Jonathan leads Uduaghan’s re-run campaign

Posted by admin Delta, State News Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan is expected to lead PDP political big wigs for rally in support of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan coming back to power during the governorship re_run in the State.

The Director of Media and Publicity, PDP Re_run Election Campaign Organization, Dr. Festus Okubor, in a statement, weekend, said it was going to be “Mother of all campaign rallies for total victory in Warri on January 4, 2011 at the Warri Township Stadium.”

Expected at the rally to be led by President Jonathan and the National Chairman of PDP, Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo, are party Leaders from all over the country, party faithful and supporters from Delta State.

The statement said: “In this period, Dr Uduaghan, PDP and party faithful have campaigned in every ward and local government area of Delta State and feedback from every community has been most encouraging.

Our campaigns have been mostly aided by the excellent performance of Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan in office as Governor.

Why we chose January 6 for rerun – INEC
Meanwhile, the decision by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, not to conduct the governorship rerun election in areas where their offices were burnt during 2007 polls has been faulted.
INEC’s Resident Commissioner in Delta State, Dr. Ogbudu Ada, had, weekend, in Asaba, said the rerun will hold as scheduled on Thursday this week throughout the state, excluding the places where its offices were burnt during the 2007 polls.

He dismissed insinuations in some quarters that the Commission was in a haste to conduct the re_run despite the call for a shift in date, adding: “We are not hurrying the election. The issue is we are working within the available time that we have. First of all you should know that the court gave us 90 days to do that election and in between we have the national assignment of doing a fresh voters’ registration, which will of course start January 15 and will end January 29.

“If you calculate after that period, if we are to do the rerun after the voters’ registration, we are not even sure whether the registration will end that January 29th. Even if the registration will end January 29. There will still be a period to do a display because legally, if you do fresh voters registration you must do a display.

Again you will need five to ten days to be able to do a display after that one you do a display, there will be claims and objections, so you need to re_amend all that and prepare it.

“The earliest again after you have finished that registration it will take up to a month before the register can be ready and of course it means that February would have passed. Meanwhile the order the court gave us supposed to elapse by February 8 so there was no need of us thinking that we can consider it after voters’ registration. It means that we will now run foul of the law.”

On why polls would not hold in areas where it offices were burnt in 2007 polls, he said: “It is only in one or two polling units where the people burnt our offices, they burnt our manual registers, they burnt our electronic registers, even the data that was collated, which had not been downloaded into the server were burnt in the process.”

So it is only in one or two places of those places, we may not have the voters register for them. But then, that one is not our problem because the communities caused it themselves. We believe it will not be substantial to affect the outcome of the result of an election”.

But reacting to the decision, a former Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Mr. Pius Ewherido said “the decision is absurd and totally undemocratic. Another example of INEC’s negative handling of Delta situation. Deltans will rise against any ploy to disenfranchise them. It will be interesting to know the section of the Electoral Act upon which this decision is based”.

Also commenting, the Director of Media and Publicity PDP Re_run Election Campaign Organisation, Dr Festus. Okubor “it is unfortunate particularly as we don’t know what areas may be involved. We will engage INEC on this issue for clarifications and possible reversal”, he stated.

On his part, the Labour Party governorship candidate, Chief Abel Adijala said “it is anti democratic for INEC to come out with such a position. It is a substantial ground to annul the election again because no one Deltan ought to be left out in the decision to choose for themselves, a leader”, he notedwp_posts