AFRICA/NIGERIA - Uncertainty with regard to regularity of presidential and legislative elections in Nigeria

Monday, 23 April 2007

Lagos (Agenzia Fides)- While the candidate of the governing PDP People’s Democratic Party Umaru Yar'Adua, appears to be leading in the presidential elections in Nigerian on 21 April, the international community and local political commentators question the validity of the vote and the future of democracy in Nigeria and, as a result, in the rest of Africa.
According to the international observers present to monitor the elections, the vote on 21 April, like the one on 14 for the election of political organs in 36 states of the federation (see Fides 13 April 2007), was characterised by serious irregularities to the point that the Transition Monitoring Group called for the vote to be annulled and new elections called.
Irregularities reported include the presence of more votes than voters in one electoral district of the Delta Region. In this case the vote was annulled and will be repeated. Cases of pre-completed voting papers, violence, intimidation were also reported. Particularly serious an unsuccessful attack on the offices of the electoral commission in Abuja, administrative capital of Nigeria, prevented at the last minute by the police at dawn on 21 April. A truck full of gas cylinders was meant to explode in front of the electoral commission offices on the day of the election.
There were also organisation problems, above all in the distribution of voting papers to the 120,000 booths all over the country. The voting papers were reprinted at the last minute after the Constitutional Court readmitted to the presidential competition Nigeria's vice president Atiku Abubakar, whose candidacy had been suspended on charges of corruption. Abubakar collided with outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo when the latter tried to change the constitution so he could run for a third mandate. When he failed to succeed, Obasanjo presented Umaru Yar'Adua as his Party's candidate. Yar'Adua appears to be in the lead but many observers think he might be a weak figure seen as the man of the outgoing president, elected in unclear circumstances.
Nigeria is the most populous country of Africa with no less than 61 million eligible electors. The rest of Africa looks with interest and concern at the Nigerian elections as a test of democracy on the continent. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 23/4/2007 righe 34 parole 423)


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