REFLECTIONS ON ANAMBRA GOVERNORSHIP ELECTION

Nick Dazang 

Viewed against the backdrop of the 2017 and 2021 election cycles, the off-season Governorship election in Anambra State which held on November 8, 2025 was a splendid departure. It altered the doom-and-gloom narrative that defined those two previous elections.

Recall that in 2017, the Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB) and its cohorts, mobilized the citizens of Anambra State against participating in the election. In 2021, Anambra State was literally a war zone. The off-cycle election of that year was presaged by a horrid campaign of arson and mayhem. Offices and facilities of the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) were razed. The situation was so scary that ad hoc staff who were trained for the election scampered for their lives at its eve. The Commission had to seek presidential intervention for the election to hold. Little wonder the 2017 and 2021 elections witnessed dismally low turn out of voters, at 22% and 10% respectively.

In spite of misgivings – arising from the dire security challenges of 2017 and 2021 – polls, with a few exceptions, opened early across the State.

Also, except for a few incidents in four local government areas, namely: Anambra West, Anaocha, Awka and Onitsha South, the election took place peacefully. It is worth underscoring that the total number of votes affected by these incidents did not visit substantial violence to the election, hence the ability of the Returning Officer for the election to declare the result and the winner.
The security agencies helped matters by comporting themselves professionally. So did the INEC Staff deployed to conduct the election.

Polling Unit(PU) results were seamlessly and timeously uploaded onto the INEC Results Viewing Portal(IReV). Before midnight of Election Day, nearly all PU results had been uploaded on the IReV. Thus, the winner of the election was known and INEC was merely fulfilling all righteousness by going through the motions of collation and declaration of the results in concert with the law.

The election was won, back to back, and for the first time since 1999, by the incumbent, Professor Charles Chukwuemeka Soludo, of the All Progressives Grand Alliance(APGA). He scored the highest votes cast in the election (422,644) and scored a minimum of twenty five percent of the lawful votes cast in all twenty-one local government areas of the State. This goes beyond the threshold of scoring a minimum of two-thirds or fourteen local government areas as required by law. Professor Soludo’s victory was not only comprehensive, it confirms Anambra as a stronghold of APGA.

The positives of the election, particularly as they relate to Anambra State, should be built upon and sustained against subsequent elections. Lessons learned should be factored into conducting subsequent elections scheduled to hold before the 2027 General Elections. These elections include: the Federal Capital Territory(FCT) Chairmanship and Area Council Elections, scheduled for 21st February 2026; the Ekiti State off-cycle Governorship Election scheduled for 20th June 2026; and the Osun State off-cycle Governorship Election scheduled for 8th August 2026.
If the off-cycle Governorship Election in Anambra State witnessed a significant shift in the needle away from violence and a voter turn out increase of 100% over that of 2021, it should be noted that this figure is still lower than the national average. Voter turn out in the 2023 presidential election, the lowest since 1999, stood at 28.63%. The niggardly voter turn out across the board of Nigeria speaks to a number of factors such as the doubt voters continue to harbor over the integrity of our elections, the violence that visits and mars the conduct of elections and the outright non-delivery of good governance by our ruling elite.

Vote buying/trading was rampant in the election. So widespread was it that not less than four candidates, including the winner of the election, Professor Soludo, and the runner-up, Nicholas Ukachukwu, complained stridently about this ugly phenomenon.

The brazenness and the near ubiquity of vote buying is deeply concerning. This is because political office can easily be bought by the deepest pocket or highest bidder. The sacred will of the people is also soon subverted or reduced to a travesty. Among others, vote buying should be brought to the upper reaches of electoral discourse as well as further galvanize stakeholders to insist on the establishment of an Electoral Offenses Commission and Tribunal. This should mete out punishments to perpetrators of vote buying and other electoral offenses. It should also serve as deterrence to would be perpetrators of electoral infractions.

The conduct of the Anambra State off-cycle Governorship Election coincided with the advent of Professor Joash Amupitan to the helm of INEC. Though he assumed office at a time when nearly all the thirteen thresholds on the path to the election had been crossed, the election must have served both as an eye-opener and a baptism of fire.
Professor Amupitan is coming at a time when the Commission is smarting under trust challenges arising from the conduct of the 2023 General Elections and the urgent need for it to redeem its besmeared image ahead of the 2027 General Elections.

He is also coming at a time when reforms/amendments of the electoral laws are desperately required to ensure, among others, that electronic transmission of results is made mandatory to safeguard the integrity of the process and when logistics, a perennial challenge, needs to be addressed forthwith.
He must use the window between now and the conduct of the next general elections to earn the confidence of Nigerians in the Commission’s ability to conduct transparent and credible elections, to bring about these reforms while paying heed to the nuances and intricacies of his onerous job.
With speculations rife that the general elections will be shifted to November 2026 to make sufficient room for post election litigations, he will discover that he and the Commission have precious little time. It is left for him to multi task and to seize the moment. He should do so when the currents serve him well.