Nigeria’s Main Opposition Says Election It Lost Was Like a War
Nigeria’s Main Opposition Says Election It Lost Was Like a War
Nigeria’s main opposition People’s Democratic Party said it will ask the courts to overturn state elections it lost last week in circumstances it likened more to “war” than a democratic exercise.
Two of Nigeria’s 36 states went to the polls on Nov. 16 to select new governors, nine months after the country’s presidential vote that returned President Muhammadu Buhari to power. While the Independent National Electoral Commission declared the ruling All Progressives Congress party candidates as winners in Bayelsa and Kogi, election observers reported that the exercise was marred by violence and rigging.
“We believe what we went through was a war situation, not an election,” Kola Ologbondiyan, the national publicity secretary of the PDP said in a Thursday interview in Abuja, the capital.
The PDP, which in 2015 lost power to the APC for the first time since Nigeria’s return to democracy sixteen years earlier, rejects the results and will ask the courts for the cancellation of the polls, Ologbondiyan said
Election monitors condemned the vote in the two states as lacking credibility as they were marred by violence and vote rigging
‘Massive Violence’
“Political party thugs and supporters aided by uniformed persons unleashed massive violence on voters seeking to exercise their franchise,” the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room coalition of election observers said in a Thursday statement.
YIAGA Africa, another group of monitors, said the disparity in Bayelsa state between the official results announced by the electoral commission and its own parallel tabulation “suggests the results were manipulated during the collation process.”
At least 10 people were killed in Kogi state alone in acts of electoral violence, according Idayat Hassan, executive director of Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development.
National Publicity Secretary for Buhari’s All Progressives Congress Lanre Issa-Onilu didn’t respond to request for comment.
INEC, in a statement by spokesman Rotimi Oyekanmi, said it “condemns the violence that occurred in several areas in both states.”
“We’re asking for electoral reform,” Ologbondyian said. “We have lost total confidence in this INEC.”
To contact the reporter on this story: William Clowes in Kinshasa at wclowes@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Anthony Osae-Brown, Dulue Mbachu
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