By Dr PETER IFEJIKA & Dr COSMAS OKOYE

Two different but related things occurred at the newly commissioned Anambra International Cargo Airport last December 31. Andy Uba, who participated in the Anambra State November 6 gubernatorial election purportedly on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), arrived at the airport and did everything to avoid the media in particular and the public in general. He stayed in his private jet for a long time to figure out how he would leave the airport without the press seeing him. A few hours later, Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige, another former senator and APC member, arrived at the airport into the warm embrace of the public, including enthusiastic journalists. Ngige, who came with a presidential jet, savoured every minute.

Uba, a two-term senator, is fast acquiring the reputation of the most despised politician in Anambra State. He knows it, and has taken a series of measures to keep away from the public; he doesn't want to earn, in a spectacular way, the wrath of the people. For instance, with the election only five weeks away, he announced on October 2, 2021, an indefinite suspension of his electioneering campaign ostensibly on account of security in the state. He did stay away from not just campaigns but also the state for more than two weeks.

In contrast, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, who survived a politically motivated attack last March 31 when he was addressing the youth from his hometown of Isuofia at their Civic Centre but lost three of the four police officers protecting him, continued with the electioneering campaign as though nothing had happened. Soludo thus created in the minds of Anambra voters that he has an abundance of leadership values of courage, perseverance, optimism and perhaps heroism. Everyone knew he was destined to win the November 6 vote by a wide margin.

So, why did Andy Uba, who took a distant third position, refuse to congratulate Professor Soludo on his brilliant performance, even after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the election, Valentine Ozigbo who came second, congratulated the winner immediately the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) pronounced the reform-minded ex- Central Bank of Nigeria governor victorious? More appropriately, why has Uba been hopping from court to court claiming he won the vote?

Most Nigerians are convinced that a number of lawyers, including senior advocates, are merely swindling him by assuring Uba, who became extremely wealthy after serving for eight years as ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s very powerful Senior Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs, of triumph, even though they know such a victory is like searching for a needle in a haystack. To such lawyers, it is an opportunity to grab their own share of the proverbial national cake as much as they can. But the more compelling reason seems to be Uba’s plans for judicial capture.

Uba is not depending on the Anambra people to become a governor. Nor is he relying on the substance of his case or even technicalities at the courts. He is rather depending on what the late flamboyant politician, Dr K. O. Mbadiwe, would describe as visible and invisible sources. In other words, he has been planning a judicial coup. After all, his camp has been drawing inspiration from what is generally known as the Imo Formula, a situation which could see someone who took a very distant fourth position in an election declared the winner. Like the camp of Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma, legitimacy, or popular acceptance, appears of little interest to the Uba coterie. It is probably not fortuitous that Governor Uzodimma, of all persons, was made the chairman of the Andy Uba Gubernatorial Campaign Council.

The good news is that the Imo Formula is most unlikely to work in Anambra State. The country’s leadership is fiercely opposed to Uba. He is the only APC governorship candidate in history whose campaign has been boycotted by both President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo three times on moral grounds. He remains the only APC gubernatorial candidate whose rally has been boycotted by all APC governors, including Hope Uzodimma, chairman of his campaign council! Andy Uba has also made history by becoming the only APC governorship candidate whose campaign has been avoided by every senator who belongs to his own party.

What can the nation make of President Buhari’s simple request to the organizers of the APC Congress or primary election of June 26, 2021, to produce a video of APC governorship aspirants voting? What can we make of Vice President Osinbajo’s shock at Uba’s temerity in announcing before him, as he did before many other party members including Senator Joy Emodi, that the result of the Anambra election had been written and INEC would announce it as presented by APC operatives? What can the nation make of the claim that Uba scored a whopping 230,201 votes in the alleged APC primary election of June 26, only to score a mere 43,285 votes in the governorship election of November 6? What can we make of the assertion by Professor Soludo that Uba’s high school certificate is a forgery? The erstwhile senator claims that he wrote his Senior Secondary School Certificate (SSSC) exam in 1974, decades before the SSSC was introduced in the country. The certificate he presented to INEC also claims he obtained the school certificate at Union Secondary School in “Enugu State”, a whole 18 years before the state was created. What we had in Enugu in 1974 was East Central State, not Enugu State.

It is amazing that Uba continues to believe in the plans for judicial capture or in the effectiveness of the Imo Formula after all the robust judgments which our appellate justices have been delivering on the Anambra State gubernatorial drama to the applause of the Nigerian people. Something is fundamentally wrong with many a Nigerian politician, all the more so if he is what Nigerians call, at best, a money bag and, at worst, a “money miss road”.

•Dr Ifejika is of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka Campus, while Dr Okoye is of the Enugu Campus.