Nigerians waited nervously on Sunday for the results of landmark presidential and state governorship elections which observers said were marred by violence and ballot rigging.
Outside the strife-torn Niger Delta, polling day was relatively peaceful, but observers warned that disputed results from the three-day counting process could trigger a violent reaction in some areas.
Men in security force uniforms shot dead six opposition supporters in a village in the Niger Delta, poll monitors said on Saturday, while witnesses reported intimidation and fraud across the south of the country.
The chaos in the south took the shine off what might otherwise have been a fairly positive showcase of Nigeria’s four-year-old democracy, the first civilian-run presidential election in 20 years.
In much of the country large numbers of would-be voters turned out, determined to make their voices heard.
”The electorate is more determined than ever before not to be taken for granted,” said Titilayo Ajanaku, a popular community leader in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s southwestern hometown, Abeokuta.
Obasanjo is standing for re-election against a challenge from opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari. Both men are former military rulers of Africa’s most populous country, now converted to a democratic system.
The run-up to polling day has seen violent political tensions threaten to boil over, and security was tight as polls opened, with armed policemen escorting ballot boxes, and troops in the streets of major cities.
In most of the country reporters found polling better organised than at parliamentary elections on April 12, and voters took part in a cheerful and orderly way in Lagos, Abuja and the southwest.
”The turnout was quite high,” said Abel Guobadia, chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
”People are peaceful. At this point in time I feel very happy and comfortable.”
But in the troubled southeast of the country it was a different story, especially in oil-rich Rivers State and its capital Port Harcourt.
”It’s a complete sham down there. All the observers are reporting massive rigging and thuggery,” one western poll observer said, on condition of anonymity.
Another international monitor in the city said many voters stayed away because of what he described as ”effective intimidation”, and a British reporter who toured the area said he found very few polling stations open.
Also in the south, in Enugu State, reporters found polling opened very late, and angry voters gathering in the streets.
”I believe it is a grand ploy to rig the election… but we will not allow this to happen,” said Jude Adikwe, a 32-year-old construction worker.
The head of the Catholic Church’s large poll monitoring team, Father Iheanyi Enwerem, said his agents had been obstructed in Enugu and that armed ruling party supporters had stolen ballot boxes.
And in Bayelsa State the intimidation turned bloody when men in the uniforms of Nigerian security personnel fired on a group of opposition supporters who had come to the village of Oporoma, an activist said.
”Voting materials had been taken to Oporoma for distribution. Some residents had come to collect materials for their community, when someone ordered them shot,” said Oronto Douglas of Environmental Rights Action.
Six people died, and seven were injured, Douglas said, in an account confirmed by election monitors from the Institute of Democracy in South Africa (Idasa).
The April 12 polls, which produced a landslide victory for Obasanjo’s ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), were denounced by the opposition as ”massively rigged” and criticised by independent monitors.
Buhari called on his supporters to take action to protect his vote from further PDP ”fraud”.
”Mass action is a spontaneous action whenever a fraud takes place. I do not incite anybody. Obasanjo can say what he likes. I ask people to exercise their civil rights,” he said in his northern hometown of Daura while supporters cheered and chanted ”Allahu Akbar” (God is greater).
For his part, voting in Abeokuta surrounded by admiring supporters, Obasanjo appeared confident — ”people feel we have done relatively well” — and praised the improvement in polling conditions.
”Nigerians have to learn to be magnanimous in victory and gracious losers,” he said, when asked about alleged irregularities. – Sapa-AFP