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Obasanjo takes strong lead
21/04/2003 09:16 - (SA)
Lagos - President Olusegun Obasanjo was on the verge of victory on Monday in Nigeria's first civilian-run polls in 20 years, as allegations of ballot-rigging raised political tension.
Obasanjo's supporters ousted three state governors in Nigeria's densely populated southwest, while first results for the presidential contest had him with three quarters of the vote with a third of areas declared.
In the southwest the results of Saturday's poll were immediately denounced by the angry losers, who accused Obasanjo's party of fraud, and elsewhere in Africa's most populous country tension was high.
Voting was marred in the southeast - home of Nigeria's multi-billion dollar oil industry - by what independent observers described as "massive rigging and thuggery" backed by "effective intimidation".
Initial results from Rivers State, home of the oil city of Port Harcourt, showed Obasanjo in the lead with 99.63 percent of the vote, despite reports from observers that no true polling had taken place.
In the mainly-Muslim north, where Obasanjo's main challenger Muhammadu Buhari has more support, opposition leaders warned of a backlash if the results did not go their way.
Very serious problems
"There will be very serious problems if this election was rigged," Buhari's spokesperson Sam Nda-Isaiah said on Sunday.
Obasanjo and Buhari, both former military dictators, and 18 outsiders stood against one another on Saturday in Nigeria's first civilian-run vote in 20 years, while 36 states held gubernatorial battles.
Observers said that, after the poll itself, the toughest tests of Nigeria's four-year-old experiment with elected government will be the fairness of the count and the reaction of the losers.
With votes from just under 12 million of Nigeria's 60 million registered electors accounted for, Obasanjo was well ahead with 73 percent of the vote while Buhari trailed at 21 percent.
Obasanjo needs a simple majority over his nearest challenger and 25 percent support in two-thirds of the states to win re-election without going to a second round. Full results are expected by Tuesday.
State electoral officers announced large victories for Obasanjo's allies in three gubernatorial contests in the southwest, where they ousted incumbent governors from their lucrative posts.
Angry response
Those results drew an angry response from the governors' party, the Alliance for Democracy (AD), which accused Obasanjo's ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of rigging the vote.
"This result is a fraud of the highest order. It's unacceptable and we reject it in its totality," said AD spokesperson Ibrahim Alfa.
Voting was conducted peacefully in most of the country outside of the troubled southeast - the oil rich Niger Delta and the Igbo heartlands east of the river - where monitors complained of intimidation and fraud.
In the northern city of Kano the election was seen a tight race between Buhari's All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the PDP, and tensions were high amid accusations that the PDP governor had tried to rig the vote.
Taking no chances
As results were being collated at Kano's electoral agency headquarters scores of Buhari supporters took to the streets to celebrate an anticipated victory, burning a PDP flag and mocking the governor.
Buhari is a Muslim and a northerner, like most of the population of Kano, and has made the city his election headquarters. But officials results have yet to be announced from the city.
With the crowd in the streets police reinforcements were deployed in front of the governor's palace, where earlier an armoured car had drawn up.
"We don't want to take any chances, especially if he wins," an officer from Nigeria's paramilitary Mobile Police said.
Police said that on polling day in the southwest several AD supporters had been arrested for hoarding stolen ballot papers, smashing or stealing ballot boxes or for training thugs armed with machetes, bows and arrows.
But by the far the worst abuses, witnesses and AFP reporters said, were in the south and southeast.
In Bayelsa State six opposition supporters were killed by men in security force uniforms, Nigerian and South African monitors said.
- AFX
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