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Protests as ruling candidate wins Nigerian presidential poll
AFP/Pius Utomi Ekpei
Presidential candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and president elect Umar Yar'Adua.By Helen Vesperini
AFP
ABUJA
Petroleumworld.com 04 24 07
Umaru Yar'Adua was declared winner of Nigeria's presidential election Monday and immediately appaealed for national unity amid outcry at home and abroad over rampant electoral fraud and violence.
"The contest has come and gone. So must our differences, in the interest of the greater good," Yar'Aduam, candidate for the ruling PDP party, said in his first press briefing since his victory in Saturday's election.
The national election commission said earlier that the quietly-spoken Yar'Adua had won the ballot with 24.6 million votes, well ahead of his two main rivals.
But opposition parties in Africa's most populous country immediately rejected the result, citing rampant fraud, while foreign observers slammed the credibility of a poll that cost at least 200 lives.
In the northern city of Kano, youths loyal to opposition candidate and onetime military ruler General Muhammadu Buhari lit bonfires to protest their his defeat and harassed passing motorists.
The United States said it was "deeply troubled" by violence and voting irregularities during both state elections on April 14 and the presidential and parliamentary polls on Saturday.
And former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in Nigeria as the head of an observer team, said the country's electoral process was going in the wrong direction.
"Regrettably, 2007 represents a step backward in the conduct of elections in Nigeria. In many places, in a number of ways, the electoral process failed the Nigerian people," Albright said.
Britain, the former colonial power in Nigeria, also said it was "deeply concerned" but urged those disputing the result to do so peacefully.
Yar'Adua, the 55-year-old governor of one Nigeria's northern states, was backed by President Olusegun Obasanjo and was the pre-poll favourite.
He has a track record of financial prudence, public service and accountability and is among the few governors recently absolved of corruption by the country's anti-graft agency.
He has promised to tackle graft, a major issue in a country regularly ranked among the most corrupt on the planet by global watchdog Transparency International.
The presidential election had been touted as a democratic showcase marking the African giant's first peaceful handover of power from one civilian to another since independence in 1960.
But with all eyes on the future stability of the world's sixth largest oil exporter, even Obasanjo admitted the polls had been far from perfect and called on the country to do better next time.
"After all, in another four years, there will be an opportunity for a fresh contest which I hope will take care of ballot paper and ballot box malpractices," he said.
The handling of the polls was vigorously criticised by both foreign and domestic monitors.
Chief EU observer Max van den Berg said they had "fallen far short" of basic international standards.
"The process cannot be considered to be credible," he said.
Van den Berg's team said at least 200 people were killed in "unacceptable" election-related violence during the two polls, with victims including police and some candidates. Obasanjo put election casualties at around 65.
The main opposition candidates Buhari and Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo's former friend-turned-foe, said the poll was unfair and undemocratic and vowed to pursue the matter in court.
"It is the worst election ever seen," Abubakar said.
"It was a disgrace to Nigeria," Buhari said, rejecting the results as "a sham".
The candidates' verdict was backed up by Nigeria's largest election monitoring group which called the poll a "charade" and demanded it be reheld.
Turnout was low for Saturday's presidential and legislative elections after ballot papers printed at the last minute arrived hours late, or not at all, in many of the 120,000 voting stations.
The chaos was partly caused by an 11th-hour Supreme Court decision to allow Abubakar, who is facing corruption allegations, to run in the election, overruling his disqualification by the election commission.
That left the commission with the mammoth task of reprinting ballots overseas for 61.5 million eligible voters and getting them to booths in time.
AFP 23 2034 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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