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Nigerians vote heavily in key poll
LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuters) -- Nigerians voted in parliamentary elections on Saturday amid organizational chaos but largely without the widely feared bloodshed. However, police reported one death in southeastern Enugu district and polling was postponed in the southern oil town of Warri, at the center of ethnic warfare in the oil-rich Niger Delta. A spokesman for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said warring tribes who had threatened to disrupt the poll in Warri finally gave their consent for voting going ahead, but too late for it to be held on Saturday. Witnesses reported long queues at polling stations across the country, but INEC had no immediate official turnout figure. Polls officially closed at 1400 GMT but INEC said it would allow people already in line at the time to cast their votes because of huge logistical problems that delayed the start of balloting in most places. Many of the country's 150,000 polling stations were unmanned more than three hours after the official start of polling, witnesses said. Voters said they were told officials were still trying to collect ballot boxes. Saturday's poll marked a major test for democracy and the fragile unity of Nigeria, where 15 years of military dictatorship ended in 1999. A presidential vote follows on April 19 with incumbent Olusegun Obasanjo facing 19 rivals. Military coupsThe West African country of more than 120 million people has never experienced a successful transition from one civilian administration to another. Past attempts in 1965 and 1983 were cut short by military coups, shortly after new governments were sworn in. Thirty parties are fighting for the 360 seats in the lower House of Representatives and the 109 Senate seats. Many pundits tip Obasanjo's ruling People's Democratic Party to emerge as the biggest group, but some say the political landscape has changed radically since 1999 when the military allowed only three parties to run. Final results may not be known before Tuesday. After casting his own vote, Obasanjo told NTA TV the impression he had was that people were eager to vote and were "going out peacefully and patiently." "The reports I have received from all over the country so far have been satisfactory," he said. Ethnic clashesThe Niger Delta is the source of most of Nigeria's important oil production. Ethnic clashes around Warri last month forced major oil companies to evacuate the area and shut down some 40 percent of the country's production. Operators cautiously restarted some production this month, but most remains at a halt, notably in the shallow swamps of the western Niger Delta around the Escravos export terminal. Fighting around Warri involves the area's three main tribes -- the Ijaw, the Itsekiri and the Urhobno -- whose struggle for a greater share of Nigeria's oil wealth has increasingly taken on a political undertone. Many Nigerians had expressed fear that unrest in the Niger Delta could derail Nigeria's fragile democracy as a whole. In Lagos, Africa's biggest city of 13 million people, the streets were eerily empty, partly because many were wary of going out, fearing the violence that has preceded the elections might resurface on polling day. An estimated 10,000 people have died in outbreaks of ethnic, religious and political bloodletting since Obasanjo's election in a military-supervised vote in 1999. Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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