The two main opposition candidates in Nigeria’s flawed presidential elections last month have filed petitions seeking the cancellation of the result just before the Wednesday deadline for legal challenges. The election for a new president and federal lawmakers on April 21 were labelled ”not credible” by international observers.
Outgoing Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has embarked on a sale of state assets to allies in the private sector in the dying days of his administration, prompting accusations of double standards. Critics say Obasanjo is disregarding due process and paying off his friends with the sales within days of his handover to president-elect Umaru Yar’Adua on May 29.
Unidentified gunmen attacked an oil facility in Nigeria operated by France’s Total on Monday using high explosives, sources at private security companies said. It was unclear whether there were any casualties or damage to the facility in the attack. A Total spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
Suspected militants kidnapped three Indian petrochemical workers from their residence in Nigeria’s oil capital, Port Harcourt, on Saturday, the army said. The militants originally seized 10 workers, all employed by Indonesia’s Indorama, but the military engaged them in a gunfight and rescued seven, the spokesperson for the army in the region said.
Nigerian unions have called for a two-day strike on May 28 and 29 to protest against widespread vote-rigging in last month’s elections, the secretary general of the Trade Union Congress said on Thursday. John Kolawale said the strike, which will coincide with the inauguration of president-elect Umaru Yar’Adua on May 29, would not affect oil production.
Nigerian militants used dynamite to blow up the home of vice-president-elect Goodluck Jonathan in southern Bayelsa State early on Wednesday, killing two police officers, police said. Jonathan was not in his village of Otu-Eke at the time of the attack on his country home, federal police spokesperson Haz Iwendi said.
Six gunmen wearing military fatigues seized a Nigerian staff member of the Italian oil company Agip on Monday in the Nigeria’s southern petroleum region, police said. The assailants grabbed the human resources manager for Agip, a subsidiary of Italian oil giant Eni SpA, as he drove to work, said Rivers state police spokesperson Irejua Barasua.
At least 30 people were killed when three vehicles burst into flames after colliding on a road in southern Nigeria, police and local press said on Monday. ”About 30 bodies were removed from the scene of the accident. The bodies were burnt beyond recognition,” a senior police office said by telephone.
The outgoing Nigerian government launched a last-minute auction of 41 oil-exploration licences on Friday, ignoring a court order not to sell two of them and widespread criticism over timing and transparency. Most Western oil majors kept away from the sale in which 10 pre-selected investors had already been given preferential bidding rights.
Gunmen seized four more foreign workers amid a dramatic rise in violence that has roiled Nigeria’s southern petroleum-producing region, oil industry officials said on Wednesday. The attackers carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a transport vessel carrying the workers in the southern Niger Delta minutes before midnight on Tuesday.
Nigeria’s Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), said late on Monday it will resume attacks on oil pipelines in the south of the country. Mend, which security sources describe as the best-equipped, and most media-savvy militant group in the country, has in the past tended to make good on such threats.
Fighters from the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) destroyed three major oil pipelines in Nigeria’s southern delta on Tuesday, the group said in an email statement. Mend said the Italian oil firm Agip’s Brass terminal, which normally exports about 200Â 000 barrels per day, had been affected by the attacks.
Nigerian president-elect Umaru Yar’Adua will visit seven African countries starting on Monday in his first international trip since his disputed election last month, his spokesperson said. The 56-year-old state governor, who is due to assume leadership on May 29, will visit Benin and Togo on Monday, followed by Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Algeria and Libya.
Nigerian militant group the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said all the hostages taken from an Italian-operated offshore oilfield earlier on Thursday have been released. The self-styled leader of Mend said his group had not intended to take more hostages, having seized six foreign workers from a United States-operated oilfield on Tuesday.
Up to 17 foreign workers in Nigeria’s oil industry were kidnapped by gunmen on Thursday, including up to six from an offshore platform. It was the second time within a year that the Mistras facility, located off the southern Nigerian state of Bayelsa and operated by Italian oil company AGIP, has been targeted.
Nigerian president-elect Umaru Yar’Adua promised on Wednesday to review the conduct of the disputed April elections that gave him his mandate with a view to delivering better ones in 2011. Local and foreign observers said vote-rigging was so widespread that the elections were not credible, while the opposition has rejected the results.
The Governor of Nigeria’s Plateau state, who faced money-laundering charges, has resumed work after five months in hiding following a Supreme Court order for his reinstatement, private television channels said on Monday. Joshua Dariye was removed from office by a faction in the central state’s legislature late last year.
Fifty people were killed during Nigeria’s flawed governorship elections earlier this month, the country’s electoral agency said on Monday. Independent National Electoral Commission spokesperson Philip Umeadi told reporters that of these, 39 were police officers and 11 were civilians.
Nigeria’s literary giant and 1986 Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka has joined widespread calls for the cancellation of the country’s disputed general elections. The governorship, legislative and presidential polls held on April 14 and 21 have been roundly condemned by foreign and local observers.
Nigeria’s president-elect, Umaru Yar’Adua, intends to tackle violence in the oil-producing Niger Delta by initiating dialogue with militants when he assumes office after disputed elections, he told the media on Thursday. Yar’Adua said he would get to work immediately on solving the crisis in the lawless delta in southern Nigeria.
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.
The people of the oil-rich Niger Delta see the rise of one of their own to vice-president (VP) as an opportunity to reduce poverty and violence, although activists say time is tight. Goodluck Jonathan, governor of Bayelsa State in the delta and running mate of president-elect Umaru Yar’Adua, will carry the hopes of many in a region troubled by militancy.
Nigeria’s president-elect Umaru Yar’Adua on Tuesday faced a growing tide of discontent after being declared winner of a disputed poll that even the outgoing head of state admitted was far from perfect. In his first press briefing late on Monday, Yar’Adua issued an appeal for national unity.
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.
Voting began on Saturday in Nigeria’s landmark presidential elections, hours after a failed attempt to blow up the electoral commission marred hopes of a trouble-free poll in the first post-colonial transfer of power between two civilian presidents. Private vehicles were warned to keep off roads in Lagos and heavily armed troops threw up roadblocks on key thoroughfares.
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.
Nigeria’s opposition accused the government of detaining its activists and stuffing ballot boxes in the north on Friday, a day before a presidential election in Africa’s most populous country. The Action Congress and All Nigeria Peoples Party said the tactics were a repeat of widespread abuses that marred a state election last weekend.