By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Dec 8 1997 (IPS)

The result of Saturday’s elections to the parliaments of Nigeria’s 36 states has fuelled fears that the country might be headed for a situation where one party hogs political power at various levels.

With 739 seats in the state assemblies already declared, the United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP) led with 490 legislators. Its nearest rival among the four other registered political parties here was the Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN) with 151.

There are 838 seats nationwide, but elections were not held in two areas where there were communal clashes this year, Warri in the southeast and Ife-Modakeke in the west.

Since the scores for Saturday’s election are similar to those registered at municipal polls held in March this year, observers here feel the UNCP will have a stranglehold on power at the national, state and local government levels come October 1998, when a transition to democracy set by the regime of Gen. Sani Abacha is scheduled to end.

“This is a clear indication of what we should expect at the end of the transition programme,” said one political analyst. “The other parties might have to fuse into the two main parties, the UNCP and the DPN. But there is the likelihood that, as speculated, Abacha might join the UNCP, which points to the fact that Nigeria might go one-party state.”

“It is expected that since UNCP is the winning party, many people might decamp and the governorship race … will become onesided,” he added.

The election to the post of governor of each state, in early 1998, is the next stage of the transition timetable, while the last — the presidential poll — is due by October.

None of the parties has announced its presidential hopeful and there has been speculation that the UNCP has called on Abacha to be its candidate for the post of head of state. There have also been rumours that four of the five parties plan to adopt the general as their choice for president.

For months, the belief that Abacha might want to succeed himself appeared to scare politicians from entering the presidential race. In fact, none came forward until Abacha invited them to do so during a mid-November broadcast marking the fourth anniversary of his regime.

In late November, 64-year-old lawyer Tunji Braithwaite, stated that he would run, while it was announced that Olusola Saraki of the Congress for National Consensus (CNC) would also do so, but this was denied by Saraki.

The latest entrant is former police inspector general M.D. Yusuf, quoted Monday by the privately-owned ‘This Day’ newspaper as saying he would give Gen. Abacha a run for his money if the latter decided to run for president.

According to the paper, Yusuf said his interest in the presidential post stemmed from his determination to save Nigeria. “We have a national emergency in the country, we all should not sit by and watch,” he reportedly told the paper.

Abacha critics believe Yusuf, who is not a known politician, is being sponsored by the government to give the impression that there will be a contest against Abacha for the presidency.

“This is all a ploy by the government. We don’t know Yusuf as a politician. He was former inspector-general of police. That is all we can remember of him,” one critic told IPS.

Whoever wins next year’s elections may be elected by a minority since there was reportedly a low voter turnout on Saturday, including in Lagos State, where Nigeria’s pro-democracy and human rights groups — most of them are based here — had called for a boycott.

When IPS visited some of the polling stations here on Saturday, party leaders, agents and National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON) officials complained of voter apathy as the biggest problem confronting the exercise.

Party officials explained that many eligible voters said they were tired of elections that would not yield any results. This, the politicians said, forced them to send out agents to try and convince registered voters to come out and cast their ballots.

However, IPS discovered that some agents resorted to buying voters’ cards from people whom they were unable to persuade to go out and vote.

One woman who said she sold her card for 100 naira (about 1.2 dollars) told IPS: “I can’t queue for an election I am not sure would be of use, but I sold the card when they agreed to return it after the election.”

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