President ignores vote-rigging claims

NIGERIA’S newly re-elected President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday ignored a torrent of claims that his spectacular victory was achieved by crude vote-rigging.

Opposition parties, most foreign observers and the US State Department voiced reactions ranging from fury to disbelief after the outcome of the April 19 presidential election was chaotically proclaimed on Tuesday night.

The elections had been seen as a milestone in the transition from military to civilian rule in troubled Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and biggest oil producer.

The main opposition party said the polls had instead been the target of a massive crime and warned it would not recognise any government formed on their basis.

In a victory speech, Mr Obasanjo, a born-again Christian, made no reference to the protests.

“The people of Nigeria have spoken, loud and clear, with their votes. They have voted for one united, harmonious Nigeria and no leader should deny them their hearts’ desire,” he said in a televised address. “I am delighted to say that electorally, Nigeria has come of age,” he said after EU observers reported they witnessed electoral fraud in 13 of Nigeria’s 36 states.

In Washington the State Department talked of “widespread and often credible claims of electoral malfeasance”.

Mr Obasanjo even had some avuncular advice for his principal adversary, Muhammadu Buhari, whose aides were left fuming after results showed the northern Muslim had received 12.7 million ballots compared to the incumbent’s 24.5 million.

“Good politicians should be good sportsmen, showing magnanimity and humility in victory and gallantry and good-naturedness in defeat,” the president said.

There were many who feared that aggrieved opposition supporters in traditional trouble spots might not respond in such a spirit.

At least 25 people have been killed since last Saturday’s vote.

More than 10,000 people have died in ethnic, religious and political clashes in Nigeria since a 1999 military-supervised election put Mr Obasanjo in office.

“You can feel the anger in the mosques. The Imams and the worshippers all see Obasanjo’s victory as a robbery,” Shehu Sani, a human rights campaigner, said from Kaduna, capital of the mainly-Muslim north.

Analyst Lindsay Barrett said discontent would be exacerbated in the Niger delta, the oil-producing area where ethnic rivalry and repeated protests over environmental degradation have cost many lives.

“I am sitting in a state where Obasanjo was credited with 100% victories, and there is no celebration,” he said, speaking from Rivers state. Buhari’s All Nigeria Peoples Party said the election fraud had been “on a scale that has never been witnessed in the history of criminality in Nigeria”.