Fifth Nigerian governor out
2007-11-15 20:20
Abuja - A Nigerian state governor, Murtala Nyako, was removed from office on Thursday when an election tribunal ruled an opposition candidate had been wrongly disqualified, the fifth major decision to go against the ruling party since April polls.
European observers judged this year's elections for
president, governors and legislators "not credible" because of what they said was widespread vote-rigging and intimidation, mostly by agents of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP).
Hundreds of results, from Umaru Yar'Adua's election as president, down to the state house of assembly level, are being contested before election tribunals.
Illegally disqualified from race
A tribunal in the north-eastern Adamawa state on Thursday
annulled the election of Nyako of the PDP as governor,
the official News Agency of Nigeria reported.
The opposition Action Congress (AC) said its candidate,
Ibrahim Bapatel, had been illegally disqualified from the race
after his name appeared on a list of corruption suspects issued
by the anti-graft police and endorsed by the government before
the elections.
That list was widely denounced at the time as interference
in the election process by the PDP government. Since the
elections, anti-corruption police have shown no sign of
investigating or prosecuting those named on the list.
"The Action Congress has again hailed the judiciary for its continued efforts to ensure the sanctity of elections in Nigeria as well as the survival of the country's democracy," the party said in reaction to the Adamawa ruling.
The AC's presidential candidate, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, is one of two leading opposition figures contesting Yar'Adua's victory at a tribunal in the capital Abuja, and the AC said Thursday's ruling had encouraged it to continue.
Fraud, violence widespread
Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 after three
decades of almost continuous army dictatorship. Olusegun
Obasanjo, a former army head of state from the 1970s, returned
to power as a civilian through elections in 1999 and 2003.
The 2007 elections were supposed to be a democratic
landmark, the first transition from one civilian president to
another through the ballot box since Nigerian independence.
Instead, fraud and violence were so widespread that
international and local observers said the results were not
credible. Human Rights Watch has called the polls "a farce".