NIGERIA: Nigerian presidential vote seen as a democratic watershed for the country

Record ID: 234583

  • Title: NIGERIA: Nigerian presidential vote seen as a democratic watershed for the country
  • Date: 21st April 2007
  • Summary: OPPOSITION ANPP CANDIDATE MUHAMMADU BUHARI RIDES IN CAR DURING ELECTION CAMPAIGN POLITICAL RALLY BY OPPOSITION ANPP HEADED BY MUHAMMADU BUHARI
  • Embargoed: 6th May 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVAF426SZDQ8LANEEA839R11Y2TO
  • Story Text: Nigerians voted in a presidential election on Saturday (April 21) but violence and delayed polling stoked fears that it would dash hopes for a democratic leap forward in Africa.
    The vote is intended to seal the first handover from one civilian president to another in the continent's most populous nation, scarred by three decades of corrupt military rule. But hours before polling stations opened, unknown attackers tried to blow up the national electoral headquarters in the capital Abuja with a fully laden petrol tanker. It hit a telephone pole outside the building and did not explode.
    "At about 4 a.m. this morning, my men were on duty when they heard a bang," Abuja Police Commissioner Lawrence Alobi said at the scene.
    "That tanker collided with that electric pole there that is bent, and when they came, they moved in to see what was the problem, they found fire inside the tanker and a very heavy stone on top of the accelerator of the tanker. It enabled the tanker to move in slowly while the fire was on and the intention was to move into INEC headquarters and there would be a blast," he added.
    Later, thugs in police and army uniforms and armed with guns and cutlasses abducted an electoral officer in the southwestern state of Ondo and took away voting materials, the state news agency said.
    Late on Friday (April 20), militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta had stormed the office of the ruling party's vice-presidential candidate in what police said was an assassination attempt. He escaped but two civilians were killed. Electoral commissioner Maurice Iwu blamed "desperate Nigerians" out to sabotage democracy.
    Witnesses said voting began in the northern city of Katsina on time at 10 a.m (0900 GMT), but started late in the largest city Lagos and elsewhere because of transport delays.
    Even before the violence, there was pessimism that the vote would be free and fair after wholesale rigging in many places during regional polls a week ago.
    Some 50 people died in the aftermath of that vote and opposition parties alleged on Friday the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) had started rigging a day before the presidential poll.
    The opposition said it no longer had confidence in the electoral authority after last week's vote, which handed the PDP a landslide.
    The leading opposition challenger, former army strongman Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria People's Party, said the regional poll was the worst election in Nigerian history.
    President Olusegun Obasanjo, who failed to change the constitution to allow him a third term, tried every possible tactic to prevent his arch-rival, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, from standing.
    The ballots had to be altered at the last minute after the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the electoral commission had acted illegally by disqualifying Abubakar.
    World oil prices rose on Friday because of concern that turmoil could further cut supplies from the world's eighth-largest exporter, where output has been reduced by a fifth for the last year because of militant attacks in the delta.
    But officials from Obasanjo on down said Saturday's vote would be historic. He asked observers not to "exaggerate the negative."
    The PDP has fielded a little-known state governor, Umaru Yar'Adua, as its candidate but the opposition says he is a puppet intended to perpetuate Obasanjo's power.
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