The Soludo gamble

One of the party’s newest internal challenges is a suit which its member Ken Emeakayi instituted at a Federal High Court in Awka asking it to stop former Central Bank Governor Chukwuma Soludo from acting as the PDP’s governorship candidate for the February 6, 2010 governorship election in Anambra State. The national leadership of the […]

One of the party’s newest internal challenges is a suit which its member Ken Emeakayi instituted at a Federal High Court in Awka asking it to stop former Central Bank Governor Chukwuma Soludo from acting as the PDP’s governorship candidate for the February 6, 2010 governorship election in Anambra State.

The national leadership of the party had picked Soludo during a selection exercise penultimate Friday, an excise that has attracted wide condemnation from within and outside the party because it was not a constitutionally recognised primary election .

Emeakayi’s suit, filed at the Anambra high court on October 12 and fixed for mention tomorrow, is the latest most potent hurdle for the PDP and Soludo in the four months before the February poll. It is a poll that is expected to be made tough by notable candidates from other parties, including incumbent governor, Peter Obi of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and governor of the state between 2003 and 2005, Chris Ngige of the Action Congress (AC). While Obi now has all of APGA behind him after the two factions of the party met last week to adopt him, Ngige who was the candidate of the party in 2007 has similarly been elected its undisputed flag bearer for the 2010 election.

Perhaps within the PDP are hundreds who feel like Emeakayi even if they have not chosen his path to express such feeling. Senator Annie Okonkwo (Anambra Central), a frontline PDP aspirant to the Anambra governorship election, has never hidden his belief in fairly conducted party primary as the only acceptable way to pick its candidate for any election. The senator who spoke on phone with the Sunday Trust, said. “We are facing an unjustifiable aberration here. We can’t be talking about party democracy and be tolerating this kind of inconsistency. It’s sad and it has a long-term effect that we ought to avoid. Is this the democracy we want to build for our children?”

The internal opposition to Solude’s emergence thickened on Wednesday when 13 of the party’s co-aspirants alleged that Soludo presented them N35 million each to accept his adoption.  The leader of the anti-Soludo group, Chief Chuma Nwofor Nwofor, whose allegation Soludo has denied, said, “We were offered N35 million each by Prof. Soludo to support his candidacy as the governorship candidate but because we are the integrity group and we believe that the race is not for sale, we rejected the offer. Our mission is to correct the anomalies in our party.”

The equation leaves the PDP as the only major contending party heading for the election speaking in bitterly contrasting voices. And if the allegation of financial inducement against Soludo is a spice of a different kind which his opponents have added to the PDP’s pot of soup for Anambra 2010, making it palatable for the opposition but bitter to those who have cooked it, it will do the cooks some good to return to the kitchen while there is time. The alternative appears likely to be a loss of Anambra State by the PDP once more. Other parties are waiting to take such a loss to full advantage.

National Chairman of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke who is incidentally from Anambra State told Sunday Trust Friday that his party was watching the PDP with interest. He said it would pay the opposition for the PDP in Anambra to exhaust all its energy against itself and leave room for the more coordinated parties to gather strength against them.

The PDP walked into the tight corner it occupies now by failing to pick its candidate in strict democratic practice. The National Executive Committee of the PDP which announced Soludo its Anambra 2010 candidate attributed ed the non-elective nature of arriving at him on the failure of the party to conduct the necessary primary election following two court orders stopping the planned primaries.

Not a few have long believed however that the court orders were part of a carefully scripted plan to make the primaries fail so that Soludo could push through as PDP’s beautiful bride.

“The undemocratic emergence of Soludo is an anomaly typical of the PDP,” a lawyer and publisher, Job Dangana, said. Dangana who is not known to hold brief for any political party. Explained his stand in a telephone interview with Sunday Trust, “The process of party primary to elect the PDP governorship can didate was started and truncated by the same people in the PDP who now want the country to believe that the party resorted to handpicking Soludo because court injunctions stopped the primaries. It’s Soludo and the PDP officials who know Soludo will not win the primary elections that, working by proxies, generated those court orders. They never really wanted any primary election to elect a genuine governorship candidate for the PDP.”

Dangana would however not support the party’s other aspirant, Andy Ubah, who has insisted that because he became governor of Anambra State under the PDP before his election was voided, he should be declared governor-in-waiting. He shares the PDP position that. the primary election conducted in 2007 is no longer valid.

Andy was sworn in as governor of Anambra State on May 29, 2007 but was told on June 14, 2007 to vacate the office with immediate effect by the Supreme Court which ordered the reinstatement of Peter Obi, on the grounds that he had to serve as governor till March 17 2010. The Supreme Court stated that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) erred by conducting elections in Anambra State in 2007 when the serving governor, Obi, still had over two years left to serve.

Many exist with low view of Andy Uba and feel that he should let Soludo have now the ‘undeserved favour’ he had in his own heyday. Enoc Randle, a social critic, says, “Whatever Andy Uba is getting from the PDP is right for him. It’s the evil he did to people under Olusegun Obasanjo (President between 1999 and 2007) that is coming home to him. In the first place Andy did not win the governorship election of Anambra State in 2007. Obasanjo’s PDP and INEC’s Iwu made sure the election was properly rigged to favour him.”

 This makes no difference to many within and outside the PDP. They feel that the PDP might have prevented the internal turmoil it is now confronted with following Soludo’s contentious emergence if it had simply adopted Andy Uba as its candidate in reverence to Andy’s argument that the PDP had not set aside his candidacy since he ‘won’ the governorship election under it in the cancelled 2007 Anambra election.

The flood of opposition against Soludo is not however without a letup. The pro-Soludo group hosted a meeting on Wednesday in Abuja which adopted the Soludo/Anosike ticket. Speaking at the presentation of the Soludo/Anosike candidacy to the Ogbulafor-led NWC, the PDP National Vice-Chairman for the South East, Chief Olisa Metu moved,: “We have 36 former aspirants that have adopted Prof Soludo/ Senator Anosike for the office of the Governor of Anambra State. We came here to inform you that Anambra PDP has accepted the Soludo/ Anosike nomination. We have set up a reconciliation committee to calm frayed nerves. The process of re-building Anambra State has started.”

Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions, Hon. Cyril Maduabum who read a resolution of the Anambra PDP House of Representatives members declared that nine of them (of the total 11) had adopted the Soludo/ Anosike candidacy.

The party’s national chairman Prince Ogbulafor who saw the Soludo solidarity meeting as ‘a graceful day’, held that the PDP quarrel arising from Soludo’s new status was an internal affair. He said, “We can quarrel and settle our disputes indoors.”