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No ballots in Nigerian oil city poll, fraud suspected
02 Dec 2004 14:09:34 GMT
Source: Reuters
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(Updates with new material in paragraphs 6-8) By Tume Ahemba WARRI, Nigeria, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Nigerian authorities held local government elections in the ethnically divided oil city of Warri on Thursday, but witnesses said there were no ballots at polling stations. Leaders of the Ijaw ethnic group, who have been engaged in a violent seven-year-old power struggle with the rival Itsekiri, accused the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) of rigging the vote in the three local councils in favour of the Itsekiri. A Reuters correspondent in Warri said he could not find a single polling station at which voting took place. At one designated station, Nana Model College, he said there was no evidence of electoral materials or officers. "I am not aware of any elections here," said a teacher at the college. "I have not seen any electoral officers. It is only when we see them that we can talk of voting." A spokesman for the Delta State Independent Electoral Commission said "logistic problems" prevented them distributing ballot boxes and voting cards to polling stations. But commission chairman James Omo-Agege said the elections were under way. "Voting is going on as far as I'm concerned," he said, without specifying where. Three PDP candidates were already celebrating what they said was their victory with a small group of Itsekiri youths on the streets of Warri around lunch time. "We had elections. You can see the people rejoicing. The elections were peaceful and there was no problem," said Austin Gengenu, who said he stood as a PDP councillor for Warri South-West. Prior to the election, the commission failed to announce the names of candidates for the three areas, which are highly valued posts because they give access to a slice of the region's oil revenue and power to allocate government contracts. HELICOPTER GUNSHIP The poll in three Warri local government areas was postponed in March and again last week because of fears of violence. The government drafted in hundreds of troops on Wednesday amid fears the Ijaw might stage another uprising, as they did last year when 40 percent of the OPEC nation's 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) output was briefly halted. About 140,000 bpd is still shut because of sabotage and security concerns in the vast wetlands region. On Thursday, the security presence was light in the muddy, humid city of Warri and streets calm, but one Ijaw leader said a helicopter gunship conducted low-altitude flights over Ijaw communities around the Escravos oil export terminal. "Instead of electoral materials they have decided to send bombs and bullets to intimidate and provoke our people," said Bello Oboko, president of a militant Ijaw group, the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities. "They have not held any elections, but at the end of the day they will declare results and impose their people on us." Political rivalry between the Ijaw, the largest ethnic group in the delta, and Itsekiri exploded into violence in 1997 when the state handed the Itsekiri control of the Warri South-West creating additional electoral wards. Fighting reached a new peak last year in the run-up to general elections, when the Ijaw staged a broad based revolt against the Itsekiri, the government and oil multinationals, sabotaging oil wells and cutting off supply to world markets. The three local governments have been administered by bureaucrats since then. The rising political temperature in Warri, in the western side of delta, follows a crisis in the eastern delta in September when a militant Ijaw group threatened to blow up oil facilities in a dispute over oil money and political power. Western diplomats say President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler, and his party have failed to live up to hopes for clean democratic governance since his 1999 election which ended 15 years of military dictatorship. Nationwide local government elections in March were subject to widespread fraud, according to monitors, and violence which killed at least 100 people across Africa's most populous nation.
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