The Chairman of INEC Allegedly Lied Under Oath

Some ballot papers used for the April 21, 2007 presidential election were printed in South Africa, findings by THE PUNCH have revealed.

This contradicts the claim of the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Maurice Iwu, that the printing were solely handled by the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company at a cost of N7.7bn.

Iwu’s claim was contained in his affidavit in response to the 27 questions raised by the presidential candidate of the Action Congress, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on the conduct of the poll.

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In support of the accusations made by Buhari and Abubakar on the 24th, Punch newspaper has discovered that the ballots for the most recent election were indeed made at least partly by a South African company, but it has not been confirmed whether or not the ballot had serial numbers. The handling of the elections, however, was under the control of Obasanjo, and Yar’Adua may or may not have been at fault.
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Yar'Adua Faces Court Over Alleged Fraudulent Elections

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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