Source: http://www.suanusblog.com/2017/11/10-things-we-learned-from-anambra.html


The governorship election in Anambra State held on Saturday, 18th November 2017 with 37 governorship candidates.

At the end of the election, APGA’s Willie Obiano was declared as the winner.

Here are some of the noticeable things that characterized the election:

1. INEC still performed below the expected standard as lots of logistical challenges still bedeviled the poll including late arrival of electoral materials, some inexperienced adhoc staff, failure of card reader machines and inappropriate polling units (the use of some people’s compound).

2. The election was relatively peaceful with reduced incidence of ballot box snatching and other open cases of electoral manipulations.

3. Gov.Willie Obiano without a godfather or so-called presidential support won in an unprecedented way in all the 21 LGAs of the state.

4. Osita Chidoka and Yul Edochie may have learnt a lesson or two from the attempt. This will help them to have a sharpened and improved knowledge, experience and approach to politics in Nigeria next time.

5. PDP’s shameful defeat is another indication that things are fast falling apart in the party and if sincere efforts aren’t put in place, the woes of the party may not abate any soon.

6. Hon.Dr.Tony Nwoye’s defection to the APC did not help him politically enough as the votes he garnered on the party’s platform was not any significantly different from what he got in 2013 when he had just 10 days to campaign under the PDP.

7. There was widespread vote buying and voters’ inducement with food being distributed to voters in some places.

8. President Buhari kept to his promise and did not interfere in the elections. Unlike before where bullion vans were allegedly used to convey huge sums of money from the Central Bank and distributed to stalwarts of the ruling party and used in bribing electoral officers.

9. Gov.Willie Obiano’s victory was not based on performance but on the cultural attachment of Igbos to APGA to preserve a party that has long been given an ethnic coloration.

10. The ordered boycott by IPOB to some extent affected the participation of people in the election; a reverse order may have changed the narratives somehow.



What else did you observe?

I observed that no individual Challenges the authority of a state.....