President Olusegun Obasanjo’s ruling party took a lead in legislative elections, according to partial returns, boosting his hopes for re-election in presidential balloting later this week.
Though voting was marred by violence, observers and witnesses said the weekend election was more peaceful than expected. The election was considered an important test for Nigeria’s young democracy.
With more than half of the seats determined on Monday, Obasanjo’s Peoples Democratic Party was solidly ahead.
His party won 119 seats in the House of Representatives, while six opposition parties shared 92 seats. The remainder of the House’s 360 seats were still being tabulated.
In the Senate, the ruling party had taken 33 seats, compared to 22 for the opposition. Vote counting for the remaining seats in the 109-member Senate was continuing.
The legislative race is a key gauge of civil tensions a week ahead of presidential elections that will pit Obasanjo — a former military ruler turned civilian leader — against 19 opposition candidates.
The vote was the first civilian-run ballot in 20 years. Military coups have scuttled Nigeria’s previous attempts to hold democratic, civilian-run elections.
Obasanjo came to power in 1999 when the military regime administered the vote after 15 years of military rule in Africa’s most populous nation.
Obasanjo has faced growing opposition, particularly among northern Muslims and residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta in the south. Many complain the government has failed to fight poverty and corruption, his key campaign promises last time.
The president’s backers predicted victory in Saturday’s presidential vote.
”We are going to win the presidential elections comfortably,” said Onyeama Ugochukwu, an official with Obasanjo’s campaign.
During the weekend vote, more than two dozen people were killed in election-related violence, many in the troubled Niger Delta, witnesses and voting observers said. In some places, the vote was peaceful, but there weren’t enough ballots.
The violence leading up to the election has resulted in more than 100 deaths and shut down 40% of the country’s oil production. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of US oil imports.
Several officials were arrested on charges of trying to stuff ballot boxes, and observers accused government ”thugs” of stealing voting supplies at gunpoint.
The Commonwealth Observer Group of international monitors said there were missing ballot materials, long lines at polling stations and a lack of privacy for voters.
”There were violent incidents in certain places, but the most pessimistic predictions were confounded,” chairman Salim Ahmed Salim said in a statement.
In a national television address, Obasanjo congratulated Nigerians for voting ”in an atmosphere that was definitely free and fair, and definitely nowhere near the pre-election predictions.”
Initial results mirrored the country’s ethnic and religious divisions. Obasanjo’s party had a strong showing in the majority-Christian, Yoruba southwest. Obasanjo is a Christian from the Yoruba ethnic group.
Followers of Obasanjo’s chief rival, Muhammadu Buhari, were taking encouragement from gains in the north, dominated overwhelmingly by Hausa-and Fulani-speaking Muslims. Busloads of his supporters drove around wildly celebrating wins in several northern cities.
Buhari, a former junta leader, is Muslim and Fulani.
Among the apparent senate winners for Obasanjo’s party was former Osun state deputy governor Iyiola Omisore, who is imprisoned awaiting trial on allegations of involvement in the killing of Nigeria’s justice minister Bola Ige in 1991.
Officials indicated high turnout across the country of 126 million people. Sixty-one million voters were registered.
More than 10 000 people in Nigeria have been killed in political, ethnic and religious violence since Obasanjo was first elected in 1999. – Sapa-AP