Assembly elections. But his opponent, former Senate Committee Chairman on
Information, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, was the winner of the election as declared by
the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Chief Nkwonta immediately filed
a petition before the elections petition tribunal in Umuahia, challenging the declaration
of Senator Abaribe as winner, and urging the tribunal to declare him the rightful winner
of valid votes cast in the election
In this interview he granted Nna Henry of Ekekeee, Chief Nkwonta waxes confident that
he’ll get justice from the tribunal, even as he says how strong he thinks his case is.
Excerpts:
You are the petitioner in Abia South Senatorial Zone in the last National Assembly
election, can you tell us how the case has been going so far?
So far so good we are very optimistic that at the end victory will be ours.
You came today as a star witness, what can you say about your performance at the
witness box?
I think I did very well, I brought out some of the issues that had not been brought to
the fore.
What gave you the confidence to go to the tribunal to challenge the declaration of
Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe as the winner of Abia South Senatorial election?
Because I won the election. As at the time they were collating results, five local
governments out of the six local governments in Abia south, I was leading with 25,164
votes, and then the result of Obingwa came last because they were waiting to know the
extent to which they were going to manipulate and when it became obvious that I was
already leading with over 25,000 votes that now enabled them to determine how to rig
and that is why, if you look at the result sheet, you will see all manner of mutilations,
doctoring of figures because it is strange that in one local government where there are
about 98,085 registered voters, 78,410 were accredited and they all voted. “78,000”,
that is about 80% voter turnout, whereas in Aba North with 184,000+ registered voters
and Aba South with 182,000+ registered voters they were only able to accredit 43,000
each, and Aba is an urban area, so it tells you that what happened in Obingwa was just
a charade.
From your counsel, we gathered that you have closed your case, waiting for the
respondents to start theirs. From the briefs you have got, how confident are you that
you will win this case?
I’m very very confident that I am going to win this case because I actually won the
election. They say he who goes to equity must go with clean hands and I have come to
the tribunal with clean hands. I am convinced that I won, otherwise I wouldn’t have
been in court.
What do you think the print out of uploaded card reader report gotten from INEC
Abuja will do to this case?
What that does to this case Is to further reassure that we have a fantastic case because
If you look at the number of accredited voters in that document you have 26,996
accredited voters in Obingwa so how come you have about 78,000 people voting? How
could that have been possible? Even along the fact that there was manual accreditation,
if you look at the time that order was given, which was about 12.30 to 1pm, was it
possible for over 50,000 people to be accredited manually? It is unbelievable. So that
document is very key to our case and I’m very very hopeful that it will do more damage
to the respondents’ case.
We understood that there are so many alterations with no signatures beside them?
What is the implication of that?
The implication is that whenever you cancel just like if you write a cheque and you
cancel a figure what do you do? You sign. There were all signs of cancellations,
mutilations, imposing of figures, all manner of evil and those cancellations were not
signed off.
How did you gain access to these documents because we have it on good authority
that most of the Obingwa results were caught up in the fire that razed down the INEC
office in that LGA.
Well we were able to have access to these documents before they decided to burn
down the INEC office in Obingwa. So we did that ahead of time because we knew that
they were going to burn down the place.
Why is Obingwa so contentious in almost all the elections; Governorship, National
Assembly and even State House of Assembly?
Because that was where a whole lot of irregularities took place and these irregularities
to a very large extent rendered Obingwa election null and void. Take for example the
total number of votes that he (Senator Abaribe) claimed to have gotten, if you put those
votes aside, it’s way above what he got from the other five local governments put
together which is about 36000+. So something went wrong in Obingwa, and what was it
that went wrong? Cancelations, mutilations, doctoring of figures and that was why they
delayed Obingwa result. It did not come on time, they waited until they knew the
outcome of the other five local governments and then they now went to work and
started changing figures. Because how could you explain that 80% of registered voters
came out to vote in a rural area where majority of are Adventists, whereas Aba, an
urban area with over 184,000 registered voters in Aba north and over 182,000 in Aba
South got 43000 and 42000 respectively, then Obingwa was able to have about 78000?
Haha! We no get brain?
If the tribunal does not favour you, what next step are you going to take?
It will favour me. (His counsel cuts in and says “ïf it doesn’t favour us, we will go on
appeal”) No no no, it will favour me.
What message do you have for your voters and supporters?
To be optimistic, to have hope that in the end there will be justice.
Thank you sir for your time.
Thank you very much.
Via ekekee
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