By Eddy Ochigbo & Orkula Shaagee, Abuja

The Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate in the March 18 election in Enugu State, Hon. Chijioke Edeoga, has expressed confidence and trust in the judiciary to deliver justice to him by declaring him winner of the gubernatorial contest in the state.

Edeoga, who is challenging the declaration of Peter Mba of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the winner of the election, spoke when he paid a courtesy visit to DAILY ASSET’s head office, Abuja, yesterday.

He further noted that given the declaration made by INEC which indignated the people of the state, some observers  were amazed by the vibrancy and cheerfulness with which he has carried on, especially as the unexpected declaration of Mba led to sudden deaths in the state and in some cases triggered mental ill health in some others. According to him, this is “because they couldn’t come to terms with the declaration when they know that I won the election. This is evidential.”

He noted that “In Enugu State now, we have 14 members of the House of Assembly out of 24, leaving the PDP with only 10. Labour Party  has two senators, leaving the PDP with one. LP has seven members of the House of Reps, leaving PDP with only one. It was an easy road to victory for me and the party. We have 17 LGAs in the state.

In the result of 16 LGAs that came in, LP was leading with eleven thousand votes. The result of only one LGA which is the LGA where the PDP candidate comes from was deliberately kept back, where sixteen thousand voters were accredited and they returned thirty thousand votes in other to beat the clear lead of LP.”

He observed that “There was no reason for the result from that LGA to come late or last because it is one of the closest to the INEC Headquarters. The results from the farthest and biggest LGAs had come in, that of Nkanu East was deliberately kept back, now we know, for the necessary adjustments to be made after all other results had come in, in connivance with the resident electoral commissioner who provided them with extra sheets to accommodate the alterations that ensued.”

According to him, “When this thirty thousand results came into the collation centre, all the opposition political parties protested, that it was an anomaly. And then Abuja intervened and the collation was suspended. I understand that the relevant persons:

the REC and some INEC National officers were asked to come to Abuja. People asked me to go to Abuja and I said no because the matter is clear. The law says in matters of over-voting, you cancel. So I said Abuja would do the right thing, they will apply the law and announce the proper result. But lo and behold rather than cancel what Abuja did was to scrap off sixteen thousand votes from the over-voting and now said that PDP had won by about three thousand votes. They gave LP one hundred and fifty-seven thousand and gave PDP one hundred and sixty thousand. Up till now, no one has told us the basis of that decision.

“The only issue for me was my disappointment from my naivety because I had assumed that Nigeria could work because I had thought that there are patriots in Abuja and that Abuja would apply the law. When it failed I was disappointed. Abuja had no right to allocate favours. They have no powers at all. They acted outside the law in making those allocations. We now sent a petition to Abuja.

“There are places where twenty-one thousand votes were cancelled, incident forms entered. Twenty-one thousand votes for LP against three thousand and they were my strongholds. Do you want to take into consideration these cancellations? We filed a petition in the tribunal. We are challenging INEC’s declaration on that election. The basis of our challenge are three. One, that the candidate of the PDP was not qualified to contest the election, abnitio, having submitted a forged NYSC document.

“We have uploaded the evidence to that effect. Number two, we asked the tribunal to help rectify the calculation errors because in Udenu LGA which is the LGA of the current governor what the PDP and INEC did was to re-allocate my favours.

“In a polling unit where it was clearly recoded and acknowledged and certified that LP won, for instance 80 for LP and 14 for PDP, at the point of collation, the officers deliberately moved the victory to the PDP and moved the loss to LP. And it happened consistently in Udenu to the point that we need proper calculation and to return three thousand votes. And these are in documents, certified by INEC.

“We said they are calculation errors, so please calculate properly. And the third arm is that we said they acted in variance with the Electoral Law. In the area of over-vote, you cancel. We gave example, especially with Nkanu East, the home LGA of the PDP candidate where there was clear over vote. So we are saying please apply the law on over vote.

“So we are in the tribunal, the PDP has replied. Anytime from now, the battle will begin. We are optimistic that before the matter will travel the gamut from Tribunal, Appeal to Supreme Court, the truth will prevail and justice will be done. We hope that justice will be done in our case because the injustices are glaring.”

While further espousing hope and confidence in the judiciary, Edeoga said “Our hope is in the judiciary. Even when the judiciary errs, people will know because the judiciary acts on precedents and facts, evidences, so we assume that they are going to follow the tradition. For instance, the precedence with regards to the submission of forged documents are very clear.

“The Supreme Court’s position on that is very clear. So we expect that for instance if the issuing office is called, in this case, the NYSC is called and asked did you issue this certificate? Once the NYSC said we didn’t issue it, the law expects nothing else than disqualification. We don’t expect the tribunals or the Supreme Court to depart from these precedents.

“We said it is calculation error. We didn’t allege any crime, so there is no reason why a judge who had come to effect justice would refuse to correct a calculation error when the miscalculations are obvious. The areas of our expectations do not leave much to idiosyncrasies, they follow strictly on matters that are factual and evidential.”