RIOTS ERUPTED across Nigeria’s largely Muslim north yesterday, as it was confirmed that incumbent Goodluck Jonathan had won the presidential election.
Final figures announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission showed Mr Jonathan won 22.5 million votes, about 57 per cent of votes cast, compared to 12.2 million votes, about 31 per cent, for his nearest rival Muhammadu Buhari.
Mr Jonathan had sweeping wins in the predominantly Christian south, where he is a former state governor. Observers said the election was the cleanest in decades, with the Washington DC-based International Republican Institute declaring it “a major step forward in advancing Nigeria’s democracy”. However, Mr Buhari claimed the poll was rigged, prompting an outbreak of unrest in northern cities.
In Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city, protesters burnt houses that displayed Mr Jonathan’s election banner. In Kaduna, which is home to the country’s vice-president, young men burnt buildings and killed members of Mr Jonathan’s ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party.
“There are gunshots everywhere and smoke rising all over the city from burning tyres and houses,” said Shehu Sani, a civil rights leader in Kaduna.
“When they announced the results people went from street to street, house to house, looking for members of the ruling party to kill. I’ve seen churches, mosques and police stations burnt down today.”
Yesterday, the governor of Kaduna state declared an immediate 24-hour curfew “in order to protect the lives and properties of all citizens of our dear state”.
Oil-rich Nigeria has a history of vote rigging. However, election observers have resoundingly endorsed this year’s polls, while analysts say the protests reflect religious tensions rather than genuine concern over voting irregularities.
“Some northerners might feel cheated, but the violence that has broken out has an ethnic and religious dimension” said Hussaini Abdu, a political analyst in the capital Abuja. “By tomorrow we should be out of this. The election was managed very well and before today, everything was pretty calm.”
Nevertheless, there was evidence of what some observers called “strategic rigging” to ensure Mr Jonathan avoided a run-off, with turnout in some states reaching close to 100 per cent.
To avoid a second round of voting, the winning candidate must take at least 25 per cent of the votes from two-thirds of the country’s 36 states.
Mr Jonathan, the son of a canoe maker, assumed the presidency in April 2010 after his predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua died following a long illness. Before that he had served as vice-president for three years and was a former governor of Bayelsa state in the south.
His ruling People’s Democratic Party has dominated politics in Africa’s most populous nation since it became a democracy in 1999, but the country’s Muslim north remains hostile to Mr Jonathan, a Christian.
This is in part because his party traditionally switches its presidential candidate every two terms between a northerner and a southerner. Mr Yar’Adua’s premature death prevented this from happening, angering some in the north, where Sharia law has been enacted by 12 states.