NIGERIA:Nigeria's ruling party won more seats and consolidated its grip on power in several states after rescheduled polls marred by very low turnout and electoral fraud, early results showed yesterday.
The electoral authority restaged polls for hundreds of federal and state legislators' seats on Saturday in places where earlier elections were annulled due to irregularities. But Reuters correspondents in several states said the re-runs showed little improvement over the original polls.
Voting slips and ballot boxes were stolen by ruling party members in some places and polling stations never opened in others.
Nigerian newspapers reported from around the country that even where polling stations were up and running the turnout was extremely low as voters were poorly informed, fearful of trouble and did not believe their votes would be counted.
Elections on April 14th and 21st resulted in a landslide victory for the People's Democratic Party (PDP), which has ruled Africa's most populous nation and biggest oil exporter for eight years.
The elections were billed as a landmark democratic transition in Nigeria, a nation scarred by three decades of army rule. It is the first time that one civilian president is due to hand over to another through the ballot box.
But international observers said fraud was so widespread that the polls were not credible. The opposition rejected the results and called for mass protests.
Early results yesterday showed that the PDP won all outstanding seats in the northern states of Sokoto and Gombe, the southeastern states of Enugu and Anambra and the southwestern state of Oyo.
Enugu, Anambra and Oyo were among states where media reported many polling stations did not open at all on Saturday and there were widespread reports of missing voting materials.
In southeastern Imo, the only one of Nigeria's 36 states where the governorship poll was re-run, an opposition candidate was declared the winner on Sunday. The PDP was weakened in Imo because it tried to substitute its candidate for governor after the deadline and the Supreme Court ruled this illegal.
In the commercial capital Lagos, the opposition Action Congress consolidated its hold with a clean sweep of the seats being contested in the re-run.
Lagos, in the southwest, and Kano, the commercial capital of the north, have both been opposition strongholds for years and analysts say it would have been impossible to keep the peace in the volatile cities if the PDP had been declared winner there.
In most other states, the PDP won with huge margins even where there was evidence of massive popular support for opposition candidates. (Additional reporting by Ijeoma Ezekwere in Anambra)