Source: www.Nigerianhome..com

EMMANUEL OBE takes a look at the implication of the kick-off of the campaign of the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the February 6, 2010 governorship race in Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, in the face of a court ruling stopping him from parading himself as the party‘s standard bearer in the election

Developments within the camp of the Peoples Democratic Party have been raising hairs about

the fate of the February 6, 2010 governorship election in Anambra State.

Interest in the Anambra election is not only local. It has gone international. Only last month, President Barack Obama of the United States and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, sent envoys to Anambra State to assess the situation on the ground.

The delegation led by the head of the political section of the United States Consulate in Lagos, Mr. Philip Drouin, and the Deputy British High Commissioner, Mr. Richard Powell, met with electoral officials, the police, leaders of the civil society organisations, party leaders and the governorship candidates. Though they did not make press comments about their visits, the diplomats acknowledged that the Anambra election was important to the international community.

Even the Independent National Electoral Commission had promised that it would make the Anambra election the test case for its proposed electoral reforms. And all eyes are set on the state to see if it is the harbinger of the good news that elections could be free, fair and credible in the country. Also the PDP-led government of Umaru Yar‘Adua has promised to use the Anambra poll as a guinea pig to show that it was serious with its promise of electoral reforms.

But what is happening in the PDP and the way it is going about handling the ripples emanating from the nomination of its candidate for the February 6, 2010 election have raised questions about whether the country is really ready to join the league of countries where credible elections and the respect for the rule of law can hold.

Two months to the conduct of the election, the party appears not to have been able to settle the issues arising from the failed October 2 state congress where its governorship candidate should have been elected.

To beat the October 9 deadline given for the submission of the names of its candidates to INEC, the PDP nominated Soludo and Senator Emma Anosike, as its candidate and running-mate respectively.

This action, done because the party could not vacate an order barring it from conducting the state congress, has since kicked off a litany of suits and counter-suits, with no seeming end to the resolution of the litigation in sight.

Only on Friday before adjourning till December 13, the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja directed the party not to do anything that would be sub judice to the matter before it in respect of the continued sponsorship of Soludo as the party‘s governorship candidate for the February 6 election.

A day before the court gave that directive, the National Chairman of the PDP, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, symbolically handed over the flag of the party to Soludo at a well attended rally in Onitsha to formally flag off the party‘s governorship campaign in the state.

The appeal court directive given by Justice Mary Odili, was in furtherance to an earlier one issued on Tuesday December 1, when the court first heard an appeal filed by two former Anambra State governorship aspirants, Mr. Valentine Ozoigbo, and Mrs. Rose Obi, challenging dismissal of a suit they filed seeking the nullification of Soludo‘s nomination by an Abuja high court, which said it lacked jurisdiction to hear the suit.

But the PDP had not only gone ahead to give its flag to Soludo, but campaigned to the people of the state to vote him during the poll. Though Ogbulafor and others that spoke at the rally made no reference to the matter before the appeal court, Soludo himself had two days before then declared that pre-election suits were nothing unusual, and even as they would not distract him from preparing for the poll.

He and the Secretary of the Caretaker Committee of the PDP in the state, Mr. Tony Muobike, denied the existence of any order barring the PDP from presenting the former Central Bank of Nigeria helmsman as the party‘s candidate for the election.

The latest legal intricacies are apparently making the race a chequered one for the PDP in a state where it is arguably the largest political movement.

While INEC has taken precautionary steps to ensure that it did not jeopardise the principles of the rule of law by removing Soludo‘s name from the list of candidates for the February 2010 election, the PDP appears stiff-necked about it all.

But how is the party responding to the issues and orders emanating from the courts? Was it right for the party to have ignored the appeal court‘s directive and then went ahead to present Soludo at a well publicised rally?

In justifying that rally, Soludo said, ”There will always be court cases. That is not anything to worry about. These are pre-election matters. And there have always been in the past a litany of such kinds of cases. But they would linger on, I am sure. Some of them may linger on till even after the election.”

But the Action Congress sees the stance of the PDP as amounting to arrogance. Mr. Ben Chuks Nwosu, the Deputy Director General of the Ngige Campaign Organisation and the Publicity Secretary of the organisation, Mr. Nnabuenyi Udoka, said the Onitsha rally was a negation of the rule of law.

”Soludo shows he is someone who cannot abide by his own party‘s Constitution on one hand, and on the other hand he has deliberately disobeyed and knowingly avoided all court orders challenging his purported emergence as PDP governorship flag bearer.”

For the National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Chief Victor Umeh, PDP has no candidate, considering the fact that the Court of Appeal has ruled that he should not be fielded until the matter before it was decided.

He adds, “PDP has remained the problem of this state. PDP has been responsible for all the political upheavals Anambra State has suffered in the past 10 years. We pray to God to touch their hearts and give them the opportunity to realise that they cannot force themselves on the people.”

The party began to lose its grip on the state in 2003 when the people of the state rejected it after its government under Dr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju, failed woefully due mainly to insoluble intra-party wrangling.

Though the party succeeded in manipulating the electoral process and installed Dr. Chris Ngige as governor in 2003, the crisis continued, and eventually led to the expulsion of Ngige from the party. The party also eventually lost the governorship of the state at the election tribunal in 2006.

An attempt by the party in 2007 to return to power through Dr. Andy Uba was frustrated by the Supreme Court, which held that the election that produced Uba as governor was a nullity.

From whatever way it might be looked at, Anambra State appears to have contributed more than any other state to the development of constitutional law in the country. And so the state now seems to be perching on the threshold of another constitutional milestone.

This is where stakeholders are expressing concern. Since the judicial activism midwived by Justice Alpha Belgore in 2007 began to restore hope in the judiciary, the rule of law has become the mantra of everyone that means well for the country.

If the nation fails with Anambra now, could there be any more hope for the electoral reforms. It is not only Nigerians that are watching. The world is watching. And this is a challenge for the judiciary too to sustain the hope it has raised for Nigerians after surviving the Olusegun Obasanjo administration that threw respect for it to the dogs.

Source: www.Nigerianhome..com