Great news from the Anambra region!

The All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) has set an unassailable lead in the first batch of results on the Saturday 16 November 2013 poll for governor of the Anambra administrative region released by the organising electoral commission (The Guardian, Lagos, 18 November 2013). APGA candidate Willie Obiano scores 174,740 in 16 of the 21 electoral districts declared whilst Tony Nwoye of the People’s Democratic party has 94,956 votes from 2 of 21 districts and Chris Ngige of the All Progressive Congress (APC) receives just 92,300 votes from 2 out of16 districts. Concluding elections for a total of 113,113 “indemnified” votes cast during this round of the exercise are being planned by the commission soon.

Anti-deportation platform

For APGA, which campaigned, correctly, on an anti-APC Igbo deportation-from-Lagos platform, its last Saturday’s performance represents a comprehensive defeat of the reprehensible APC programme of deporting Igbo nationals from Lagos to Igboland which is part and parcel of the ongoing Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2013/08/igbo-deportation-from-lagos_2.html). In the wider compass of Igboland contemporary politics, undoubtedly, Anambra voters have indeed scored an historic defeat of the genocidist and fascist project of the APC in the Igbo country. The voters surely have to go out and consolidate this victory for the incoming Obiano administration whenever the electoral commission convenes the second ballot.

As in 2010 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2010/02/anambra-way-forward.html), voters in Anambra have achieved this extraordinary feat in an atmosphere of relative peace and goodwill, despite the serial provocation of the APC candidacy and operatives – millions of US dollars worth in local currency imported from abroad in west Nigeria to Anambra during the period, importation of agent provocateurs from abroad in west Nigeria to Anambra during the period, wake-keeping-like mourners from abroad in west Nigeria enmeshed in dubious acts of self-flagellation in Anambra during the period, aggressive, pro-APC media campaign from abroad in west Nigeria beamed to Anambra during the period... Besides the very tragic deaths of 25 worshippers at the Uke church revival service earlier on in the campaign, these elections have been remarkably peaceful: men and women from varying political parties openly campaigning actively, boisterously even, without intimidation; no person nor crowd nor vehicle nor building nor anywhere is firebombed, for instance; no suicide bombing, or such inanity – definitely not, not in Igboland, please!

Evidence

If one requires yet another piece of evidence on the ground,  the prevailing peace in this Anambra election season is a reminder to the world that the violence and instability that often headline everyday life in Igboland are encoded in the matrix of the operationalisation of the Nigerian occupation of the Igbo country (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/followingthe-all-day-sit-at-home.html). On the contrary, the politics of Igbo public affairs has historically been conducted in peaceful milieus. The classics indeed attest to this. A reading of that grand debate in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God between ogbuefi Nwaka and Ezeulu on the crucial subject of the future direction of Umuaro exemplifies the trend. The debate rages and rages with its dogged and at times agonising twists and turns but at no time does either of the protagonists try to raise some army or employ any extra-juridical agency to subvert the discourse or impose their will. It remains to the very end an expansive engagement of intellect, a mutual bombardment of ideas!

The electorate in Anambra are surely living up to their pedigree.

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe