By Justin Chukwulozie Esq.
Sir Bob Robert Nester Marley, the late Reggae Maestro, popularly called Bob Marley, in one his hit songs, did say that good name is better than silver and gold. While physical properties worth billions in monetary terms, could be recovered when lost, a good name lost, evaporates and never makes it back.
Born and bred in Kaduna State, North Western Nigeria, though of Igbo extraction, Mr Festus Okoye, a legal practitioner, was sworn in alongside other National Commissioners of INEC in 2018 to represent the South East.
Mr Okoye right from the outset, hit the ground running, becoming the commission’s famed spokesperson in charge of information and voter education. Ever smiling and immensely endowed with gift of the gab, Festus was every journalist’s toast as he was always ready with answers to questions put to him and appeared regularly on broadcast stations to elucidate on policies and programmes of the commission.
As a senior lawyer, his adornments were no less admirable. Everyone who listened or viewed the television as Okoye tore into pieces the brand new Electoral Act, as well as new safeguards introduced to make the law impregnable, could not help but believe that the INEC under Mamood Yakubu was the best thing to happen to Nigeria. He was a true image maker.
As the 2023 elections approached, Festus Okoye and his boss Mamood Yakubu, subliminally began to come across to many, as persons providentially planted in INEC to midwife God’s perfect leadership plan for a country bedeviled by decades of electoral malfeasance and corruption and which had topedoed her growth and development. This was especially so when the duo championed, alongside civil society organizations and other stakeholders, the emergence of what is today regarded as a foul -proof Electoral Act, 2022, designed to restore voter confidence, back to the ballot box.
Unfortunately, all that glitters is not gold as everyone was fooled. No one knew that nothing had really changed in the morally and mortally depraved commission, except of course, the amount of subterfuge, facade, make-believe and affectations, tactically deployed to decieve Nigerians. Beneath what both men passed off as their public persona, lay ravenous wolves in clean suits and dignifying apparels, waiting for an opportunity to cut their own pound of flesh; too bad.
Having taken active part in squandering Nigerians’ trust and goodwill in the last presidential election and becoming the conduit pipe through which INEC’s sleazy transactions were safely laundered, alongside his fellow desperadoes, and being aware that his July, 2023 retirement date was unlikely to be extended, Festus Okoye mortally chose for himself the retirement benefits of sleaze, booties and blandishments coming from desperate politicians and which were always at his beck and call.
When therefore the Enugu opportunity presented itself, he wasted no time, grabbing it. Dependable sources indicated that nothing was really happening until the stalemate at the Enugu State’s gubernatorial election’s collation centre, occasioned by the perverse and mindless over-voting spotted in Nkanu East Local Government Area, the country home of the diminutive PDP candidate, Peter Mbah.
When Enugu people cried out through representatives at the collation centre, warning that padded votes from the two electoral wards of Owo and Ugbawka, having not passed through the BVAS, must be rejected, the feckless Returning Officer; Professor Maduebibisi Iwe, pretended to have yeilded to pressure by suspending collation for three days, until he got a green light from the commission’s headquarters on the way to go. Did the university professor really need to do so having become convinced himself that there was indeed massive over-voting in the two electoral wards and which consequence was outright cancellation?
Prof. Iwe took the matter to Abuja where an illegal committee was set up to handle a matter whose solution was already clearly spelt out in the new Electoral Act 2022. Festus Okoye, a highly corrupt public officer was put in charge of the committee, giving him a golden opportunity to have one more preretirement bite. No sooner he got the job than the former sleazy Governor of Enugu State; Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi(then incumbent) placed a call across to strike a deal with him, selling Enugu to the highest bidder. The then governor was reported to have asked Okoye how much he wanted to declare Peter Mbah winner and leave any consequent court matter for the PDP. The sum of #1 billion naira was demanded and released.
Grapevine reported that the deal was not perfectly cemented until two hours to the commencement of collation already promoted for Wednesday 22 March, 2023. According to the report, a similar deal would have been struck for Abia State to deny the Labour Party its victory, but for the intransigence of the Returning Officer, Professor Nnena Otti, who made it abundantly clear to the coup plotters, that she would under no circumstances declare a loser as winner, irrespective of what transpired in Abuja. They let her be.
Not so for the corrupt, pliant and whimpy Maduebibisi Iwe who was pliably and mechanically herded down to Enugu to announce a result he knew and acknowledged to be false. It’s on record that the shameless professor stated while making the false return, that despite unresolved discrepancies in the Nkanu East’s result, he was bound to carry out the will of his employer. The will of INEC or that of the good people of Enugu State who freely expressed so through the ballot box?
After the Enugu incident, Barr. Festus Okoye got yet another illicit contract to subvert the will of the Adamawa people, using the returning officer for the state one Yunusa Hudu Ari. Up against a sitting governor, determined to return to power, the game plan was not as easy. Quite uncomfortable with the fact that Governor Umaru Fintri, led his main challenger; Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed of the APC, popularly called Aisha Binani, on the polls, with a total of 37,249 votes and a supplementary poll scheduled for 15th of April 2023, Binani’s sponsor and wife of the then President; Aisha Buhari, an indigine of Adamawa state, would have nothing else than the declaration of Binani as governor, using her full powers and contacts. The supplimentary election became necessary after it was realized that the total number of collected PVCs in areas cancelled, amounted to 37, 207, far higher than Fintri’s margin of lead.
It would be recalled that it was the same Aisha Buhari’s meddlesomness in the 2019 Adamawa gubernatorial election, which cost the then incumbent, Governor Bindow his seat after he refused, despite pressure, to relinquish his ticket to Aisha’s preferred candidate. Crisis consequently hit the Adamawa chapter of the APC resulting in the recapture of the state by the PDP.
Festus Okoye hitherto unsure of how to go about the illegality, got emboldened when told that the wife of the President was behind the move and that his pecuniary interest was fully covered. However, there was an elephant in the room. The Returning Officer for the Adamawa gubernatorial election Prof. Mohammed Melle, had rebuffed all attempts at getting compromised insisting that only genuine votes cast, would be declared , leaving the plotters at their wits end. Getting wind of the development, the presidency became even more determined to deliver Binani at all costs.
A dependable source disclosed that the plan figured out, was to take Prof. Melle out of circulation by any means possible and thereafter push the narrative that the state could not be held to ransom and that someone else other than the Returning Officer, should be allowed to announce the result as part of the so-called doctrine of necessary.
According to the source, part of the plan was to allow the supplimentary election already scheduled for Saturday 15th of April, 2023, to first hold before using Yunusa Ari and the INEC national commissioner; Festus Okoye to do the hatchet job.
Unfortunately for the desperadoes, the Resident Electoral Commissioner Hudu Yunusa Ari, was beginning to contemplate a change of plan without carrying his sponsors along. According to the report, the change became necessary when Governor Fintri was reported to be leading in all ten local government areas whose results had been declared in the supplimentary election, dashing all hopes of a seamless manipulation of the process.
As stated earlier, although the collation of supplimenary election results was scheduled to resume by 11am on Sunday, 16th April, 2023, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, shocked his Abuja sponsors by inviting the state’s police commissioner and other heads of security agencies for the purpose of continuing collation at 9am on Sunday, two hours before schedule. In the absence of the supplimentary election results, which were yet to be officially received, as well as key stakeholders, the reckless REC declared Binani as winner of the election.
The entire manipulation plan Festus Okoye brought down from Abuja, having been completely bungled by the REC, the presidency tactfully withdrew from the whole process, amidst widespread condemnation by well meaning citizens across the country. To give the impression that they too were against what was going on, the INEC being an accomplice, officially drafted the same man they intended to use for the hatchet job to supervise the declaration of actual votes cast in the election. That man was no other than Festus Okoye.
Having put personal gains and currupt enrichment before good name which is immortal, Festus Okoye will go down in history as the most brutal sleaze fixer any public office has ever engaged to cover its tracks. Having been sufficiently used to rubbish Peter Obi’s presidential election victory, the same political party he served, found him unworthy of tenure extension, hence he retired in July 2023. Good riddance to bad rubbish