/ 13 April 2003

Several Nigerian cities miss out on voting

Voting had not begun in several southeastern Nigerian cities by 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Saturday, just one hour before the planned close of polling in historic legislative elections.

AFP reporters and election monitors in two southeastern Nigerian cities, Warri and Akwa, found that voting had not begun.

Diplomatic sources and the head of the election’s biggest team of independent monitors said that no voting had been carried out in the southeastern state of Enugu.

Increasingly angry voters queueing around the empty polling centres in the flashpoint towns of Warri and Akaw accused the officials of conniving in ballot rigging.

But in the Nigerian capital Abuja, INEC Chairman Abel Guobadia said: ”I’m very impressed by what I’ve seen in terms of turnout.

”That shows the Nigerian electorate would have been disappointed with those calling for the postponement of elections. The reports I receievd from Borno, Lagos and Ogun are satisfactory.

”I was a little bit disappointed when I visited some centres at about 9:00 am and discovered the exercise had not commenced. The delay was due to logistic problem caused by early morning rain,” he said.

Father Iheanyi Enwerem, who heads the Roman Catholic church’s 30 000 strong team of poll monitors, said that he was still receiving reports back from the field, but said that Warri, Akwa and Enugu had so far missed out.

Ayo Obe, president of Nigeria’s leading rights group, the Civil Liberties Organisation, was scathing.

”The preparations have been very patchy. There is a lot of concern in the east in particular about rigging, stuffed ballot boxes and so on, and about the counting process,” she said.

”The last military government had nine months to organise the elections in 1999. This government had four years and, really, the military organised them better,” she added. – Sapa-AFP