“The INEC headquarters in Abuja reacted by withholding Okorocha’s Certificate of Return vowing it would not reward Okorocha’s criminal behaviour. But the courts were not interested in the circumstances or morality of the case”.
BY OWEI LAKEMFA
I do not know where His Excellency Hope Odidika Uzodimma lives. He is Governor of Imo State but is reported from Abuja so frequently that I have come to the conclusion that he lives in Abuja, but visits Imo State. He is so much in and around the Aso Rock Presidential Villa that I expect the occupiers of the Rock to have gotten sick and tired of a supporter who will not sit in his home but wanders around the corridors of the Presidential Palace making a show of putting President Bola Tinubu first in all matters before the Imolites who are supposed to have elected.
Uzodimma is a supporter with so fertile an imagination that, as Chairman of the ruling All Peoples Congress, APC Progressive Governors Forum, he has reportedly promised to give President Tinubu a minimum seven million votes from each of the 32 Governors in the Forum during the January 2027 Presidential Elections. This will amount to a minimum 224 million votes. The First Family alone has promised their patriarch thirty million votes. The First Lady’s Mummy Men Movement, MMM led by APC Youth Leader, Dayo Israel who is distributing free 2026 prado jeeps, promises ten million votes. The First Son’s City Boy Movement which claims to have 4.8 million members, says it has ten million votes locked down. The First Daughter’s Iyaloja General Movement, IGM also promises Tinubu a minimum ten million votes with its Lagos State Chapter alone, pledging one million votes.
As things stand, the votes locked down by Uzodinma and the First Family alone, will give Tinubu more votes than the Nigerian population. This will not be a record. In the 1927 Liberian Presidential Elections, President Charles King and his True Whig Party scored 243,000 votes in an election which had about 15,000 registered voters.
If President Tinubu is destined to score more votes than the population of the country, who are we to question destiny? Uzodimma himself is a child of destiny. Nobody I know, gave him a chance to become the elected governor of Imo State in the March, 2019 Gubernatorial Elections which had a crowded field of seventy contestants.
Honourable Emeka Ihedioha came first with 273,404 votes, Uche Nwosu, second with 190,364 votes, Ifeanyi Ararumen was third with 114,676 votes while Uzodimma came a distant fourth position with 96,458 votes. But Uzodimma who believed in destiny, went to court with the votes from 388 polling units which he claimed a policeman collated for him. The Supreme Court believed him and a hopeless case gave Hope renewed hope. So, from the fourth position, he was pushed to the first. This was despite Uzodimma admitting at the Electoral Tribunal that he had hijacked the result sheets and completed them himself. I have heard it said many times that the last shall be the first. But never thought the fourth shall be the first. Today, about seven years later, he remains the State Governor.
But Uzodimma is not done setting records in our political system. He has set himself another; to be elected a Senator and Senate President while still being in office as an elected Governor. He tried to push the boundaries of constitutionalism and governance by being an elected executive and legislator simultaneously.
There were questions. If elected a Senator, would he resign as governor before being sworn in or, wait until after the follow up election as Senate President before deciding which position to drop?
Uzodimma seemed well on his way to achieving this feat by running in the May 18, 2026 APC Imo West Senatorial District primaries. The published results showed he scored an irreversible 230,464 votes against the paltry 1,098 scored by former Governor Rochas Anayo Okorocha. The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC of Law Professor Joash Amupitan which monitored the elections, testified to Uzodimma’s victory.
But the spoiler, Okorocha headed to the courts on August 13, 2026 suing INEC, the APC and Uzodimma. He claimed to have polled 150,780 votes in the same primaries and, that Uzodimma scored 102,15 votes. This was a case possible only in the crafty world of the tortoise or fox; what our people will describe as ‘Cunnyman die, cunnyman bury am”
Justice Obiora Egwuatu of the Federal High Court in Abuja ruled on Thursday, October 29, 2026 that Okorocha and, not Uzodimma won the primaries. He ordered the APC to forward Okorocha’s name to INEC, directed the latter to publish Okorocha’s name as the validly nominated APC candidate and that Uzodimma should stop parading himself as the APC Senatorial candidate.
This case seemed a replay of the 2019 Imo State Gubernatorial elections except that this time, the loser is Uzodimma.
A jubilant Okorocha said he won the case: “because the court has found that my documents are genuine and correct.” He added that the judgment is: “a victory for the nation’s fast-growing democracy.”
I am not sure of this claim because the democratic robes of both Okorocha and Uzodinma are cut from the same fabric. Even their tailor is same. They are what the people of the Niger Delta will call “same ten and ten pence”
Let me give just one instance of Okorocha’s magical displays in our electoral system. In the same 2019 General Elections in which Uzodinma performed his miracle of coming from the fourth position to being named the Gubernatorial winner, Okorocha pulled off his own miracle as he was pronounced winner of the Imo West Senatorial Constituency elections even when the documents in the hands of INEC showed he had lost the elections.
When the INEC Returning Officer, Professor Innocent Izuchukwu Ibeabuchi appeared in public to announce the Senatorial election results, he said he was being forced to do so under duress having been held hostage for days. He emphasized that the results he was going to announce are false but he was being forced to do so, in order to save his life and those of his electoral officers. He then announced Okorocha the winner. The INEC headquarters in Abuja reacted by withholding Okorocha’s Certificate of Return vowing it would not reward Okorocha’s criminal behaviour. But the courts were not interested in the circumstances or morality of the case. They ruled that once INEC had announced Okorocha as the alleged winner he must be given the Certificate of Return.
So, for the people of Imo West, the choice between Uzodimma and Okorocha is no choice. The fact that many leading politicians in Eastern Nigeria give the people little or nothing to choose from, might be responsible for the popularity of Peter Obi. He is no saint, but I am sure he would neither perform the Uzodimma miracles nor hold INEC staff hostage.
