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guardian.co.uk/commentisfree > David Pallister Change for the worse
Elections in Nigeria aren't like they used to be: 24 years ago they were violent, flawed and corrupt. Since then the situation has worsened.
David Pallister
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About Webfeeds April 24, 2007 9:30 PM | Printable version
I reported in the Guardian 24 years ago that the Nigerian elections were fatally flawed by widespread irregularities and incompetent organisation; that the electoral officers often failed to turn up at the polling booths; that some areas didn't receive ballot papers and many names were missing from the registers; that ballot boxes had been blatantly stuffed. And then there was the violence and intimidation. The numbers killed were difficult to assess but they certainly ran into the scores.
Does nothing change? Yes, this was Nigeria in 1983 when President Shehu Shagari was re-elected for a second term only to be ousted in a military coup four years later. A decade later, I witnessed again the weird and wonderful world of Nigerian electioneering on the campaign trail with Chief Moshood Abiola, the certain winner, who died in prison after the contest was annulled by the military. The extraordinary events during this week's elections suggest that things have only got worse. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart was never more apposite. This time the fatalities are reported to be in the hundreds.
Our Africa correspondent Chris McGreal reports the scepticism about the results in two of the Niger Delta states where the new president Umaru Yar'Adua apparently won 1.8 million and 1.2 million votes against a combined opposition total of 109,000 and 42,000. Back in 1983 there was equal incredulity when Shagari's party captured the governorships of three opposition strongholds in the Ibo and Yuroba regions. Two of those results were reversed by election tribunals. And no one believed the national electoral register when a town in Lagos states, with an estimated population of 65,000 suddenly had 201,000 voters. The register in at least four states was, according to an opposition leader, "a negation of all accepted norms of demography and population growth."
Then as now the head of the national electoral commission shrugged off the problems. Declaring himself largely satisfied with the process in 1983, Mr Justice Victor Ovie-Whisky, said: "We did not expect to be perfect." On Monday, Maurice Iwu admitted that the ballot had "not gone without difficulties" but said that overall it had been "free, fair and credible".
That was emphatically not the view of both local and foreign observers who described the process as a charade.
It could not have been otherwise. It was not until April 16, five days before the election that the vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, was allowed to have his Action Congress opposition party symbol on the papers. The supreme court ruled that the electoral commission had exceeded its power when it excluded him from the list over allegations of corruption.
The new papers had to be printed in South Africa and they arrived in Nigeria only at the last minute. The idea that they could be distributed in good time was an absurdity and no doubt the young men of the retiring President Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party - those who had been paid to intimidate voters and stuff and steal ballot boxes - did not make that process any easier.
The role of money in Nigerian politics is key which is why politics is treated with such passion. Put simply, getting elected means getting rich and there seem to be few exceptions. Most of the previous state governors were under investigation for corruption and the new ones will find it hard to resist.
In 1993, flying around in Abiola's private jet, our party never left Lagos before the banks opened. A man would be sent off with a large Gladstone bag and return with it stuffed full of fresh naira. On the campaign trail the chief would inexplicably disappear, sometimes for hours at a time. The purpose, his aides told me, was to spread his largesse among the local party bosses and tribal chiefs to encourage an enthusiastic turnout.
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This entry was tagged with the following keywords: election nigeria democracy shehushagari moshoodabiola umaruyaradua atikuabubakar
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silenthunter
Comment No. 547155
April 24 22:00
GBR Yes....yes.....But can we still get our hands on their oil?
That's the important question to the madarins of Whitehall and the Whitehouse.
To hell with democracy and peoples rights - it's only the bloody third world after all.
Let Geldoff worry about the starving Africans.
Thank God we don't live in a society with a corrupt government that's happy to sell political favours for cash.....Oh, hang on a moment? :O(
[Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.] worried
Comment No. 547176
April 24 22:10
Is it Shell or BP ?
[Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.]
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