Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday accused the European Union poll monitors who criticised the conduct of his re-election of not understanding African culture.
Obasanjo was voted back into power on Saturday, in a controversial poll which has been rejected by the Nigerian opposition and described by EU and US observers as shot through with fraud and ballot-rigging.
”The view that I hold is that whereas democracy must have certain standards that are common, the cultural milieu of the place where your democracy is practiced must be borne in mind,” he said, at a press conference from which non-Nigerian reporters were banned.
Eyebrows have been raised by Obasanjo’s extremely strong performance in parts of the south of Nigeria, such as the president’s home state of Ogun, where he won 1 360 170 votes ‒ 99,92% — to his opponent’s 680.
Also unexpected was that the number of votes cast in Ogun in a simultaneous ballot conducted at the same polling stations was much lower than in the presidential poll, only 747 296 in total. But Obasanjo denied that the discrepancy was evidence of fraud.
”Certain communities in this country make up their minds to act as one in political matters … they probably don’t have that kind of culture in most European countries,” he said.
On the difference between the turnout in the state and presidential elections, the president added that many people had not bothered to vote in the gubernatorial poll, believing the national race to be more important.
European monitors said in an interim report on the vote that the election was ”marred by serious irregularities throughout the country and fraud in at least 11 (of Nigeria’s 36) states.”
American monitors from the International Republican Institute (IRI) said they had ”observed incidences of obvious premeditated electoral manipulation”.
The reports have raised concerns abroad. The EU team also criticised the performance of the Nigerian media which it said ”failed to provide unbiased, fair and informative coverage” of the elections, in a comment which drew an angry response from Obasanjo.
”The performance of the Nigerian press was just simply magnificent,” he said. ”I believe all aspects of the Nigerian media deserve commendation.” – Sapa-AFP