US election observers warned Nigeria on Sunday that next week’s presidential elections could be undermined if the shortcomings of this weekend’s parliamentary poll are repeated.
The International Republican Institute (IRI), in a statement released here, said that it commended the Nigerian people for turning out to vote in largely peaceful legislative elections on Saturday.
But the group, which dispatched 20 poll monitors to Africa’s largest ever election, said it had witnessed ”serious lapses at critical levels of the election administrative structure”.
”IRI observers believe that the weaknesses observed during the April 12 election process, if not addressed and corrected, could damage the quality and efficiency of the April 19… elections,” it said.
In particular, the monitors complained that voting stations opened late, insufficient ballot papers were distributed in some areas and officials were badly trained in the process of counting and tabulating ballots.
In some areas there was not enough light to count the votes by, and in many local election officials handed over ballot boxes to local officials for centralised counting, in breach of procedure, they said.
”Though none of the administrative and procedural problems identified by IRI observers would by themselves call the integrity of the April 12 election process or the credibility of the result into question, their overall impact on the perceived quality and transparency of the election was substantial,” the statement said.
On Saturday, Nigeria held its first election since the 1999 end of military rule and first civilian-run poll in 20 years.
While most observers were glad that violence was kept to minimum, serious concerns have been raised about the organisation of the poll and in the southeastern region, especially, there have been multiple reports of killings, intimidation and attempted ballot-rigging.
Next Saturday, Nigeria will vote again to elect a president and 36 state governors.
Meanwhile, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s ruling party has suffered a serious setback in the main northern state of Kano, the state election agency said on Sunday.
In Kano State, Nigeria’s second biggest electoral prize after the southern port city of Lagos, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) lost 13 of its 23 lower house seats to the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), it said.
A statement released by Ibrahim Biu, secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission’s mission in Kano, said that two of Kano’s three PDP senators had also fallen.
Before the election Kano, home to more than four-million registered voters, was a fief of Obasanjo’s ruling party with only one ANPP deputy, and its PDP governor Rabiu Kwankwaso is one of his staunchest supporters.
Next Saturday Obasanjo and Kwankwaso will face re-election battles of their own, and their confidence of winning the state will have been shaken by the surprise result, observers said.
Earlier results showed Obasanjo making headway against a second opposition party, the Alliance for Democracy, in its southwest stronghold. – Sapa-AFP