PDP sweeps legislative poll

Nigeria’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has achieved a convincing win in Saturday’s legislative elections for the 109-seat Senate and 360-seat House of Representatives, results by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) show. The results, published in the independent ‘Guardian’ daily today (Wednesday) show that the PDP won 59 Senate seats, the All People’s Party (APP) 29 and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) 20. The PDP also won 206 seats in the House, the APP 74 and the AD 68. Saturday’s voting marked the penultimate stage in elections leading to the restoration of democracy in the country. However, by-elections will be held on 6 March in the states of Akwa Ibom, Delta, Nasarawa and Rivers where voting did not take place because of security concerns. The Delta State government has criticised INEC for postponing Saturday’s election in parts of the state.The state’s commissioner for information and culture, Francis Overare, said “there was no threat of any sort to public peace”. Meanwhile, INEC Chairman Ephraim Akpata told a news conference that although judged generally fair, there had been some irregularities in the voting.These included the late opening of some polling centres, stuffing of ballot boxes, falsification, alteration and inflation of results. “We are very disturbed by these reports which cut across party lines and which also involve some of our staff,” he said. Akpata urged a massive voter turnout for the presidential polls on Saturday, in contrast to the poor showing for the legislative elections, “the reason for which still remains unclear”.