ONLY COURT CAN CANCEL ANAMBRA ELECTION - INEC

The commission was reacting to the calls by the All Progressives
Congress, Labour Party and their candidates for a total
cancellation of the controversial governorship election in Anambra
State on Saturday.
It said since the Chief Returning Officer, Prof. James Epoke, had
announced most of the...
results, INEC had no power to do anything
contrary.
"By law, those results are now beyond the purview of INEC to
invalidate. Only the courts have that power now to do so," Mr. Kayode
Idowu, the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Prof.
Attahiru Jega, said in Abuja.
Idowu added that with the inclusive nature of the election as
declared by Onukogu, all that "the commission can do is to conduct a
supplementary election so that the CRO can make a return."
He explained that INEC was " awaiting the return of field officers,
who went for the election so that every report obtained ,
especially concerning logistical issues, could be painstakingly
scrutinised."
It is after this, he said, that Jega and his national commissioners
would meet to fix a date for the supplementary election.
The APC candidate, Chris Ngige; his PDP and LP counterparts,
Tony Nwoye and Mr. Ifeanyi Uba, had on Sunday jointly called for a
total cancellation of the poll.
They told INEC to conduct a fresh election before the March, 2014
handover date by the incumbent Governor, Peter Obi.
Epoke had in Awka on Monday morning that the election was declared
inconclusive because it did not meet certain requirements of the
Electoral Act.
He said that the Act required that for a winner to be declared in
an election, the difference in the total voting population of the
areas where the exercise was cancelled should be less than the
difference between the votes scored by the candidate with the highest
votes and the votes of the candidate with the second highest votes.
He said in the case of Anambra State, the total voting population of
the areas in which election was cancelled was 113,113.
The figure, according to him, is higher than the 79,754 difference
between the leading candidate's votes and the second highest
candidate's votes.
With this, the CRO said, INEC had no choice but to declare the
election inconclusive.
Epoke added, "The rule guiding this election is that for a winner to
emerge, he must have majority of votes cast and the required spread of
25 per cent of votes in two-thirds of the local government areas.
"We observed that due to many reasons, there were a lot of cancelled
votes that made it difficult for a winner to emerge."
The CRO said the winner of the election would be only be declared
after election had been conducted in the areas where the exercise
was cancelled.
He also explained that election was cancelled in some polling units
because of snatching of ballot materials; delivering of coded ballot
materials to wrong collation centres and the non-arrival of election
materials at polling units.
In the election result received and released by INEC, Chief Willie
Obiano of the All Progressives Grand Alliance led with 174,710
votes.
The Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Mr. Tony Nwoye, was second
with 94,956 votes while the All Progressives Congress candidate, Dr.
Chris Ngige, was third with 92,300 votes.
The Labour Party candidate, Ifeanyi Ubah, came fourth with 37,446
votes and the Progressives Peoples Alliance candidate, Mr. Godwin
Ezeemo, was fifth with 5,056 votes.
The total valid votes cast in the election were 413,005.
INEC announced that the supplementary election would take place
in 15 local government areas, where 113,113 voters were denied the
right to vote because election was cancelled in their polling units.
Most of the cancelled polling units(160) are in Idemilli North LGA
where 89,997 voters were disenfranchised.
Also affected are Idemili South with one polling unit and 636
voters ; Ekwusigo, three polling units with 884 voters; Ayamelum,
three polling units with 1,247 voters; Anambra East, one polling
unit with 250 voters; Anambra West, six polling units with 2,000
voters; Anaocha, one polling unit with 276 voters ; and Awka
North, two polling units with 1,366 voters.
The rest are Awka South, one polling unit with 249 voters; Nnewi
South, two polling units with 376 voters ; Onitsha North, one polling
unit with 484 voters; Onitsha South, 17 polling units with 12,279
voters ; Orumba North, four polling units with 588 voters; and Oyi
four polling units with 1,202 voters.
The failure of INEC to fix a date for the supplementary election
created some confusion especially among the poll monitors and
journalists.
Many waited till Monday afternoon before moving out of their
hotel rooms when it became obvious to them that INEC had not decided
on a date for the supplementary poll.
On Monday evening, the riot policemen deployed in INEC office in
Awka were also seen moving out after some ceremonies.