Since the election, denounced by some outside observers as the most fraudulent they had ever witnessed, over 1,200 petitions have been filed by the losing candidates in protest against the results. Almost all the successful petitions so far have alleged individual breaches of the electoral law, such as ballot papers with missing names. But more systematic crimes may have occurred, and indeed the first petitioner to prove wholesale malpractice on election day—many voters never even saw ballot papers—won his case last week against the governor of Enugu state. Those bringing the case against the president hope to do the same.
The former military president, Muhammadu Buhari, and the former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, are leading the charge against Mr Yar'Adua—both lost to him in the presidential poll. They allege that the elections were a sham, that the country failed to produce a complete voters' register and that ballots lacked serial numbers (and were therefore impossible to track). Furthermore, Mr Abubakar says he was illegally excluded from the poll until the very last minute, preventing him from campaigning.
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Many people in Nigeria are claiming that the most recent elctions were fraudulent, and this is no surprise for a counry so recently Democratic as Nigeria. The recent change to Democracy would also make it easy for someone to denouce the elections as the "most fraudulent," because they have probably only witnessed three. In all seriousness, the claims over fraud are probably true to at least some degree, but whether anything will be done remains to be seen. Holding elections for a seceond time may prove difficult or impossible to accomplish.
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