Nigeria’s leading opposition party on Thursday called for the cancellation of disputed presidential elections last weekend, saying it would refuse to recognise a government issued from the poll. In the capital, Abuja, the All Nigeria People’s Party said it was ready to call its members into the street to press for a rerun of the vote.
”I did my best,” Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said in an interview with the media as he looked back on eight years in office and rejected foreign and domestic criticism of the country’s flawed polls last weekend. ”The day I meet God I’ll tell him: not everything was perfect, but I did my best,” the president said in his office late on Wednesday.
The runner-up in Nigeria’s presidential elections convened a meeting with other opposition politicians on Wednesday, seeking a unified response to the weekend vote deemed not credible by international observers. The opposition has already rejected the outcome as rigged in favour of the ruling People’s Democratic Party.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s chosen successor, Umaru Yar’Adua, was proclaimed the victor on Monday in a presidential election European Union observers said was not credible and Obasanjo admitted was not perfect. The ballot in the vast oil producer was undermined by ballot-stuffing, violence and a shortage of millions of voting papers on Saturday.
Ruling party candidate Umaru Yar’Adua looked set to win Nigeria’s presidential poll on Monday, early results showed, but monitors condemned the vote as a blow to the country becoming a beacon of democracy for Africa. A definitive result is expected on Monday, when more international observers will deliver their verdicts.
Nigeria’s election was a failure and must be rerun, local observers said on Sunday, but the government said coup plotters were trying to discredit the poll. The vote on Saturday in Africa’s most populous nation was marred by violence, fraud and intimidation. First results on Sunday indicated continued dominance by the ruling People’s Democratic Party.
An attempt to blow up the electoral headquarters with a petrol tanker, attacks by thugs, missing ballot papers and low turnout undermined Nigeria’s presidential election on Saturday. The vote should seal the first handover from one civilian president to another in Africa’s most populous nation, scarred by three decades of corrupt military rule.
Nigeria votes on Saturday in a presidential election beset by fears that abuses and violence will wreck a milestone in African democracy. Concern that Nigeria’s first handover from one civilian leader to another would be compromised was underlined only hours before the vote when militants attacked government buildings in Nigeria’s oil region with dynamite and assault rifles.
Troops have intercepted a truck-load of already completed ballots the day before Nigeria’s presidential election, the opposition said on Friday, heightening fears the vote will be rigged. The accusation followed widespread abuses and violence in regional elections last week.
Nigeria holds a presidential election on Saturday that is widely seen as a democratic watershed for this country and the whole of Africa. But two days before the vote there are serious doubts over whether it will be seen as a valid, democratic election.
No matter how many times Olusegun Obasanjo speaks of his plans to retire to his chicken farm after stepping down as president of Nigeria, millions still wonder whether he really means to relinquish power. Many Nigerians suspect the 70-year-old retired general intends to continue dominating the affairs of Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil exporter.
An opposition boycott threat and bloody clashes with Islamic militants on Wednesday raised tensions ahead of Nigeria’s presidential election — the most closely watched poll since independence. A group of 18 opposition parties said the national election commission should be disbanded and Saturday’s presidential ballot postponed.
Nigeria’s government on Wednesday rejected an opposition call to postpone next Saturday’s presidential election following widespread abuses in state polls last weekend. Information Minister Frank Nweke told Reuters. Election observers said the results announced in 10 of 36 states did not reflect the will of the people.
Opposition supporters burned buildings, blocked roads and barricaded election offices in Nigeria on Sunday as partial results from flawed state elections showed a big victory for the ruling party. Local newspapers estimated about 50 people were killed in fighting linked to rigging in Saturday’s elections for 36 state governors/
Election irregularities sparked pockets of violence across Nigeria on Saturday in a vote which should lead to the first fully democratic transition of power in Africa’s most populous nation. Saturday’s election of state governors and legislators was a test of the strength of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and should give Nigerians an idea of what to expect from presidential polls in a week’s time.
Nigerians go to the polls on Saturday to choose state governors and legislators in the first of two elections which, if successful, will give a big boost to democracy across Africa. The conduct and results of the state level vote will provide an indication of what to expect from presidential polls in Africa’s most populous nation and top oil producer a week later.
President Olusegun Obasanjo told Nigerians on Friday to limit their travel during election days and stay home at night to curb violence. Obasanjo accused ”highly placed individuals” of fomenting trouble ahead of the vote, and an opposition party said several of its candidates and thousands of supporters had been detained.
A Nigerian presidential candidate died on Thursday, local radio and television stations reported, casting doubt over whether landmark elections will be held as scheduled next month. Adebayo Adefarati (76), candidate of the opposition Alliance for Democracy, died in the south-western state of Ondo, private radio Ray Power FM reported.
Stepping into a contentious election-year issue, a Nigerian Senate panel said on Wednesday that President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy-turned-political-foe both illegally used funds from the country’s massive oil industry. Both officials are currently immune from prosecution.
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/ 13 February 2007
Nigerian kidnappers have released all 24 Filipino seamen they had been holding captive in the creeks of the oil-producing Niger Delta since January 20, the men’s employer, German shipping firm Baco-Liner, said on Tuesday. The kidnappers said they had freed the men ”on humanitarian grounds” without receiving any ransom.
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/ 5 February 2007
Nigerian militia leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, whose release is demanded by armed groups causing havoc in the oil-producing Niger Delta, should be barred from his own trial because of bad behaviour, prosecutors said on Monday. Asari’s treason trial started a year and a half ago but the court is yet to hear a witness.
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/ 2 February 2007
The World Bank has approved a -million International Development Association credit to provide additional funding for community-based poverty reduction projects in Nigeria, its spokesperson in Nigeria, Obadiah Tohomdet, said in Abuja on Friday.
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/ 31 January 2007
The Nigerian government faces a new challenge from spiralling crime in the oil-producing Niger Delta, but wants to avoid turning Africa’s oil heartland into a battleground, Energy Minister Edmund Daukorua said. Violence, which surged in the southern delta in 2006 forcing thousands of foreign workers to flee, worsened this year.
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/ 23 January 2007
Two foreign construction workers were kidnapped by gunmen on their way to work in Nigeria’s southern oil city Port Harcourt on Tuesday, police said. Rivers State police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu said the two men were American nationals working for local construction firm Pivot, but oil industry security sources said one of the men was British.
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/ 18 January 2007
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday said he was seeking permanent solutions to hostage-taking in the restive Niger Delta and denounced kidnaps as "criminality" that must not be allowed to go on. "Hostage-taking is not [due to] marginalisation, it is not lack of opportunity to air their views. It is simply criminality," Obasanjo told a presidential forum.
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/ 17 January 2007
A Nigerian newspaper publisher faces up to 15 years in prison after being charged on Tuesday with belonging to the virtually unheard of terrorist group known as the ”Nigerian Taliban”. Mohammed Damagun (50) a director of Media Trust Limited, pleaded not guilty to three charges of terrorism.
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/ 16 January 2007
A Catholic diocese in Nigeria has instructed parishioners to show they have registered to vote in April elections or forsake the right to take communion. The diocese of Nsukka circulated a bulletin in Catholic churches telling the faithful that they had to make their vote count in this year’s elections.
Gunmen in Nigeria’s volatile southern Niger Delta abducted five Chinese workers in the early hours of Friday in what appeared to be a kidnapping for ransom, authorities and security sources said. The Chinese embassy in Abuja said it was in contact with authorities in Rivers state, where the kidnapping took place, to try and secure the release of the men.
A Nigerian militant group said on Wednesday it had foiled a plan by Italian oil company Agip to free four foreign hostages who have been held in the creeks of the oil-producing Niger Delta since December 7. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said Agip had paid middlemen to try and get its four workers out.
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/ 17 December 2006
Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party on Sunday chose Umaru Yar’Adua, Governor of the northern Katsina state, as its candidate for the April 2007 presidential election. Yar’Adua (55) won hands down, garnering 3 024 votes out of a total of 4 007 valid votes cast.
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/ 16 December 2006
About 10 000 security agents, including police officers, were deployed on Saturday to ensure the smooth running of presidential primaries of Nigeria’s ruling party, a police spokesperson said. About 5 000 delegates of the People’s Democratic Party were to converge in Abuja to choose their presidential candidate for 2007.
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/ 15 December 2006
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) decided on Thursday to enlarge its membership for the first time in 30 years by admitting African producer Angola, a decision aimed at reinforcing the cartel’s grip on world oil resources. Angola was one of three possible new members waiting to join Opec.