Timeline: Peter Obi’s Troubled First Tenure As Anambra State Governor
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Mr. Peter Obi contested in the Anambra State Governorship Election as a candidate on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) party in 2003, but his opponent, Chris Ngige of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
After nearly three years of litigation, Ngige’s victory was overturned by the Court of Appeal on March 15, 2006.
Obi took office for on 17 March 2006.
But on 2 November 2006, he was impeached by the state house of assembly after seven months in office and was replaced the next day by Virginia Etiaba, his deputy, making her the first-ever female governor in Nigeria’s history.
However, Obi successfully challenged his impeachment and was re-instated as the governor on 9 February 2007 by the Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu. Etiaba handed power back to him after the court ruling.
Peter Obi once again left office on 29 May 2007 following the General Elections, in which Andy Uba was declared the winner by the electoral body.
Questioning the truncation of his tenure on May 29, 2007, Obi returned to the courts once more, this time, contending that the four-year tenure he had won in the 2003 elections only started to run when he took office in March 2006. He was the first Nigerian leader to seek suck legal interpretation of tenure of office of the governor of a state.
On June 14, 2007 the Supreme Court of Nigeria upheld Obi’s contention and returned Obi to office.
This brought to an abrupt end the tenure of Obi’s successor, Andy Uba whose April 14, 2007 election the Supreme Court nullified on the grounds that Obi’s four-year tenure should have remained undisturbed until March 2010.
On 7 February 2010, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Peter Obi the winner of the 2010 Anambra State Gubernatorial election, where he defeated Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the current governor of Anambra State.
