Nigeria’s biggest election monitoring group has said Saturday’s presidential poll was so flawed that it should be scrapped and held again.
The Transition Monitoring Group said a winner could not be announced on the basis of results from half the country.
Archive for April 22nd, 2007
Voting delays in some places, but riots and violence in other parts of the country. There were some deaths but it’s not as bad as many expected. Neither was it a fully free and fair election, however.
What I find worrying - as an election monitor in Ogoni in 2003, who saw the beginning of the militarisation of thugs used to rig ballots - is that what started in the Delta is now spreading across the country as part of the political culture. This is very dangerous indeed, given the state of things in the oil producing South four years on. Analysists should look to voter intimidation as much as to deaths and shootings as an indicator of the national precedents that are being set in Africa’s biggest, nominal democracy.
The chairman of the Independent Natioal Electoral Commission, Professor Maurice Iwu, said that is was a case of “so far so good”.
- In the central state of Nassarawa, policeman were killed while escorting election officials with ballot papers.
- Police fired on crowds in the northern state of Katsina and four were killed in clashes over inadequate voting materials. Katsina is the home state of both the governing PDP candidate, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and his rival for President, Muhammadu Buhari.
- In Kano, men armed with cutlasses and guns stole ballot boxes while in Onde state
- In the south-west, men disguised as policemen abducted election officials.
The BBC is now reporting live that in the Niger Delta at one polling station,all the results were completely round figures. 7000 for the PDP, 3000 for all the others…
An observer delegation led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived before any election material.
After shaking hands with would-be voters, Albright went looking for officials from the Independent National Election Commission, known as INEC.
ALBRIGHT: “You are all INEC officials? And you have the voter registration lists? ”
Observers like Madeleine Albright arrived before election materials, 21 Apr 2007
ELECTION OFFICIAL: “They are bringing everything.”
ALBRIGHT: “But what do you have? Oh, you have the manual.”
Another observer was former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark.
CLARK: “How many voting places are there here in this poll?”
ELECTION OFFICIAL: “There are about five.”
CLARK: “So how many voting boxes do you have? Five?”
ELECTION OFFICIAL: “At the moment, we have one box, but they are bringing them in.”
The problems, occurring on the heels of disputed state elections April 14, raised the possibility that the presidential election might not produce a credible winner, plunging the nation into a constitutional crisis.
That could scuttle the attempt to hand power from one democratically elected government to another for the first time in the nation’s history, and leave the impression that the nation’s leaders would once again be chosen through a deeply flawed process.
