April 27, 2007
By Austin Ekeinde PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, April 28 (Reuters) - Ballot papers were stolen and voters intimidated as Nigeria re-staged polls for hundreds of state and federal legislators' seats on Saturday after elections widely condemned as fraudulent. The April 14 and 21 polls delivered a landslide victory for the People's Democratic Party (PDP), which has ruled Africa's most populous nation and biggest oil exporter for eight years. But international observers said the elections were not credible and the opposition has rejected the results. The electoral body had rescheduled elections for some seats in 26 of the 36 states, in places where the earlier polls were cancelled due to massive irregularities. Reuters correspondents in several states witnessed similar abuses on Saturday as had occurred on the two previous polling days and said turnout was low. In Port Harcourt, the main city in the oil-producing Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, this reporter saw a polling station that had been taken over by about a dozen young men shouting "PDP power! We are in control!". They had several official transparent ballot boxes, all stuffed with voting slips marked for the PDP. There were no voters in sight. The youths threatened to beat up the reporter and damage his car. Ten policemen stood by and did nothing. In southwestern Ogun state, opposition candidates said they had been unable to cast their ballots after electoral officials told them early in the day they had run out of voting materials. "PROGRAMMED TO FAIL" "Obviously it was programmed to fail," said Lanre Tejuoso, who was running for senator against the daughter of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP candidate in that district. Other opposition members in Ogun, Obasanjo's home state, said his daughter was the only one of the main candidates for the senatorial seat who was able to vote. They said they had seen ballot boxes stuffed with slips pre-marked for the PDP. In southeastern Imo, the only state where the election for governor was re-run, residents in four different local government areas said that five hours after voting should have started there were no polling stations in their wards. On April 14 and 21, voting started late or never happened at all in many parts of Nigeria because PDP supporters stole the ballots and result sheets to falsify results, observers said. In Port Harcourt on Saturday, electoral officials in one ward said they had received just 500 senatorial ballot papers and 200 House of Representatives ballots instead of the 4,500 of each they needed. Similar reports came from several states. The elections were supposed to mark a landmark democratic transition in Nigeria, a nation scarred by three decades of army rule. For the first time, one civilian president is due to hand over to another through the ballot box. But European observers said vote-rigging was so widespread that the elections were "not credible" and "fell far short of basic international standards". The main organisation of Nigerian observers called the polls "a charade". The PDP's Umaru Yar'Adua, the president-elect, has insisted he won fair and square and advised aggrieved candidates to seek redress through the courts. But analysts in Nigeria and abroad say Yar'Adua will face a serious legitimacy problem. (Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in Abuja, Ijeoma Ezekwere in Orumba, Ardo Hazzad in Bauchi, Farouk Umar in Sokoto, Lawal Saidu in
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