Obasanjo declared winner in vote marred by fraud

President Olusegun Obasanjo was on Tuesday declared winner by Nigeria’s electoral commission of the weekend presidential vote rejected by the opposition and said by observers to have been in large parts marred by fraud.

Final results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) showed that Obasanjo, the People’s Democratic Party candidate, scored 24.38 million votes or 62.04 percent of 39.30 million valid votes cast on Saturday.

Muhammadu Buhari, his closest rival among 19 opposition candidates and candidate of the All Nigeria People‘s Party (ANPP), scored 12.61 million votes or 32.09 percent of valid votes, leaving the rest of the opposition candidates with 5.87 percent of the vote.

“It follows that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP, having satisfied the legal requirements and scored the highest number of votes, is hereby declared the winner and returned as president,” Abel Guobadia, INEC chairman, told a news conference.

He said he believed the result reflected the will of the Nigerian electorate and urged aggrieved opposition candidates to challenge the verdict in election tribunals.

“I urge our politicians to demonstrate the highest level of statesmanship and commitment to democratic ideals by operating strictly within the constitutional provisions for seeking redress,” said Guobadia.

Prior to the announcement there was drama at the INEC headquarters in the capital Abuja, when leaders of several opposition parties stormed the conference room where journalists were awaiting the declaration of the result to denounce the elections.“We have refused to sign results that are obviously frivolous,” said ANPP chairman Don Etiebet. “It is glaringly obvious that elections did not take place in many areas.”

Both international and local observers said they saw evidence of widespread fraud, including voter intimidation, ballot box stuffing and alteration of results across the country of 120 million people. But most said they were yet to determine conclusively if the malpractices compromised the integrity of the election.

“Observers witnessed and obtained evidence of widespread election fraud in 13 states,” Max van den Berg, head of the European Union 118-strong monitoring team said in a statement Tuesday. He said the malpractices observed mostly in central Nigeria, the southeast and the southern oil-rich Niger Delta, put the integrity of results from those states in doubt.

A similar conclusion was reached by the U.S-based National Democratic Institute, with the group’s leader Kenneth Wollack declaring that such “problems have substantially compromised the integrity of the electoral process, particularly in the areas where they occurred”. The Commonwealth observer group led by Salim Ahmed Salim was equally critical but less damning in its conclusions. “In most of the country conditions were such as to enable the will of the people to be expressed,” Salim said.

Local observer groups of the Transition Monitoring Group and the Justice Peace and Development Commission (JPDC) - linked to the Catholic Church also condemned incidents of alteration and falsification of results reported by their monitors in parts of the country.

"As was the case last week some of the results being released by INEC are incredible," Ifeanyi Enwerem of JPDC told IRIN. He said in Rivers State for instance, where 2.2 million voters were registered, nearly 100 percent turnout was reflected by INEC, with ruling party governor winning 2.09 million votes. "It can't be true. In fact we observed very low turnout in Rivers State," Enwerem said.

But Obasanjo in a late-night acceptance speech said he was satisfied the elections had been free and fair and transparent. He called on opposition politicians who rejected the result to seek redress at the election tribunals.

"There have been losses and gains on all sides. Good politicians should be real good sportsmen, showing magnanimity and humility in victory, and gallantry and good-naturedness in defeat," Obasanjo said. "You cannot accept victory and reject defeat."