had to repeat what I had said in my deposition which was that the certificate in question was dated 1974… And in 1974, there was nothing like Senior Secondary School Certificate in the country. .. And certainly, there couldn’t have been SSCE. What we had was West Africa School Certificate (WASC). It was a duration of five years for secondary school then.
Now it’s six years (three for junior secondary and three for senior secondary). So, obviously, that has cast a lot of doubt on that certificate; that it couldn’t have been issued in 1974. One wonders then how the certificate came by. And very significant is the issue of the law being clear that if a candidate in an election submits a forged document that candidate stands disqualified. That was the surprise I had from my opponent’s lawyer. I thought that by bringing that up they probably were helping my case rather than helping the case of their client.
Q: The issue of voter’s register cropped up during cross-examination where indication was that even dead men voted in the election in question…people who were not privileged to be at the tribunal would certainly be interested to know more…
Ans: Actually, that question had come up when one of the witnesses was led in cross examination at the tribunal and I had also commented on this after the tribunal session. In the respondent’s reply to my petition, they uploaded a voters’ register of Uli ward 1 in an attempt to prove that there was an election in Uli ward 1 when our position was that, there was no election.
One of the witnesses who is still a community leader in Uli came out clearly to state that there was no election in Uli ward 1; that any attempt to say that there was an election in Uli ward 1 would amount to “an abuse of democracy”. He went further to indicate that on closer scrutiny of the names in the voters’ register, that was uploaded, there were many people in the uploaded register ticked to have voted in the election who had died long before the election, while some of them had travelled out of the country and were not even anywhere around Anambra State during the election. … Bizarrely, this is my first time of people implying that spirits vote in an election! I do not know that could have happened and I actually did not upload that document. The facts surfaced when my people went to Uli to ask people on the streets whether they actually voted in the election and it was during that exercise that the locals spotted names of several people who had died and yet were marked as haven voted in the election.
Q: You affirmed that you would rely substantially on your chart in the petition for final computation of results of the election. Why the use of the word ‘substantially’?
Ans: Yes, I used that word substantially because I would very much rely on that chart for the tribunal to compute the exact result but I also know that after we got the C.T.Cs from the police, we found out that there were in fact some scores that we got but we did not really add to our own scores. So that’s why I said during my cross-examination that I will rely on that chart plus others including what INEC subsequently uploaded as C.T.C with a proviso that the scores are completely based on customized result sheets. I will be happy with that.
Q: You mentioned there was violence in Nnewi North Local Government while testifying, would you want to talk more on it?
Ans: What happened at Nnewi North was a big disgrace… I think it was one of the witnesses that gave a more vivid description. It was a clear case of thuggery and everything unsavory. To the point that the hierarchy of then police force in Anambra State were there… then Area Commander was there; the D.P.Os of that area were there… even the Deputy Commissioner of Police for the exercise also visited because of the big confusion that happened as a result of attempts by some people to influence the result of the election by coming up with new result sheets long after the election finished the day before.
This is an election where I saw ordinary citizens who were not INEC officials carrying election results to collation centers… and people were arguing whether it should be accepted or not. It was such a shame what happened at Nnewi South and Nnewi North Local Governments. The collation centre for the entire Anambra South Senatorial zone was located in Nnewi North!
It was also in Nnewi North that some prominent citizens, I will refrain from mentioning names except at the appropriate time, would use money to collect customized result sheets, take them away and come back with voting point or non-customized result sheets and give to willing INEC officials to submit for collation. We pray that such things do not happen again in this country in future.
Q: You were emphatic that elections are won at the polling units and not at the collation centres. What were your reasons for the emphasis?
Ans: My reasons are simple, there had been decided cases in the past where the honourable justices in tribunals decided to actually calculate the results of the election because results move from the polling units to the wards collation centres, from the wards to the local government collation centres and finally to the zonal collation centre… as they move figures could change. Someone might score 90 votes in a polling unit and by the time it gets to the local government collation centre, it becomes 900 votes, zero is added at the positive end. And sometimes the opposing party might not have a way of making sure such fraud was stopped. What they will always tell you is that you can go to the tribunal. Hence they go ahead and declare whatever they want to declare. So the issue here is that in those decided cases the polling unit results hold the key, hence my assertion that elections are won at the polling units where people voted.
Infact, I am looking forward to a situation in future where immediately after an election, all results are sent electronically to a central location and results announced. And we move away from all these hop, step and jump processes that are only there to cause troubles and bring out wrong results. It is very important that we remove whatever stages that empower bad people to take advantage of the process and declare the wrong person winner in an election. In today’s technological age, it is very possible to declare a senatorial election result within a few hours of completing the voting via the polling units… so that’s why the statement.
Q: Could you please repeat here what you prayed for in your petition.
Ans: My prayer is simple and that is for the honourable justices to decide. I believe and I am quite convinced that I won the election and that is why I went to the tribunal in the first place. I pray that the tribunal only accepts the results on duplicate originals of customized result sheets obtained at polling units and from there determine the winner of the election. While discarding all fraudulently contrived result sheets. Actually, the truth is that in some cases, we even noticed where you have customized result sheets and at the same time a voting point result sheet in a particular unit because of you know… when someone is doing something wrong, he cannot cover all his tracks. So the issue here is that my petition is simple… I don’t want to take anything that doesn’t belong to me. My prayer is that if I won the election, please give me my mandate because my people want me to be their senator, so it’s as easy as that.
Q: What is your message to the people of your zone who are anxiously waiting for the outcome of your case at the tribunal?
Ans: My message to them is to keep their hope alive… That I have every confidence in the judicial process. We pray God to give us good health that we will see the day when justice will be done. All I can say is that it is not in my powers to declare myself winner, it all depends on the Tribunal and I believe that it is a court of justice and justice will be done.
Q: What would be your advice to your fellow technocrats and professionals should they wish to toe your line into the political arena?
Ans: All I can tell them is that it is not an easy road to walk, but when the going is tough, it’s the tough that gets going. A soldier does not discard his uniform because there is a war. When people ask me whether I’m a politician or technocrat, I tell them that I am both. Politics is a great profession and I keep repeating that politics is a very important institution that determines the policy direction of a nation. A responsible political institution is critical to the development of our nation and until we have the right people in place to make that difference, high performance will continue to elude us.
So, I encourage those who have the calling and the will to do it to please join. The truth is that not everybody can be a politician and should be a politician. There are people who should remain professors in the universities, some people should remain nurses, managing directors of companies, e.t.c. but the issue is that when you are driven like I am to see how you can make a difference in our country, in our state, in our local government area and zone as well, then you must have that push, that zeal and that desire necessary to get you to the finishing line. It’s only when that happens, that you should leave whatever vocation you have to enter politics. And I guess it is that zeal that is pushing me and had led me thus far.
Q: Anything to add for your numerous followers out there?
Ans: It has been an exciting time, people ask me whether I enjoy politicking… they ask what the future holds…. And I tell them I am looking forward to my days in the Senate. The future is bright for Anambra South District… I believe that this nation is great and will continue to be great. When this case is over, I will be making more definitive statements. Right now, I must say that I have refrained from saying many things because of the matter that is before the Tribunal and as a sign of respect to the Tribunal.
R: Thank you very much for your time.
Ans: You’re always welcome.
Source: Tai Emeka Obadi (fb)
