Nigeria's president-elect pleads for peace
Nigeria's president-elect Umaru Yar'Adua, the ruling party candidate who chalked up a landslide election victory, faces rumblings of discontent over a flawed poll which even the outgoing head of state described as far from perfect.
Significantly, the first move by President Olusegun Obasanjo's hand-picked successor was to plead for peace and unity after a poll both foreign monitors and the opposition say was the most fraudulent in the country's history.
"The contest has come and gone, so must our differences in the interest of the greater good," said the leader-to-be of the world's sixth largest oil-exporting nation.
"I want all Nigerians to join hands and work hard in moving this country forward," he said in a statement after being proclaimed winner of Saturday's disputed presidential polls.
Asked to comment on allegations of massive vote-rigging, said by foreign monitors to have exceeded fraud in the 1999 and 2003 polls won by Obasanjo, Yar'Adua remained unflappable.
The poll, held concurrently with parliamentary ballots, was "one of the best elections organised in Nigeria", he said.
That was not the opinion of former colonial power Britain, the United States or the European Union, who were "deeply troubled" by violence and voting irregularities they said fell short of international democratic standards.
And there were harsh words in Nigeria's morning newspapers.
"We have been the laughing stock among world commentators," wrote the respected independent daily The Nation. "This is not the kind of Nigeria we dreamed of when many dueled with life ... for a democracy."
"Even a goat would have won the elections provided it had the backing of the PDP (ruling People's Democratic Party)," said the private daily The Vanguard.
In London, world oil prices steadied amid market nerves over production in Nigeria, the world's sixth biggest exporter of crude, and struck by a decrease due to trouble in the oil-rich southern Dellta, analysts said.
"The situation in the oil market is still uncertain because of the election in Nigeria," said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo.
Yar'Adua, 55, a mild-mannered governor of one of Nigeria's northern Sharia law states, was handpicked by mentor President Olusegun Obasanjo and his ruling party. He takes the reins on May 29.
National election commission chief Maurice Iwu, who described the vote as "free and fair", declared Yar'Adua winner with 24.6 million votes, almost 70 percent of vote counted.
His two main rivals, General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP) and Vice President Atiku Abubakar of Action Congress (AC), trailed far behind, with respectively 6.6 million and 2.6 million votes, Iwu said.
There were no voter turnout figures but on the basis of commission figures, AFP calculated turnout at 57.5 percent of 61.5 million registered voters.
The two main opposition parties said Monday they would appeal the results in court and Buhari, whose supporters took to the streets in protest in the northern city of Kano, said: "I completely and utterly reject the results as a sham."
Obasanjo, a former military ruler acclaimed for having handed power to civilians in 1979, admitted to a bundle of election flaws and violence but said aggrieved parties should take complaints to court.
He urged the electoral commission and the judiciary to put wrongs right within the next five weeks before he steps down.
"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," Obasanjo said.
The poll had been trumpeted as a showcase election marking the first civilian-to-civilian handover of power since independence in 1960 in violence-prone Nigeria.
AFP
