Updated: Saharareporters can confirm that the incumbent Governor Peter Obi of Anambra has won the polls held on Saturday February 6, 2010 in Anambra State in the southeastern region of Nigeria according to final results released by the Independent National Elections Commission of Nigeria. Saharareporters is projecting that incumbent Governor Peter Obi of Anambra is set to win statewide polls held on Saturday February 6, 2010 in Anambra State in the southeastern region of Nigeria.
An Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) result obtained by our correspondent shows that official tally of votes point to Mr. Obi as the winner of the governorship election, despite logistical stumbling blocks deliberately created by top officials of the commission. The election was widely regarded as a mirror into the general elections scheduled for 2011 in Nigeria.

As at press time, Mr. Obi, who ran under the ticket of APGA, has comfortably won 11 local government areas. According to ballot tallies from polling booths across the state, the APGA candidate won in Awka North, Awka South, Orumba South, Onitsha North, Onitsha South, Ogbaru, Njikoka, Ekwusigo, Anambra West, Anaocha, and Nnewi South. Saharareporters also projects that Mr. Obi would carry Ihiala.

In a stunning blow, Obi trounced Charles Chukwuma Soludo; the candidate of the PDP, in the latter’s local government area. Mr. Soludo, immediate past governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, had used his thugs to snatch ballot boxes in a few polling centers, but his effort to rig the polls became a woeful failure.

Mr. Soludo also enlisted a fictitious organization called Holler Africa to publish false polls suggesting that the former CBN governor was leading other candidates.  A source told Saharareporters that Soludo financed the polling scheme in order to legitimize the election he planned to rig.

Bed-ridden Nigerian ruler Umaru Yar’adua and his wife Turai imposed Soludo on the party using Tony Anenih, the widely corrupt Edo-born politician.
Our projections, based on reports by our on-ground observers as well as INEC sources, indicate that the voters of Anambra resoundingly rejected Soludo’s candidacy. Mr. Soludo rushed into the governorship fray after he presided over the collapse of the Nigerian banking system and engaged in widespread corruption including a bribery scandal unraveled in Australia over currency printing contracts.

In several reports, Saharareporters had revealed plans by INEC chairman Maurice Iwu and Victor Chukwuani, one of his commissioners and close associates, to rig the election for Andy Uba (of the Labour Party) and Mrs. Uchenna Ekwunife (of PPA) respectively.

Our sources within INEC disclosed that uncooperative security agents thwarted plans by the two INEC officials to manipulate the election.

Iwu, whose conduct of the 2007 elections drew universal condemnation, has a history of fraud dating to his graduate studies in pharmacy at Bradford University in the UK.

Saharareporters has published an expose detailing how Iwu lied to the university that he obtained a “first degree from a university in Cameroon.” In addition, Mr Iwu once fraudulently withdrew $50,000 mistakenly credited to his account by Citibank after he deposited $5,000in February 1993. He claimed he thought it was grant money paid into his account even though he had not applied for or received any grants at that time.

Several INEC insiders told Saharareporters that Mr. Chukwuani is romantically linked to Mrs. Ekwunife. They described Chukwuani as one of the sleaziest commissioners at INEC. “He promised Mrs. Ekwunife that he would definitely deliver Anambra to her,” said a source in the PPA, adding that the controversial female candidate was still in shock and “felt thoroughly abandoned.” Ekwunife amassed a huge fortune in cash and landed property in the early 2000s when, as a banker, she reportedly used her affair with then Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju to steer government funds into her pocket.

The election was particularly marred by voter register errors. A substantial number of voters who turned out to vote could not find their names in the voter registers provided by INEC even though these names were present in earlier voter registers displayed across the state.

Saharareporters learnt that some INEC officials, working in concert with PDP candidate Charles Soludo, had tinkered with the voter registers a few days to the polls to make room for the announcement of fraudulent outcomes during the collation of results.

INEC officials in Awka told Saharareporters that the commission hoped to conclude the collation of official results in a matter of hours and then announce the winner today.

Meanwhile, the Action Congress this morning indicated that it planned to mount a legal challenge to the results. The party said that irregularities in voters registers called the outcome into question.

Mr. Obi’s election may also be jeopardized by a ruling last week by a Federal High Court in Lagos stating that INEC did not have the constitutionally mandated quorum of commissioners to conduct a proper election. It is unclear whether that verdict would invalidate yesterday’s polls.

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