Chief Chris Uba’s roles in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), his romance with Independent National electoral Commission (INEC) and the judiciary to achieve his political objectives is a matter of concern to all. At the outset of this democratic experiment in 1999, Uba was hardly known in political circles as a strong force, not even in Anambra State where he hails from. It is believed that his elder brother, Senator Andy Uba, then a Senior Special Assistant to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, brought Chief Chris Uba to political limelight.
Chief Chris Uba has become a political force that neither Senator Andy Uba, Anambra State, its people and the Judiciary are spared from his attacks depending on the which political divide one finds himself. From the 2003 National Assembly elections when Chris Uba first experimented with his own list of candidates alongside that of the PDP in Anambra State, the state has never had one list of candidates for elections till date.
It has always been the PDP list against the list of Chris Uba. The existence of such parallel list of candidates in Anambra State PDP in 2003 produced such cases as Uba v Ukachukwu and Ukachukwu v. Uba which consumed the career of many Justices of the Court of Appeal,including Justice Okechukwu Opene (JCA). The cases of Abana v. Obi, Enemuo v. Duru as well as that of Hon. Jerry Ugokwe that took an appeal to the ECOWAS Court of Justice as a ploy to buy more time, all emanated from Chief Uba’s action. By the time the curtain was drawn on the elections of 2003 and its related cases, not less than four judges both at the High Court and the Court of Appeal had lost their jobs as a result of their conducts in the cases in which Chris Uba had interest…
In the primaries that led to the Governorship election of 2013 in Anambra, Chris Uba re-enacted his act when he took his brother and Governorship aspirant, Senator Andy Uba to conduct their own primary election at a different location while the rest of the aspirants were at another properly designation venue participating in a lawful primary election under the supervision of Governor Shema of Katsina State duly designated by the PDP National Executive Committee (NEC) for that purpose. The outcomes of the parallel primaries were subject matters of litigation that ended at the Supreme Court. Just as in Emeka v. Okadigbo, Lado v. C.P.C and others, the Supreme Court pronounced that Senator Andy Uba did not participate in the primary election conducted by the PDP and would not have won such a primary election in which he did not contest and can, therefore, not become the candidate of PDP in the said election.
Comrade Tony Nwoye was declared nominated as the candidate of the party in that election. It would have been expected that Chris Uba and his collaborators would have learnt a lesson from their selfish acts and the subsequent judgment of court that kept Senator Andy Uba out of an election he would have likely won to become the Governor of Anambra State.
It seems, however, that the lessons of that great event was lost on the self-styled “war Lord”.
Again, when the whistle was blown for the primary election to nominate the candidates of the PDP for the National Assembly election to be held in this year, the PDP and Chris Uba went their divergent ways. At all the dates of the primaries, Chris Uba purported to have conducted his own primaries at separate venues from that conducted by the NEC of PDP, not many people took Chief Chris Uba serious as it was believed by many that he would soon fizzle out, but a new twist attended the whole saga on Wednesday, January 14, this year, when it was confirmed that the INEC had published the ‘list’ submitted to it by Chief Uba as the list of PDP candidates for the National and State Assembly elections in Anambra as against the authentic list of candidates of PDP submitted by the National Chairman and Secretary of the party, which is a product of a lawful exercise, a result of party primaries conducted under the supervision of the party.
Not a few people have been dumbfounded at seeing this direct affront on democracy. The people of Anambra, particularly, the PDP family has since then been thrown into great wonder, amazement and mourning. The question on every lip is: “What went wrong with our legal order as to hand the people of Anambra and their rights to choose their leaders over to Chris Uba”?
The INEC has a ready defence for publishing the said Chris Uba’s list of candidates. According to INEC, it is obeying what was termed a judgment of a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, which had declared in November, last year that the tenure of one Ejike Oguebego was subsisting as the chairman of PDP in Anambra.
It further declared that it was only the list of candidates produced by the said state executives of PDP in Anambra that should be accepted and published by the INEC and no other. If the said judgment is couched as it is rumoured, then INEC may be justified in publishing the Chris Uba list of candidates because a judgment, no matter how perverse, stands until it is set aside on appeal.
However, it is worrisome that among the reasons given for the acceptance of the Chris Uba list of candidates is that it was the primaries conducted by Chris Uba and Ejike Oguebego that INEC officials monitored.
If one understands the provisions of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) on the monitoring of political party activities, it is the national leadership of the party and not its state chapter that relates with INEC on political party activities. How did INEC prefer to monitor the primaries conducted by Ejike Oguebego and Chris Uba and failed to monitor the one conducted by the NEC of PDP through its National Working Committee?
It is instructive that the INEC has not treated the rest of the 35 state chapters of the PDP as it treated the Oguebego and Chris Uba-led state chapter in Anambra, if the Commission had done that, it would have ended up dealing with 37 political parties in PDP alone. What if it had applied the same yard stick to every political party, the result would have been unimaginable.
As for the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, the matter is still subjudice and would have been decided if not for the industrial action embarked upon by Judiciary workers. However, interested Nigerians have found it difficult to believe that a court of law that ruled last October that one Kenneth Emeakayi was the state Chairman of PDP, Anambra and that his tenure elapsed in that month could turn in another breadth and rule that Oguebego is the Chairman of the same PDP, in the state, that his tenure is subsisting. Unless there is a provision in the relevant laws of the party under which the two purported chairmen held office concurrently or that Oguebego was elected after the tenure of Emeakayi elapsed in October,2014, then the said judgments of the same court are irreconcilable and ought to be re-examined thoroughly.
Assuming without conceding that the tenure of Oguebego is still subsisting, an examination of the PDP Constitution and Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended), as well as the guidelines for PDP primaries reveals that it is not the state chapter of a political party, rather it is the NEC that conducts primary election to nominate the candidates of that party.
Time is ticking away on the Anambra saga. On December 15, last year, the National Chairman of PDP, Alhaji Mu’azu wrote a letter to the chairman of INEC restating to him the obvious fact that it was the candidates on the list of candidates submitted to INEC, signed by the National Chairman and Secretary of the party as approved by the PDP NEC through its National Working Committee (NWC) that are authorised to stand for elections on the platform of the party.
What would happen if this empasse is not resolved before the next month’s elections is yet to be imagined. Head or tail, the relevant institutions, including the PDP, INEC and the Judiciary have all contributed in one way or the other to encourage Chris Uba in his democratic activities. It is these same institutions that would put him in permanent check otherwise the said activities are heating up the polity and are challenging the foundations of our democratic experiment seriously.
