A ruling party candidate who saw his first gubernatorial election win overturned by the courts for irregularities won a rerun election in an oil-rich Nigerian state, officials said Friday.
Associated Press
LAGOS, Nigeria —
A ruling party candidate who saw his first gubernatorial election win overturned by the courts for irregularities won a rerun election in an oil-rich Nigerian state, officials said Friday.
Officials with the Independent National Electoral Commission said Emmanuel Uduaghan, a candidate with the ruling People's Democratic Party, clinched the vote Thursday in Delta state. Statistics offered by commission Friday showed Uduaghan won with 275,253 votes out of 433,312 valid ballots cast.
Nigeria's government hoped the election would prove to its citizens the oil-rich nation could hold a free and fair election as an upcoming presidential election looms in April. However, even with more than 20,000 police officers and federal election officials on hand, allegations of ballot box thefts and faked voter cards still persisted.
The closest opposition candidate, Great Ogboru of the Democratic People's Party, pulled in just 138,244 votes.
The state-run Nigerian Television Authority aired the results live Friday. The program even showed video of upset crowds complaining about faked voter registration cards being in circulation during the election.
Attahiru Jega, national chairman of the electoral commission, said officials "took the business of organizing this election very, very serious."
"We did our best to learn from the mistakes of the past," Jega said.
Nigeria, one of the largest crude oil suppliers to the U.S., became a democracy through a presidential election in 1999, but its polls remained mired in vote-rigging, violence and political thuggery. International observers called the 2007 election of the late President Umaru Yar'Adua rigged, even though it represented the first civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in the nation's history.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who took over after Yar'Adua's death in May, has promised a free and fair election in April. However, equipment to register voters was stolen from Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport just after its arrival in Nigeria last month, raising questions about manipulating the voter rolls. Registration is scheduled to begin Jan. 15
No comments:
Post a Comment