POLITIC-NIGERIA: Smooth and Peaceful Elections Despite Rains

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Apr 13 2003 (IPS) - -A sea of different shades of colours of umbrellas formed queues at polling centres here this weekend as Nigerians turned out in large numbers defying the rains to elect their representatives for the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The rains which started early on Saturday morning, and went on for most of the day, delayed officials with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agencies for a couple of hours in getting started.

”The rains this morning delayed the take off of the exercise for about two hours in Ilorin, but in spite of that, it has been very peaceful,” one resident of Ilorin, capital of the violence prone central state of Kwara told IPS.

In this commercial capital, INEC officials turned specious verandas of some houses as well as churches and mosques into polling booths to prevent voting materials from being soaked by the rain.

At Iwaya, a suburb of here, IPS noticed a lot of orderliness at polling centres where a lot of voters who were yet to exchange their registration slips for the computerised voters cards, created a second queue to collect their cards before being allowed to vote. However, some eligible voters who could not wait in the queue left in frustration.

”I cannot waste my time waiting in the queue in the rain to collect cards and then queue again to cast my vote. I do not really care about this level of elections because I don’t know any of the contestants for the Senate of House of Representatives. I will exchange the slip before the governors and presidents’ election next Saturday,” Tony Oigboshe told IPS.

But others stayed on. ”I have to vote and I am not leaving until I vote. I did not have time to collect the card during the two days INEC asked us to exchange our slips for the cards because of work. This is the time to say yes to real democracy and we cannot do that when we refuse to vote,” Caroline Aina, a civil servant said.

Elderly people who were not familiar with the emblems of the various parties on the long ballot papers and were finding it difficult to thumb-print were helped by INEC officials. ”What party do you want to vote for mam?” one official asked a seventy-year-old woman. The official then guided her ink-marked thumb to the emblem of the party she mentioned.

Nigeria has 30 political parties as against the highest ever of six in previous elections. With all the parties’ names and emblems on the ballot paper, it became difficult for the elderly and illiterates to recognise in spite of the enlightenment campaigns which went along with political campaigns of the parties.

Major streets of here have been turned into football pitches and bicycle race tracks by youths playing football or riding their bicycles in the rains. Vehicles are totally off the roads, except for vehicles on essential services, the police, journalists and monitors, as there is a stay at home order.

President Olusegun Obasanjo who voted in Abeokuta, capital of the Western State of Ogun on Saturday, said: ”I feel proud as a Nigerian. I feel satisfied”.

He told journalists after casting his vote, that reports reaching him from all over the country showed that people were trooping out to vote peacefully and patiently, and expressed the hope that the exercise would be concluded peacefully.

Commenting on the large turn-out of voters, Lai Osho, a lecturer, attributed it to mobilisation and the fact that Nigerians want to prove sceptics wrong this time. ”I think mobilisation by parties, the INEC and stakeholders, have been quite high and the eagerness to vote and have a peaceful transition this time around, has helped the turn-out. The merging of two elections, that of the Senate and House of Representatives, could also be responsible because even if you do not want to vote for the Senate, you may want to vote for the House of Representatives,” Osho said.

According to him: ”Nigerians this time want to prove the sceptics wrong about failure in the previous transition from civilian to civilian polls. The ordinary man and woman on the street want it right because if we can get it right this time, Nigeria will become great. Everybody believes we must get it right this time.”

Much as citizens turned out in large numbers to cast their votes, there were reports of some pockets of problems, not violence though, in some areas of this former capital and some parts of the country. According to Police reports two people were arrested in Lagos Island for attempting to carry away a ballot box from one of the polling centres. They alleged that they were sent by a politician.

A report from Akwa, capital of highly volatile Anambra State in Eastern Nigeria, said materials were late in getting to the polling centres due to heavy rains Friday night. The materials did not get to most centres in the capital until 11.30 in the morning on Saturday. There are 4,000 polling centres in the state. The report stated that due to the large security presence throughout the state the elections were reported to have been very peaceful.

Reports from another troubled spot, Jos, capital of the Middle-belt State of Plateau, said voting started early with women trooping to their various polling units ahead of men. In areas that have large concentration of Muslims, women were in separate queues next to their male counterparts. According to the report, the election was generally peaceful.

Abuja, the federal capital, where Salim Salim, head of the Commonwealth Monitoring Group, monitored the elections, was also reported to have been peaceful. Streets were deserted partially because of the elections and the fact that many residents, majority of who are civil servants, had travelled out to their villages where they were registered.

Saturday’s National Assembly election is the seventh in this politically fragile country. The first was in 1959 when the country was preparing for Independence in 1960 while another parliamentary election was held in 1964 which brought about political problems that led to the collapse of the First Republic on January 15, 1966.

Another election was held in 1979 when President Obasanjo, then as military head of state, handed over to President Shehu Shagari of the Second Republic. The democratic dispensation was however truncated by the military on December 31, 1983 when another attempt at elections failed leading to more than a decade of military rule.

However, in 1993 another set of elections was held under the dictatorship of military ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida. The election perceived as the freest and fairest was later annulled by the military, with the winner of the presidential election, Moshood Abiola, jailed by late General Sani Abacha who took over as head of state from an interim government in November that year.

In 1999, another set of elections, supervised by the regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, was held which brought about the present dispensation in Nigeria. (ENDS/IPS/AF/WA/IP/TO/SM/03)

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