Monitors on Sunday slammed Nigeria’s election as a failure, but the government said criticism of the poll was intended to make way for a coup.
The vote on Saturday in Africa’s most populous nation was marred by violence, fraud and intimidation. First results on Sunday indicated continued dominance by the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), as expected.
Little known state governor Umaru Yar’Adua, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s chosen successor, is favourite to win.
“We are going to call for a rerun of elections. You cannot use the result from half of the country to announce a new president,” Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of biggest local observer group, told Reuters.
But the government said coup plotters were trying to annul the election to wreck democracy, after failing to blow up electoral headquarters on Saturday with a petrol tanker.
The tanker stopped short and failed to explode.
The plotters “failed to get the international community to label Nigeria as a failed state and also incite the rank and file of the Nigerian armed forces with the sole aim of scuttling the presidential elections,” Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement.
Government spokesman Uba Sani accused Senate president Ken Nnamani of wanting to impose an interim government and incite chaos after the election, which should seal the first handover from one civilian president to another in Nigeria.
Nnamani, the third most senior state official, dismissed what he called “trumped up” charges and said he would never support a coup.
“These people have no shame,” he told Reuters, saying the conduct of the election had abdicated Nigeria’s role as an example for other African counties.
Chukwuma, of the Transition Monitoring Group, said the official electoral commission had not been prepared for the vote. “In many parts of the country elections did not start on time or did not start at all,” he said.
CONCERN
European Union observers have also expressed concern about Saturday’s vote, saying they had witnessed violence, ballot stuffing and a big shortfall in voting slips.
The chief EU observer, Max van den Berg, said he was unsure there had been any improvement over regional polls last week, when there was widespread fraud and 50 people were killed.
“For the moment I am worried,” he told Reuters.
Around 16 people are so far known to have died in violence around Saturday’s vote.
Polling stations in some areas did not open until just before the closing time of 5 p.m. (1600).
First results in the northwestern state of Sokoto and southern Akwa Ibom on Sunday showed the PDP ahead, an outcome expected to be repeated across much of Nigeria.
Clear results are not expected before Monday.
There is little suspense among Nigerians, who expect the PDP to have used its incumbent powers to ensure victory.
Optimism was swiftly dashed on Saturday that Nigeria would cement democracy after decades of corrupt military rule up to 1999, which looted oil riches and left most of the population in poverty.
Opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari said no one could claim to have won an election with so many flaws. He said he was likely to call his supporters onto the streets if the PDP announced victory.
Obasanjo, who the opposition accuses of trying to install Yar’Adua as a puppet after he failed to change the constitution to win a third term, rejected accusations of wholesale rigging.