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Corruption
Charges Mar Nigerian Elections and Democratic Hopes |
Posted:
04.23.07
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As Umaru Yar'Adua was declared the victor in Nigeria's presidential
election Saturday, international monitors and opposition candidates
condemned widespread voting-day corruption by the ruling People's
Democratic Party.
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 At
stake is the democratic future of Africa's largest oil exporter
and its most populous nation, which has been trapped in cycles
of violence and political instability for decades.
Observers from the European Union and the U.S.-based, nonpartisan
International Republican Institute reported ballot box stuffing
and phony results, among other voting irregularities.
Various media reported cases of voter intimidation, a lack of
transparency at voting stations and ballot shortages in regions
favoring opposition candidates.
According to the New York Times, some polling stations reported
high turnout -- as much as 100 percent -- though few people had
been seen voting.
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Failures
of the voting system |
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"The system failed the Nigerian people and suffers from
a lack of credibility. ... The Nigerian people were failed by
their leaders," IRI monitor Pierre Richard Prosper told Reuters.
In a statement, chief EU observer Max van den Berg echoed the
IRI, adding that urgent action was required to correct the sham
elections.
 "We
are going to call for a rerun of elections. You cannot use the
result from half of the country to announce a new president,"
Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of the Abuja, Nigeria-based Transition
Monitoring Group, told Reuters.
State department spokesman Sean McCormick called the elections
"flawed" but said the United States was not calling
for a new election.
The Nigerian elections were administered by the Independent National
Electoral Commission. Though the commission is touted as independent,
the International Crisis Group had earlier accused senior officials
as being under the direct influence of current Nigerian president,
Olusegun Obasanjo, of the PDP.
Even PDP party-mate Senator Ken Nnamani questioned the legitimacy
of the results after his polling station in southeastern Nigeria
never opened for local elections held a week earlier.
"There will be a legacy of hatred. People will hate the
new administration and they will have a crisis of legitimacy,"
Nnamani told Reuters.
More complaints had been filed in the state elections, when international
observers called for the cancellation of results in 10 of 36 Nigerian
states.
The electoral commission acknowledged the late arrival of ballots
in some parts of Nigeria, but despite all the criticism it has
received, its chief, Maurice Iwu, told Reuters the elections were
indeed "free and fair."
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Complaints
from opposition candidates |
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President-elect Yar'Adua's main opposition, Vice President Atiku
Abubakar of the Action Congress party, and former military ruler
Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria People's Party, were quick
to contest the results.
 Abubakar,
who had paved the way for the 1999 democratic elections but later
opposed his party-mate Obasanjo's attempt to extend the presidential
term, told Lagos-based newspaper ThisDay that no credible elections
could be conducted under the INEC.
Buhari, Nigeria's military ruler between 1983 and 1985, told
Reuters the election would likely be "a fatal blow to Nigerian
democracy" and called on the National Assembly to impeach
Obasanjo and organize a new election under the leadership of the
country's chief justice.
People's Democratic Party spokesman Uba Sani told Reuters that
criticism, as well as weekend violence aimed at the INEC headquarters
in Abuja, was part of a coup plot from opponents determined to
promote chaos.
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A history
of corruption and violence |
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Saturday's election was Nigeria's fourth since its independence
from Great Britain in 1960, but could be the first in which power
exchanges between two elected leaders and not by military coup.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter, bringing in billions
of dollars for the government, but its corrupt military leadership
had hoarded the riches, leaving most of the 140 million people
that comprise Africa's most populous nation in poverty.
 Even
now, under its most recent attempt at democracy that began in
1999 with the election of Obasanjo, the nation's military dictator
from1976 to 1979, the country remains one of the most corrupt
in the world, according to Transparency International.
It has witnessed political and ethnic violence that has displaced
more than 3 million people and killed 14,000, according to the
International Crisis Group.
The country remains divided along religious lines, with Christians
living in southern states and Muslims living in northern states
where strict Islamic Sharia law has spread in past years.
The election of Yar'Adua, currently governor of the northern
state of Katsina, also has raised questions about human rights
violations in connection with Nigeria's leaders. In 2002, an unmarried
mother from Katsina was prosecuted for adultery and sentenced
to death by stoning under Sharia law, but her conviction was later
appealed and overturned after intense international pressure.
--Compiled
by Adnaan Wasey for NewsHour Extra
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