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Anambra governorship election held on the 8th day of November 2025. This election has a lot of peculiarities. It’s an off-cycle election which is conducted at a different time from the general elections. This makes it a preparation and testing ground for the main elections to be held in 2027. The Anambra election is also distinguished in that it was the first election carried out by the new Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof Joash Amupitan, less than three weeks after his appointment. It was gratifying to note that Amupitan didn’t give as excuse the shortness of the time he had before the election for any performance or lack of it therefore. He boldly asked Nigerians to judge him by his performance with the Anambra election.
On the D-Day, electoral materials were despatched to the polling units for the election. People voted and the votes were counted. By the results announced, Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) polled 422,664 votes to emerge the winner, with the closest rival, Nicholas Ukachukwu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scoring 99,445 votes to come second. Paul Chukwuma, the candidate of the Young Progressives Party secured 37,753 votes to come third, while the Labour Party (LP) candidate, George Moghalu scored 10,576 votes to emerge fourth in the election. The total votes of these parties were 578,646. APGA won about 73 per cent of the votes. APC won about 24 per cent of the votes. YPP won about 6 per cent of the votes. LP won about 1.8 per cent of the votes, while other parties won less than 1.5 per cent each of the votes.
Another uniqueness of the election is in the pattern of votes for each party and each candidate. According to INEC, 16 candidates from 16 political parties participated in the election. During the build-up to the election, Soludo boasted that he was running unopposed. It appeared so after the election that he ran unopposed by the result of the election. It’s obvious that the APC is not in the DNA of Ndi Anambra. Despite being the ruling party at the centre, it could not make any reasonable impact in the gubernatorial election. The YPP did its best when one considers that the main backer of YPP in Anambra, Senator Ifeanyi Uba, just died and the YPP has not found a replacement. PDP is already dead and its performance was not surprising to anyone.
Strictly speaking, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) was not on ballot in Anambra State. This is because the coalition partner, Peter Obi, pleaded with the ADC to be allowed to support the Labour Party candidate, George Moghalu, for the November Anambra gubernatorial election since he had thrown his weight behind the candidate even before the unveiling of the David Mark-led ADC. It would, therefore, be untidy for the ADC as a party to back another candidate for the Anambra State gubernatorial election. The candidate who contested under ADC, John Nwosu, actually picked the ticket in protest for the shabby way he was treated during the LP gubernatorial primary election. His original intention was to contest under the LP, but left the LP with his supporters when LP organised a gubernatorial primary election which Oseloka Obaze described as a sham that reflected the structure of criminality that LP has become. Obaze, who was the General Manager of Peter Obi’s Presidential Campaign Council in 2023 presidential election, did not support the LP’s gubernatorial candidate in protest of how the LP primary was conducted. Even the Obidient Movement did not support the LP candidate in the election.
At the end of the day, because the LP candidate was the sole choice of Peter Obi, without consultation with other stakeholders of the Party, Obi was left alone to carry his cross. He singlehandedly selected Moghalu under the leadership of the sacked Abure-led LP. This meant that the Abure-led executive of LP stayed away from Obi and the Nenadi Usman-led executive of LP stayed away from Obi. Since a tree cannot make a democratic forest because democracy is a game of numbers, Obi actually received what he bargained for. He lost his polling unit to APC, and George Moghalu lost his polling unit to APGA. Throughout the whole of Anambra State, LP won only one polling unit led by Senator Tony Nwoye. One can submit that any politician who decides to go into election alone will fail miserably alone. Team work and cohesion is needed for a successful campaign. LP is now confirmed dead.
As usual, after the election, winners will hail the result as reflecting the wish of the people, opponents will give excuses for their performance. Soludo hailed the election as free, fair, and credible, while the opposition condemned the conduct of the Anambra 2025 governorship election, lamenting the level of vote-buying and institutional complacency during the exercise. The opposition was appalled by the apparent silence, and in some instances, visible inaction, of institutions mandated to enforce electoral integrity, like the security operatives, who stood by as voters were harassed and compromised, while electoral officials, overwhelmed or indifferent, failed to uphold even the most basic standards. To be fair, even one person was killed by some perpetrators of electoral violence. However, the person killed by yet to be identified gunmen was a member of the ruling APGA in the state headed by Soludo. Also, Peter Obi was defeated by the opposition APC in his polling unit, not by the ruling APGA. Does it mean that even the opposition was involved in vote buying?
The law is very clear that vote-buying and vote-selling are crimes punishable with imprisonment and fines. Section 121 of the Electoral Act puts it succinctly that: Any person who directly or indirectly, before or after an election, by himself or herself or by any other person on his or her behalf, corruptly makes any gift, loan, offer, promise, procurement or agreement to or for any person, in order to induce such person to procure or to endeavour to procure the return of any person as a member of a legislative house or to an elective office or the vote of any voter at any election commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a maximum fine of N500,000 or imprisonment for a term of 12 months or both. Also a voter commits an offence of bribery where before or during an election directly or indirectly by his or herself or by any other person on his or her behalf, receives, agrees or contracts for any money, gift, loan, or valuable consideration, office, place or employment, for his or herself, or for any other person, for voting or agreeing to vote or for refraining or agreeing to refrain from voting at any such election. Such vote seller is liable to be punished the same way as the vote buyer.
Unfortunately, INEC, as presently constituted by law is not well placed to effectively combat vote-buying and vote-selling. This is because INEC is given the power to prosecute but not the power to arrest and investigate. This is a power reserved for the security and prosecuting agencies. The clamour for an Electoral Offences Commission becomes justified in this regard. This commission will function like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), with power to investigate, arrest, and prosecute potential electoral offenders.
It’s gratifying to note that no politician came out crying about fake results, inflated results, ballot box stuffing, non-transmission of polling units results electronically, etc. Indeed, before 10pm on the 8th of November, more than 98 per cent of the polling units results have been transmitted and uploaded on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (Irev Portal) for the whole world to see. There was no Prof Yakubu Mahmood’s technical glitch that forestalls the electronically transmitted results. There were no Yakubu’s INEC fake pre-filled results that were surreptitiously transmitted unto the Irev Portal as it was done in Kogi. There were no cases of tampering with the backend of INEC’s server as was done in Edo to manipulate the number of accredited voters vis-a-vis votes recorded. INEC concluded the collation of results on time and the voice of INEC’s Returning Officer, Edoba Omoregie, Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, announced Soludo’s victory, noting that he satisfied the electoral requirements, having won in more than two-thirds of all local government areas across the state.
A United Nations election observer, Jim Oko, scored the poll very highly, saying the conduct was in line with international best practices, unlike the score similar observers gave to Yakubu on the 2023 general elections. Oko, the national coordinator of Nouvel Perspective Int, a UN-accredited election observer organisation, said, “With the fact that most of us have monitored a lot of elections all over the world, especially the US election that was a very high level one, we can conveniently state that everything was how it should be – peacefully done, peacefully collated, peacefully announced and peacefully accepted. So, we are very glad over this”.
With below three weeks to conduct the Anambra State election, Amupitan discharged himself well. I must admit that even Prof Yakubu Mahmood discharged himself well when he started with the Irev Portal in Edo, Anambra, etc. Then, Gov Godwin Obaseki defeated the APC and Adams Oshiomhole to win the gubernatorial election of Edo State last five years. But subsequently, he backslid and supervised the worst presidential election in history of Nigeria, in 2023. Till date, all the polling unit results for the presidential election cannot be located anywhere in the world. This makes Nigerians to praise Amupitan for this seemingly above average performance in Anambra State very cautiously. Will he continue along this path of moral rectitude, or will he backslide along the line and become like Prof Yakubu Mahmood?
Only time will tell.
