There are strong indications that the pressure which the All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate in the November 6 election in Anambra State, Senator Andy Uba, has for two weeks been mounting on the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to arrest top appointees of the state government through the Economic and Financial crimes Commission (EFCC) on trump-up charges before the poll is now yielding fruits.
Loading ...The arrests are to enable the APC, the ruling party at the national level, to achieve victory since other strategies to unseat the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) like the declaration of a state of emergency purportedly on the basis of the security situation in the South East have failed.
APGA looks certain to win by a landslide, according to a study by APC operatives in Abuja, who are worried that APGA is the only political campaigning openly in the state and its rallies draw huge crowds while other parties have gone underground ostensibly on account of insecurity.
Sources in the Federal Ministry of Justice, which oversees the EFCC, told our correspondents that the Attorney General, a close friend of Uba’s and a senior member of the Andy Uba Gubernatorial Campaign Council, has directed the anti-graft body to look for ways to arrest as many Anambra State top government officials as possible under the guise of fighting corruption and keep them in custody until the election is over.
“Malami, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, is relating to us in a bossy manner the way no other Attorney General in our history has ever done”, lamented a top EFCC officer who asked us not to reveal his name so that he would not be punished.
“He breathes down our neck and wants to use us to fight personal battles.
“He behaves like Uba’s personal assistant rather than the Attorney General of the whole Federation, otherwise he would not have accepted to be a member of a gubernatorial campaign council, as no Federal Attorney has stooped this low in the nation’s history”.
A large team of EFCC officers is likely to move to Anambra State in the next two weeks and start searching the books of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with large budgets to see if they can be charged with anything, reveal intelligence sources in Abuja.
If many Anambra State government officers are kept out of circulation until the election is over, according to these sources, both Uba and Malami feel that the election can be rigged.
Anambra State is considered the foremost South Eastern state, and the APC is leaving no stone unturned to capture it.
Among prominent South Easterners from the state are Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, a journalist, politician, orator, political scientist and publisher who led Nigeria to independence in 1960; Dr Alex Ekwueme, Nigeria’s first Vice President; Dr Nwafor Orizu, who succeeded Dr Azikiwe as Senate President in 1960; Sir Phillip Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the first African President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange; his son, Dim Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the first university graduate to join the Nigerian Army and the APGA Eternal leader; Dr Chuba Okadigbo, former Senate President; Professor Chinua Achebe, Africa’s foremost novelist; Professor Kenneth Dike, the first Nigerian to become the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan; Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the first black secretary General of the Commonwealth; Dr Pius Okigbo, Africa’s most decorated economist; Olauda Equiano, who in 1789 became the west African to write a book in English; Professor Ben Nwabueze, Africa’s best known Constitutional Law scholar; Professor Chike Obi, one of the best known mathematicians in the world; and Francis Cardinal Arinze, who almost became the first African Pope.
‘It is unimaginable that some elements in the APC are determined to rig the election for a candidate who did not pass his school certificate but forged the one he presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)”, stated Solomon Ejike Nwankwo, the new Secretary of the Coalition of the Civil Society Organizations (CCSOs) in Anambra State.
In a statement in Awka at the weekend, Nwankwo pointed out while the APC candidate claims in the document submitted to INEC that he graduated from Union Secondary School at Awkunanaw, Enugu, in 1974 with a Senior Secondary School Certificate with only one credit in one subject, the SSS Certificate was introduced in Nigeria only in 1989.
He also faulted Uba’s claim that he received the certificate from a school in the Enugu State School system, whereas the state was not in existence until August 27, 1991.
In addition, Nwankwo pooped the claim that the APC candidate sat for Further Mathematics because “the subject was known in the 1970s as Additional Mathematics, and not Further Math”.
The certificate Uba submitted was clearly a forgery, he declared, wondering why the Attorney General has turned a blind eye to a clear case of forgery but is desperate to hound innocent public officers.
“Abubakar Malami should send the police after the APC candidate and prosecute him for certificate forgery”, he argued.
“Worse, this person has been indicted in both the United States and the United Kingdom for money laundry”.
