Governor Ikedim Ohakim
Early results emerging from yesterday's gubernatorial elections in the state show that Ohakim is in the process of losing the election, but voters as well as political activists across the state are apprehensive that the results from the governor’s Okigwe area were being held back to enable Mr. Ohakim to manipulate the final voters tally.
At the time of this report, several sources in the state revealed that Ohakim’s magic numbers had started rolling in. In one local government in Mbano, Mr. Ohakim has cooked up 28,000 votes for himself, allocating his APGA opponent 1,000.
“This is part of the governor’s desperate effort to catch up with the APGA vote tally,” said one source.
SaharaReporters was able to establish with a top INEC official as well as a security source in Imo State that Mr. Rochas Okorocha was currently leading in 11 local government areas in the state with 139,930 votes while Governor Ohakim of the PDP had polled 80,247.
“Our fear is that Ohakim will bribe some unscrupulous INEC people to announce jumbo figures for him in the remaining local government areas where results are yet to come from INEC,” said a prominent indigene of the state who resides in Owerri and Abuja.
“The governor tried to impose a curfew on the state yesterday, but was resisted,” said another source, adding that there was “a genuine fear since last night that Ohakim is looking for ways to balance up the votes or possibly tilt victory to his side.”
The election in Imo State is one of the most nationally watched governorship elections in Nigeria as voters in the state seemed determined to oust Mr. Ohakim whose tenure has been marked by widespread fraud, money laundering and repression of Imo indigenes critical of his rule. He has been known to slap a Catholic priest, to personally flog a critic, Ikenna Samuel, and to order the beating of a hapless woman in Lagos who was slow in moving out of the way of the governor’s convoy.
Mr. Ohakim was a well-known financial scam artist and common fraudster before former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia State and disgraced former INEC chairman, Maurice Iwu, conspired to impose him in 2007 as Imo governor. Two years ago, Governor Ohakim broke with Mr. Kalu and his PPA and declared membership in the ruling PDP. He has enjoyed the sponsorship of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, which is one of the reasons Imo indigenes want him removed. Mr. Obasanjo is despised nationally and in the southeast in particular for his ruinous policies as president.
Mr. Ohakim’s strategy for forcing a re-run or stealing the governorship election conforms to a trend used by many corrupt politicians in the ruling party to retain their position through crooked means. The strategy is to wait until a clear picture emerges about the trend of votes and then to inflate the figures of the unannounced results to “magically” emerge victorious.
Ohakim’s hugely inflated numbers from Mbano local government area are seen as the opening salvo in his wider strategy to thwart the will of the electorate in Imo.
“Having failed woefully in yesterday’s election, Chief Ohakim is doing everything to find the numbers to force a tie,” said an observer of the Imo elections. He added that the INEC officials colluding with Ohakim were giving a bad name to the electoral body as well as its chairman, Attahiru Jega.
SaharaReporters has learnt that make-up elections are likely to be organized tomorrow in Ngor Okpala and Ohaji/Egbema where INEC had earlier cancelled the results on account of violence. A spokesman for the Action Congress of Nigeria in Imo said his party suspected that the re-run elections could be manipulated to hand illegitimate victory to Mr. Ohakim “who has been roundly rejected by the people of Imo State.”
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