Obasanjo Steams Ahead in Nigerian Presidential Poll
Updated 7:21 PM ET April 20, 2003
By Daniel Balint-Kurti and Nicholas Kotch
ABUJA/LAGOS (Reuters) - President Olusegun Obasanjo was far ahead on
Sunday in partial results from Nigeria's presidential election, but the
main opposition party alleged serious rigging.
Foreign election observers questioned an official turnout of nearly 100
percent in the southern oil-rich Rivers state where the opposition had
called a boycott.
"We have significant concerns about what has happened this weekend (in
Rivers)," Stuart Mole, a Commonwealth observer in the state capital Port
Harcourt told Reuters.
More than 24 hours after voting ended on Saturday, Obasanjo -- a
born-again Christian who won power in a military-supervised election in
1999 that ended 15 years of army rule -- had a massive 75 percent of the
10.2 million votes counted.
Main challenger Muhammudu Buhari, whose bastion is in the predominantly
Muslim north of Africa's most populous country, was a distant second
with less than 20 percent.
"This is a very huge joke" Sam Nda-Isaiah, spokesman for the Buhari
campaign, told Reuters, alleging widespread fraud in the presidential
poll and accompanying state governorship elections.
Nigeria, the world's eighth biggest oil exporter, has spent most of its
43 years since independence from Britain under military rule. It is
trying to transfer power from one elected government to another for the
first time.
Obasanjo and Buhari are both former military rulers in the West African
state of more than 120 million people.
QUARTER OF RESULTS IN
The way the figures were being released by the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) meant it was too early to say if Obasanjo's
lead was unassailable, with about a quarter of results from Nigeria's 36
states counted.
The INEC did not source the presidential results geographically, making
it hard to detect voting trends.
Obasanjo's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was scooping up state
governorships. It won outright majorities in the Senate and House of
Representatives in elections on April 12.
The opposition also accused the president and his party of vote-rigging
in that contest.
Of the first 16 governorships declared on Sunday, 13 went to the PDP and
just two to Buhari's All Nigeria Peoples' Party (ANPP). Buhari's home
state of Katsina was won by the PDP.
Voting was generally peaceful in large cities, but some losing
candidates for governorships were enraged.
"It was a robbery, but unfortunately they have stolen Holy Ghost fire
and it will burn them," said Ugo Agballa, of the All Progressive Grand
Alliance, who came second to the PDP in Enugu state.
Government supporters and public broadcasters portrayed the elections as
broadly free and fair and a step toward real democracy.
But the result in Rivers was widely challenged because it did not
reflect the boycott called by opposition parties in parts of the
oil-producing Niger Delta region.
The INEC's Port Harcourt office reported a 96 percent turnout in the
governorship race by the 2.2 million registered voters in the state.
Peter Odili of Obasanjo's PDP was returned by a crushing majority.
"There was a fairly low level of turnout yesterday," Derrick Marco from
the Idasa poll observer group, based in South Africa, told Reuters.
"Clearly (ANPP) supporters didn't come out to vote because of high
levels of violence last week," he said.
Losing ANPP candidate Sergeant Awuse said: "This is not an election....
it is a mockery of democracy."
More than 10,000 people have been killed in ethnic, religious and
political clashes in Nigeria since the 1999 election that put Obasanjo
in office.
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