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Obasanjo on brink
22/04/2003 12:36 - (SA)
Abuja - Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo was poised for re-election Tuesday, with votes from more than nine-tenths of his vast and unruly country accounted for, as violent tensions ran high in the wake of his disputed victory.
During election weekend five people were killed in an attack on a convoy of private cars carrying Obasanjo's daughter, and three ruling party supporters were gunned down while celebrating their candidate's victory in a state governorship battle, officials said.
Meanwhile the defeated presidential candidate, former general Muhammadu Buhari, has said he will almost certainly reject the results of Saturday's presidential and state elections, threatening to throw Africa's largest nation into yet another period of dangerous political instability.
Obasanjo himself was travelling back from his farm in southwestern Nigeria to the capital Abuja, ready to make a victory announcement once the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had confirmed the results, his aides said.
His victory was no longer in doubt: with 96% of Nigeria's electoral districts having declared their results, Obasanjo was leading with 22 million votes, or 61.2%.
His angry challenger, who has protested that the election was rigged by Obasanjo's ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was trailing on 11.6 million votes, or 32.7%.
The only remaining formality was to confirm that Obasanjo has also won at least 25% of the vote in two-thirds of Nigeria's 36 states and thus avoided the danger of taking the election to a second round on Saturday.
If Obasanjo can rule Africa's most populous country through an elected government for another full four-year term without falling victim to a coup he will become the first leader to have done so since Nigeria won its independence from Britain in 1963.
Nigeria is a vast nation of 120 million people, more than two-thirds of whom live in abject poverty on less than a dollar a day despite their country being the world's sixth biggest oil exporter.
It has been governed by various military juntas - one of them headed by Obasanjo and another by Buhari - for 28 of its 43 years as an independent state.
Before resuming government where he left off, Obasanjo will have to ride out the turbulent aftermath of his hotly disputed re-election, which both Buhari's All Nigeria People's Party and independent election observers have said was marred by widespread ballot rigging and intimidation.
In 1983 Buhari overthrew the last and only Nigerian government to have been produced in a civilian-to-civilian transition, and, although the former dictator looks in no position to repeat this, the anger of his defeated supporters could provoke violent unrest.
On Sunday unidentified gunmen shot dead three PDP supporters and injured several more as they celebrated their candidate's victory over the incumbent ANPP governor of Kwara State, in west-central Nigeria, police said on Tuesday.
Also on Sunday, five were killed when gunmen opened fire on cars carrying Obasanjo's daughter Idayo back from her home village near the president's farm estate in Otta, in the southwest, the president's campaign spokesperson Akin Osuntokun said.
Idayo Obasanjo was unhurt, he said, but a bodyguard, a driver, her uncle and two young children of a friend were killed. The attack is initially thought to have been by armed robbers, but officials are not ruling out a political motive and it can only raise tensions further.
Already protests have broken out in the central state of Plateau, where defeated ANPP supporters believe the polls were rigged against them, and on polling day Buhari repeated a call for "mass action" by his supporters should they be defeated by unfair means.
- AFX
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